What do you think of homeschooling?

[serious crayons]

But it's so nice to be able to be home together as much as we want, not separated into separate institutions for the best part of our waking hours 5 days a week. 

Your homeschooling life sounds very idyllic and nice. I think a lot must depend on the particular kid and the particular parents. With my kids, if we did not spend a lot of our time in separate institutions, we would wind up in separate institutions. 

[ifyoucantfixit]

     Serious Crayons.........


       if we did not spend a lot of our time in separate institutions, we would wind up in separate institutions.


  Boy do I hear that.  I have seen that the case more than not.

[Kelda]

We are a homeschooling family, actively involved in a lively, fun, academically exhilarating homeschool group. 

We're in a science club and a new and emergent readers club.  With other homeschoolers, we participate in craft day, game day, building day, museums, plays, concerts, parks.  She takes a gymnastics class, goes to a Waldorf play group twice a week (those are my breaks), is playing violin with Mr. Meno, and still has plenty of time to draw, play with her dollhouse, do spontaneous living room dancing and singing shows, and Skype with Grandma. 

Elle,

I hope you don't mind me asking but I wondered how the home-schooling grouping works?

Do the parents take it in turns to take the smaller group of kids for certain subjects or times of the week or what? Or is the groupings mainly for the group actiities as you mentioned? And this makes up a smaller percentage of the 'school week'?

[Ellemeno]

Your homeschooling life sounds very idyllic and nice. I think a lot must depend on the particular kid and the particular parents. With my kids, if we did not spend a lot of our time in separate institutions, we would wind up in separate institutions. 

Well again, remember - she's 5 1/2.  I'm sure we will be separate more often as she gets older. 

[Ellemeno]

Elle,

I hope you don't mind me asking but I wondered how the home-schooling grouping works?

Kelda, ask anything. 

Again - she's 5 1/2, so what it looks like now I'm sure is different than how it will look when she's older.

Do the parents take it in turns to take the smaller group of kids for certain subjects or times of the week or what?

We're not doing this yet, but I know it's pretty common for the older kids we know.  I carefully pay attention to what I see people doing with older kids and mentally file a lot of ideas away.  I think very soon, MiniMeno will be ready to do small group projects, and I have happy visions of experiences that look very school-like, but with 3 to 10 kids participating.

Or is the groupings mainly for the group actiities as you mentioned? And this makes up a smaller percentage of the 'school week'?

Maybe I'll describe our current weekly schedule.

Monday - she goes to the Waldorf play school.  I get as much housework and errands and goofing off done as possible.

Tuesday - free time in the morning, homeschool park day in the afternoon.  In the morning we stay home, and usually it's unpredictable, but amazing what we wind up doing.  Projects, reading, lots of pretend.  Usually just her and me, because she just had a big social day all day the day before, and we're about to have a big social afternoon.  Every Tuesday afternoon, kids and families of all ages play at a certain park.  The moms yak with each other, the kids run, play in the sandbox, climb, explore.  I envy moms of the older kids, because they actually sit and chat.  My child is too young for that, so usually the mom(s) of the kid(s) she's playing with at any given time and I talk as we stroll along at a respectful distance from our kids, keeping an eye on them.  One of the beauties of park day is seeing the mix of ages playing mostly beautifully together.  There is a lot of respect between these very articulate and compassionate kids.

Wednesday - mornings vary by the week.  One Wednesday a month is game day.  A friend of ours with a big house hosts this, and each month different games are highlighted.  The age range there is usually 2 to 7 years old.  We stay for a few hours, and have a potluck lunch together.  I imagine that as the kids get older, parents may leave, but so far we all stay.  Partly because we, the parents, are having a great time too.  Other Wednesday mornings we go to the library, either just us, or meet friends, sometimes spending 2 or 3 hours there, reading tons of books, playing with the puppet theater or other things the various libraries have, including, sometimes, computer games.  Early afternoon is her gymnastics class, and I usually leave and either go across one street and have coffee and free wifi, or across the other street and have Chinese lunch and a book.  Wednesday late afternoon, she goes for two hours to the home of a friend of mine who has a 12 year old girl she adores.  She is her "junior babysitter."  MiniMeno is her first child to babysit, and her mother is right there.  I worked with her mother and know she is a wonderful person.  I pay $5/hour for this, so it works out for all of us.

Thursday - Waldorf school. 

Friday - Morning depends on the week.  One week of the month is science club, the others are reading club, building day (blocks, legos, Tinker Toys, and modern versions there of), craft day.  Again, for now, at this age, the parents all stay.  Parents take turns organizing the topics for science and craft.  For reading club, the kids bring whatever they want to read to the group.  Some kids are actually reading chapter books, others don't read at all, but show the pictures.  MiniMeno is partial to making up phrases with magnetic words on a metal board and then bringing her sentence to the group and reading it.  Other kids make a book of a few pages with drawings and short stories that either they or their parents write the words of, and read or just point to the pictures.  The age range of participants is about 4 to 7.  Friday afternoon is free, and we sometimes go on an adventure just the two of us, or with friends, to a museum, or a store, or the zoo, or stay home and watch a movie, or read.  Whatever we feel like doing.  Sometimes we go pick up Mr. Meno from work and go out to dinner.

Saturday and Sunday - like anyone's weekend.  A mix of at home time, having friends over, going to the park, seeing family.  Every two or three weeks, Mr. and Mini drive an hour away to go see the grandparents, and are gone most of the day.  That day I usually goof off totally, loll around watching the TiVoed episodes of "The Office" I don't watch because they aren't kid-friendly, order a pizza, watch more TV, take a nap.

In between that weekly and daily structure, we play games that incorporate math concepts, do art, dance, cook together, shop together.  All that has math components.  She knows a lot (for her age, I mean) about a lot of different things, like animals, human biology (though she doesn't know the word "biology," I don't think), countries of the world and languages.  She can tell an English accent from a Scottish accent (partly thanks to you!), and a French accent from a Spanish accent.  She recently got firmly which is right and which is left.  She jumps on our big bed a lot, and is working on cartwheels.  She does worksheets when she wants to, with phonics or matching or connect the dots or other stuff on them.  I would say that academically she's ahead of average in most things, but not in arithmetic.  Developmentally that hasn't clicked in much yet.  But she can count confidently and carefully, and can say the days of the week in English and French.  I could go on and on (and have).

I wish this way of life for all who would want it.  I know not everyone does.  And I know many people simply can't.  I mean we are living on one income now.  To buy things I want for homeschooling I sometimes use money from my savings from when I worked.  I try not to spend much.  But I pretty freely buy stuff if I think it's educational.

I will say that I know families where the "HOME" and "SCHOOL" parts of homeschooling are emphasized much more than we do.  Every day they have actual textbook learning, following through systematically.  If yesterday was page 8 and 9 in their grammar book, then today is pages 10 and 11, or whatever.  And they don't go gallivanting as much as we do.  But I can't tell that their kids know more than MiniMeno does, or have better critical thinking skills.  The beauty is we are finding what works FOR US.  That's about the most one could wish from life, I think.

[serious crayons]

Well again, remember - she's 5 1/2.  I'm sure we will be separate more often as she gets older. 

Oh, we've had to separate at every age. As my sons have gotten older, we've separated more and more for their sakes. But in the earlier days, we separated for MY sake. Before they were in school, they were in daycare three afternoons a week. And then they were in school. I suppose there are parents somewhere out there who could have been them 24/7 and remained sane. But so far, this could not be said about, for instance, any of their teachers (the elder one's anyway).

Your schedule sounds extremely fun and nice. That would be a pretty idyllic life with a 5-year-old. But some of the things you all do would not have worked well with my kids. Before they were in school, and even after, I took them to a lot of places and activities: firehall open houses, pick-your-own orchards, libraries, nature classes, pools, parks, playgrounds, pet stores, and so on. We very rarely stayed home all day, again for the sake of all our sanity, and we had a lot of fun. Driving from one thing to another, we'd play word games, and they were really good at those. For example, if we were playing opposites, and I said "old," they would point out that the answer could be "new" or "young." Short could be "tall" or "long."

But unless the activity was active and/or competitive enough, my kids would not sit still for it nor invest in the importance of its success. This is the difference I always saw with my sons, again particularly the elder, who of course influenced the younger. I began to notice that other children looked to adults for guidance. The adults would indicate that this is the way things are done, and the kids -- not always, probably, but often -- would do their best to follow the correct procedure.

Mine never did that.

I'll give one example: I took them to the weekly story time at the library once. Roomful of kids their age, all sitting raptly listening to the story. Five minutes into it, mine started complaining. "This is boring!" "Shhhh!" "Let's get out of here!" "Quiet!" They got up and started walking around. We left and didn't go back.

Wait, I'll give you one more example. I took them to nature class at the neighborhood park. That one went fairly well, because there was a lot of outdoor activities -- looking for tracks in the snow, making snow ice cream, etc. But there were indoor parts, where a park district naturalist would talk to the group of about five or six kids about wolves and owls and things like that. My elder son completely dominated those. Every question the teacher asked, he would raise his hand and/or blurt out the answer. Pretty soon all the other kids were sitting quietly while the teacher and my son held a dialogue. I would think, wow, he's really smart and he knows all the answers, but when he gets into school he's going to drive his teachers crazy.

And sure enough, that's exactly how it went.

[Ellemeno]

Oh, we've had to separate at every age. As my sons have gotten older, we've separated more and more for their sakes. But in the earlier days, we separated for MY sake. Before they were in school, they were in daycare three afternoons a week. And then they were in school. I suppose there are parents somewhere out there who could have been them 24/7 and remained sane. But so far, this could not be said about, for instance, any of their teachers (the elder one's anyway).

Your schedule sounds extremely fun and nice. That would be a pretty idyllic life with a 5-year-old. But some of the things you all do would not have worked well with my kids. Before they were in school, and even after, I took them to a lot of places and activities: firehall open houses, pick-your-own orchards, libraries, nature classes, pools, parks, playgrounds, pet stores, and so on. We very rarely stayed home all day, again for the sake of all our sanity, and we had a lot of fun. Driving from one thing to another, we'd play word games, and they were really good at those. For example, if we were playing opposites, and I said "old," they would point out that the answer could be "new" or "young." Short could be "tall" or "long."

But unless the activity was active and/or competitive enough, my kids would not sit still for it nor invest in the importance of its success. This is the difference I always saw with my sons, again particularly the elder, who of course influenced the younger. I began to notice that other children looked to adults for guidance. The adults would indicate that this is the way things are done, and the kids -- not always, probably, but often -- would do their best to follow the correct procedure.

Mine never did that.

I'll give one example: I took them to the weekly story time at the library once. Roomful of kids their age, all sitting raptly listening to the story. Five minutes into it, mine started complaining. "This is boring!" "Shhhh!" "Let's get out of here!" "Quiet!" They got up and started walking around. We left and didn't go back.

Wait, I'll give you one more example. I took them to nature class at the neighborhood park. That one went fairly well, because there was a lot of outdoor activities -- looking for tracks in the snow, making snow ice cream, etc. But there were indoor parts, where a park district naturalist would talk to the group of about five or six kids about wolves and owls and things like that. My elder son completely dominated those. Every question the teacher asked, he would raise his hand and/or blurt out the answer. Pretty soon all the other kids were sitting quietly while the teacher and my son held a dialogue. I would think, wow, he's really smart and he knows all the answers, but when he gets into school he's going to drive his teachers crazy.

And sure enough, that's exactly how it went.

I'm relating to this too, K.  Story time at the library never held M's attention.  It's only recently that the library can be for reading together.  At story time M used to wander the room, and I worried about her distracting the other kids, so we quit doing that.  Well, and I also learned to accept that 5 or 10 minutes may be all she would do.

Your older son's passion to discuss sounds exhilarating, and challenging to meld with a group.  I get that.  And I hear you on the need to separate, as I illustrated.

It sounds like you did a great job giving your kids early experiences.

[Kelda]

Wow, Clarissa, schhol for Mini-Meno sounds idyllic, as Katherine says! And it works for both of you - which is great. And I love that she knows accents!!

What age do kids start school in the US?

I was four and a half. But I was one of the youngest of my class because my birthday is December and the cut of date for class intake is February so most are 5. Primary one was very much about coming out of shell and learning basic things - you're doing the same thing but in different (more fun!!) ways.

As she gets older of course, you may need to change tact but it seems like things are working perfectly just now. And its great how all the homeschoolers do stuff together. How do you all find out about each other? What you've described is very different from what I guess is my sterotypical thoughts of what homeschooling is from movies etc. Is sounds ike so much fun but also hard work for you. I'm not sure I could do it even if money worries etc were not an issue. 

Will she have to sit tests the same as those at school as she gets older?

Oh & whats Waldorf?

[serious crayons]

What age do kids start school in the US?

Kids start kindergarten when they're 5 by Sept. 1. I started when I was 4, because my birthday is in October, though I had to take a special test to do it. I was always one of the youngest in my class, and though I did fine academically I can see, retrospectively, that I was probably more immature socially. For example, in kindergarten I cried and wanted to go home. "What would you do if you went home?" the teacher asked. "Watch TV?" "Yes!" I sobbed.

They don't allow that at all anymore. My son's birthday is in late September, and he did not have the option to start at 4. Instead, his school district offered a pre-kindergarten program for fall-birthday kids called "High Fives." It was nice, because it followed the same hours as kindergarten, was somewhat academic, and unlike day care it was free. Unfortunately, he then found kindergarten really redundant and caused even more trouble than he might have otherwise.

So he is one of the oldest kids in his class in addition to being one of the smartest. In the years since then, we have talked from time to time with school officials about him skipping a grade, but for one reason or another -- mainly because we moved -- it never quite worked out. But looking back it has always seemed like it would have been easier to have him start early, rather than skip a whole year in which you'd assume they would attempt to teach some worthwhile material. His schools and district have always had inadequate programs for gifted students.

But now that I think of it, I wonder if my own childhood shyness may have been exacerbated by being relatively young, and my son's utter self-confidence may be enhanced by being one of the oldest. Both of our characteristics were in place before we started school, but still ... 

Oh & whats Waldorf?

I know the answer to this but I'll let Clarissa or someone else take it. Due to having had an obnoxious Waldorf-endorsing neighbor, I'm sort of prejudiced against the program.

[Kelda]

Thanks Katherine!

I get confused by Kindergarten too... Is Kindergarten like nursery in Scotland? I'm think probably not from what you said.

All 3 and 4 year old children in Scotland are entitled to a free nursery place with "a curriculum framework for children 3–5"providing the curricular guidelines.

In 2002, the most up to date stats I could find, 96% of 4 year olds and 80% of 3 year olds received grant funded pre-school education in 2000-01.

Formal primary education begins at approximately 5 years old and lasts for 7 years (P1–P7). Kids the move on to secondryschool. Today, sll children in Scotland sit Standard Grade exams at approximately 15 or 16. The school leaving age is 16, after which students may choose to remain at school and study for Access, Intermediate or Higher Grade and Advanced Higher exams. Fomr there they can then move on to univerity or further education.