My neighbor asked me recently to explain how homeschooling works.  Odd question, I thought, until I realized she must be thinking of trying it.   It turns out she was considering homeschooling her son but was overwhelmed with all the information out there and didn’t quite know where to start.

She mostly had questions about homeschooling curriculum and wondered how do you know if you’re teaching the right material, or in the right way. Premade lesson plans would be a huge help for her, so I showed her some examples and could almost feel her sigh of relief as she realized this WAS possible.   She could do this!  LOL

I laugh because we’ve all been there.  Everyone is a newbie for a while.  We figure out why we’re dissatisfied with the education our kids are currently getting, and then we figure out how to improve it.  We just all take a slightly different route.   Quite a few of us didn’t necessarily plan to homeschool, but our dissatisfaction with the schools our kids have attended led us down the path toward homeschooling.  Now we’re “accidental homeschoolers”, wondering how we ended up here but somehow knowing it doesn’t matter how we made the journey, it only matters that we did.

So I’d like to salute all the newbies out there, unsure and unsteady, wondering if they’ve made the right choice.  The toughest part of homeschooling is making the decision to start.  Welcome!

With my daughter in fourth grade and a older I think her hyperactivity is calming down.  I think me helping her understand she thinks outside the box and knowing that that is perfectly normal has helped her through some tough times.  I notice she isn’t as forgetful lately too. But that easily could be cuz she is interested in her subjects now.  Although I never had her tested for ADHD,  as a mom I knew she would be considered ADHD.  I never wanted her to be labeled.  Teaching was somewhat of a challenge, but I do think we have hit our niche now.  There is so many tools out there to help you.  I saw my sister go through some trying times with ADD.  I told myself I will not let my daughter go through that if I can help it.

It is such a great feeling that we are working through this as a team and learning all at the same time!  I love homeschooling!  Next adventure in our household is my oldest is taking on a babysitting job….more to come!

“Mama, what do you think about string theory?” This is the question I got on the way to TaeKwonDo lessons a couple of weeks ago. String theory? Seriously?! Did I mention that she is ten years old? In all honesty I was thinking about what I was going to feed my family on return from lessons. Then, out of left field…string theory! I shouldn’t be surprised any more. Life with a gifted child can be a challenge sometimes. They tend to think beyond their years. Mine worries about the collapse of society, and terraforming Mars. They are willing to take on subjects that are several years ahead of their educational base. Like string theory. They do quirky things, like think they have found a wonderful treasure at the used book sale, the AP High School Chemistry tome. Well, I suppose all children do quirky things, but since mine is an “only”, I don’t have a lot of experience with many other children’s quirks. Sometimes I don’t know whether to attribute her quirks to her giftedness, her being home schooled or her ADHD. 

In all likelihood it is a combination of the three. If she did not have ADHD, the school would have had a more compliant and focused learner. Had she been more compliant, the school system would have been better able to handle her giftedness. Had the school been able to handle her giftedness, I would have been happy to let them do it, no need to home school. The biggest problem probably is that schools are set up to handle many students at a time. When students stick out as being other than average, regardless of what their exceptionality is, it gets more difficult for schools to deal with them. I’m not complaining about schools. They serve a purpose. Much of the time they get the job of giving a basic education to the students done..

I used to think how great it was that as homeschoolers, my kids could avoid those pesky state-wide standardized tests the public school kids had to endure.   (Of course, it depends on the state, whether or not homeschoolers must take these tests, but in many states they either aren’t required at all, or are optional.)  One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard about the teaching in public schools is that they “teach the test”, trying to maximize test scores at the expense of regular old-fashioned learning of the stuff kids need to know.  These standardized tests always seemed like such an educational detour to me.

I got to wondering though, what kind of benefits are there for homeschoolers who take the usual array of standardized tests that schoolkids take?  I came up with benefits related to taking the SAT in high school.  Test prep these days for tests like the SAT and ACT is big business.  I do have to wonder if maybe kids who’ve been subjected to the testing routine for years have an advantage.  I don’t mean by reducing testing anxiety or learning how to color in the bubbles on the answer sheet, but benefits from “teaching the test” for so many years.  Are homeschooled kids who opt out of standardized testing at a disadvantage later, when it really counts?

I don’t claim to have an answer to this question, but it did get me thinking.  I’ve been looking for test-prep methods specifically targeted to homeschoolers.  I found a course from Time4Writing focusing on essay writing for the SAT.  It seems to me that homeschooled kids without years of standardized testing under their belts could really benefit from test-prep programs like this.

At the beginning of each school year do you search for a new curriculum to use for homeschooling? I know that some people have this scramble every year, and I am overjoyed that I do not have that problem. When I decided to home school, I had already found the curriculum that I would use. In fact, the curriculum that I found was what helped me make the decision to home school. Before we left public school my daughter believed that she was the stupidest kid on the planet, and that the school must think so too. When I asked her why, she said that they made her repeat the same work all week before taking a test on it. She was talking specifically about spelling words, which were practiced every day for the test on Friday. Ok, so, I needed something that was not too repetitive. She writes poorly, and spells poorly, so there couldn’t be too much writing or I would lose her on that count. So, it couldn’t be workbooks. I needed the curriculum to move as fast as her brain did, not at my pace, or the school’s pace. And I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on trial and error. For three years now we have been using Time4Learning, and it works for us. Her spelling is improving and I have noticed that she is more willing to put words to paper. At some point I have to bring her writing levels up to her other levels. Don’t get me wrong, she can dictate a great paragraph. But if I ask her to write a paragraph herself, or even type it, she is not on grade level. We butt heads about this constantly. I have discovered that having someone else “help” her with school often reduces her stubborn factor and she gets more school done. It won’t be long before I seriously consider enrolling her in classes taught by someone besides me. The first of those classes will be writing classes, since that is one of the places we butt heads about the most.