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Homeschooling

brYce

Member
Shalom to all,

How many of you homeschool your children? I plan on starting when I'm able and I wonder if anyone is currently involved in this.

If you're a homeschooler, please tell me what kind of curriculum you use and why you use it. What is your daily routine like? How much of the work is shared between the parents? What, in your estimation, are common pitfalls for people who are just starting out with homeschooling?

Any insights you can give would be really welcome. I've done a lot of reading on the subject and I lived with a homeschooling family over a decade ago for a while, but I'd love to hear of some real experiences.


Thanks,

brYce
 
We homeschool four children. The youngest is 17 months and it is never too young to start them at the table coloring or playing with their own numbers during school time. Biblically the father is responsible for the education of the child and therefore must at least monitor closely the schooling, progress, and final results of the children. Having said that, my wife does most of the work so that I can run the business.

The biggest pitfall that I see is the misconception that it is an option for believers, and not an obligation. Similar to divorce for convenience for believers. If it is not an option, you will make it work, and "you know who" will honor and bless your obedience with grace and strength and mercy.
 
Yes, I see it as an obligation too. In the Shema, we are commanded to train our children. I don't like the idea of trusting other people to be primarily responsible. I don't think it's wrong to have others help, but I think the majority of the responsibility lies with the parents.
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, NASB)
The chief reason why we haven't started is that my wife is still in Jamaica while we are waiting for the immigration paperwork to go through. I wish I could be homeschooling my two other daughters, but their mother left me and doesn't share my views.

I really like how you include even your youngest in the learning. While thinking about how it would all work, I never thought that little Ruthie (our toddler) would also be participating with our son, Benjamin, who is entering Grade 2 this coming Fall.

Is there a curriculum you would recommend?
 
We use different curriculum for different subjects. We do like the answers in genesis curriculum. As in all things "christian", you do have to be careful which publishers that you use. You can get some used school books from school teachers, many times they just throw tons of stuff away. Be careful about how you approach them.

regarding small children, we did not have to teach our 3 or 4 year old shapes, colors, numbers, or letters. If you include them in the activities, then they will learn these things just like they learn what a cat or dog is, or a banana or papa or gamma. They learn it without teaching it to them. Our three year old informed my wife that the carts at walmart were made of hexagons. If you make it fun for them and always relate it to God and his grace and blessings, then you will see the harvest and not be as quick to burn out on it.

We tell them two plus two is four, isn't it neat how God made all things in order and He does not change, so it will always be four?
This is how God made the (insert science topic here), isn't it cool how he did that so we know that He loves us and provides (same topic) for us? We need to be good caretakers of what we have. ETC. ETC.
I would strongly suggest that the Bible is the most important topic, even if you use it as history. "see how they turned their back on God? We can learn from this."

Finally, do not get too wrapped up in curriculum for the younger ones, they are not going to stay with a particular book or theme. Just make yourself available and interested and they will do it because they want to be just like you.
 
Hi!
I'm Paul's wife and I just want tto let you know how much I agree with you. I need my children with me throughout the day if I want to follow the scripture that you shared. There is no one on the planet that is better equipped to teach our children than we are. With that being said, I cannot do it on my own. I need Him who gives me strength to help me. Pray, pray, pray is the best advice I could give you. And don't get discouraged by other people who have all the mega-schedules and are organized like crazy. Set your own pace and schedule. For instance, it was chaotic for me to get any schooling done in the mornings while the two youngest were constant distractions. So, for the most part, we do most of the school work in the afternoon while the little ones are down for their naps. Also, sometimes Paul has to drive to a different city to do work. I will pack our daughter's backpack with her books and write on a list what pages in which books to do and she gets time with dad and a completed day of school. Do whatever works best for you.

As far as curriculum, I like to thumb through books in my hand rather than seeing them online. Even some small Bible bookstores carry homeschool curriclum so I would suggest looking through some there to get a feel of what you would like. I am very grateful that we bought used books at a homeschool conference for our first year. I ended up not liking the curriclum that I chose, so I am glad that I paid less than half of what it would have been new. If you live in or near a large city, there might be a used or consignment homeschool store. Those are great and usually run by homeschooling parents who can offer advice. Also, see if your area has a homeschool association or organization. Your local school district should know and will probably tell you when you register to homeschool. We live in a very rural area, but our homeschool group has 125 families and we have organized field trips, buy & sell books to each other, have Mom's Night Out once a month for encourgement, and the veteran homeschoolers know all about how and when to take the standardized tests and such.

If your little guy is an independent learner, I like LIFEPAC for math and language arts. For the toddler, I always suggest www.starfall.com It's basically interactive letters and their sounds, but it gets them interested in learning the letters. Even if they're too little to use the computer and you have to click on the letters while they sit on your lap, they still like it. One of our kids would get so sluggish when I pulled out the ABC flashcards, and "I don't know" was her answer for each one. The first time I turned starfall on for her, she stayed on for 2 hours and got immediately excited about learning. A switch was flipped and now, just a few months later, she is starting to read.

Stay strong in your convictions when it comes to other people expressing their doubts about your decision. The most frequent arguement that we heard when we first started was about socialization and it was mostly from family members. Our kids are very social with church activities, other homeschoolers and I'm not exactly anti-social myself. I don't believe that I have less social skills than the average elementary school student. There are so many homeschooled, Bible teaching homeschool families these days and there are many opportunities to congregate.

I'm pretty akward at ending posts, so... Bye.
 
I've been homeschooling for several years now, and have tried many different variations on ways to homeschool. I don't know the ages of your children, so I'll start with what I have used, as well as what I'm using currently. I've taught all of my kids from kindergarten up to starting 4th grade this year.

There are a number of styles that can be found, unschooling, unit studies, full curriculums, etc. My personal preference is a mix of the unit study style (in which you teach all of the children the same thing at the same time, and ask questions appropriate to age and ability), as well as workbooks. The workbooks that we're using are a mix from various places. I am personally partial to the Miqon Math books, as they teach on a ten base (as opposed to a 12 base like I was taught, much less confusing), and they teach a wide range of things early on. My oldest is doing great with math (he has his father's ability), where my dd is a little slower (she has mine), so they are allowed to move at their own pace. For social studies, they use workbooks from a local school supply shop, they are simple workbooks and inexpensive, but give a good smattering of basics. We also do random studies of anything they're interested in, such as if a topic of interest comes up, it's looked up online and the kids are given a mini-lesson pretty much on the spot, and they are likely to retain that knowledge the best, and we are also able to give our own opinions on the subject as well. For instance, this afternoon the subject of Samhain came up with the children, and a discussion about halloween, paganism, demons, satan, etc. ensued, as well as a followup discussion of why we avoid such things and do not practice halloween, etc.

For other subjects, such as reading, my favorite method is Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It is a phonetics based book, and teaches writing while at the same time teaching "sounds" as opposed to "letters". While it worked perfectly for my first two children however, it has not gone so well with my 3rd. I believe he may have some letter recognition issues though, so we're going back to that again. He also rarely stops talking long enough to follow the lesson, so there are some other areas to work on as well.

We did use a unit study program called Five In A Row, which was a very literary based education for younger children, based on reading the same book for a week and doing different studies each day in accordance with 5 areas of learning (math, science, art, language arts and one other I can't remember). While it was great for finding stories at the library, and we found some really great stories (Clown of God made me cry, but it's an amazing book), it was too much for me to make the lesson plans out and figure out what we could and couldn't do. My teaching style didn't fit well with that program, though the program was great. It's perfect for younger children who aren't necessarily ready for a ton of structure yet.

We are also starting to work on copywork, using scriptures for them to copy.

At this point in time, I like workbooks for my children who can read the best, because while they are working on their books, I can accomplish other things with the other children (such as keeping them from drawing blood), working on letters, numbers, etc. I also cook/bake quite a bit, so the kids can sit at the table while I prepare meals. At this point, we do a few hours in the morning pretty much every weekday for most of the year. It works best for us to be able to work year round and keep the habit (though it's trickier in the summer when the other kids are around and wanting to play).

If you've any questions, feel free to ask. I strongly believe that kids have a better chance of learning things well, as well as learning to be better socially adjusted when they are homeschooled. A good example would be this, we went to a pool party with my mother in law and her dad and stepmom. Her stepmom has a grandchild who is our oldest son's age. While at the pool, another boy about their age came along and started playing with the kids as well. My husband noted that while the other two boys (both public schooled) developed the herd mentality seen often in school children, our son was more likely to question why the boys would do or not do something, instead of blindly following the herd. While there is some temptation to send our child to public school for certain types of interaction, we also realize that there are other ways for them to get interaction with other kids in much healthier settings, such as smaller group activities.

One thing I will add, everyone has a different teaching style, as well as a different learning style. What worked on my first two kids won't necessarily work on my 3rd kid. You may have some trial and error during the first few years, unless you happen to stumble across just the right thing. I'm still refining what we use and as the kids get older, some of that causes changes as well.
 
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