Getting Started in Homeschooling
There are several different ways to homeschool. Some people actually set up a school in their homes, complete with a classroom and chalkboard. They usually keep the same hours and days off as the local public school system. Most homeschoolers are more relaxed than that. At the other end of the spectrum, unschoolers don't have any "formal" schooling. Life is the school. Eclectic schoolers fall somewhere in between, combining both the school of life with some actual books. I suggest you look at how your child learns best and go from there. The greatest thing about homeschooling is that you can tailor your school to your child's learning styles.
You will find that there are many curriculum options available. The homeschooling mom's best friend seems to be the google search. If you don't know about it, it's at www.google.com . Type in any subject and you will find scores of websites about it. My favorite trick is to type in the subject and the words "unit studies" after it. Nearly everything that comes up will be an educational link.
Curriculum
There are so many options available to homeschoolers now. Once you start looking, you'll find a few different buzzwords out there. Abeka, Saxon, unit studies, Charlotte Mason, creation based, notebooking, Math-U-See, Calvert, JASON, Montesorri, timelines, The Well Trained Mind, The Story of the World are just a few of the words and phrases that you will run across. That being said, let's dive in!
Boxed curriculum gets its name because you order the curriculum for your child according to grade from one company. Everything you need comes in a box. Abeka and Calvert are just two of those types of curriculum. If your child does great with reading a chapter and using a workbook, this method may be the one for you.
There are a few satellite schools available.
Unit studies are popular with families who have a spread in the ages of their children. You can teach all ages the same subject at the same time, while tailoring activities to each age. I've personally used the Prairie Primer (based on the Little House on the Prairie series) The Pioneer Era: Cadron Creek Christian Curriculum . KONOS is another popular unit study program KONOS, a character unit studies curriculum for home school.. You could also put together your own unit studies or find some free on the internet. Google comes in handy for this type of curriculum!
Eclectic homeschooling involves pulling your curriculum from different sources. This is what we are doing in our home. See the sidebar on this page to see what we do in our home.
Child led learning is sometimes called unschooling. From what I understand, they are not really the same. In child led learning, the child chooses what to study. The parents and child decide together how to study it and learn about it together.
Unschooling is just exactly what it sounds like. There is not a formal schooling process involved. Life is considered the education.
Another great resource is the support of other homeschooling families in the area. I suggest that you try to find a group or two to join in your area. You will find that the opportunities in a support group for education and association are endless.
Deschooling
There are some people who subscribe to the theory that you should "deschool" your child if they have been in the public school system for any length of time. Deschooling basically means not doing any schooling for a short amount of time in order to allow your child to get out of the habits they've acquired in the public school. While I see the point of that to some extent, I don't suggest that you let your child do absolutely nothing. You want to replace those habits with other, more suitable habits.
When I brought my daughter home to school, I took time limits off of everything. I took her to the library and told her to pick a state. She picked Hawaii and we checked out several books on Hawaii, as well as a few travel videos. We spent that first three or four weeks getting to know each other again and learning all about Hawaii. By allowing her to choose the subject, I made her an integral part of her education. By taking away time limits, I was able to observe how she learns best.
In a sense, we did "deschool". She got out of the habit of whining about and dreading her school work as I got out of the habit of harping on her about it. My daughter found her love of learning again in that few short weeks.
I hope that I've been of some help to you and I wish you blessings in your journey into homeschooling.
What We Do In Our Home:
Wow! Time has flown by and my girls are growing up. The oldest will be 14 (ACK!) soon and the youngest will be 7 years old in a few months. We are still using some of the same curricula that we started with; however, we have added to it and taken some away as well.
We continue to use Handwriting Without Tears and both girls are doing very well with it. We bought the entire curriculum 3 years ago and have not felt the need to add to it.
My oldest has begun using Stack the Deck for a writing program. It's a unique program that really gets the kids involved and having fun with their writing while increasing their writing skills. She is also using Abeka for grammar right now. We still have the Winston Grammar program as well and will go back to it when we're done with Abeka.
My youngest is learning to read! We began with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but I found that she was easily bored with it. We managed to get about a quarter of the way through the book and she did learn quite a bit; however, I felt that we needed something with more pizazz to hold her attention. We are now using the Scaredy Cat Reading System and she is loving it. She has been singing the vowels all week!
We dropped the JASON program as it became to cost prohibitive for us. I still have some of the books and we will use them every so often. This year,for science, we are doing small unit studies on whatever we find interesting. The science of the moment is the weather.
We are still plugging away with The Mystery of History. The girls love it and are beginning to see the big picture of the history of our world.
We also continue to use Muggins Math for both girls. We bought the pre-algebra program as well as a few math games while at convention this year. Both girls are doing well with this program.
Other things we've added:
The Picture It! Bible study. We are drawing our way through the Bible and the girls will each have their own picture Bible when we are done.
Art Adventures at Home-We are just beginning this study, but it seems like something that the girls will enjoy.
Home Ec-We are currently discussing table settings and manners. I am just winging it as far as the curriculum is concerned, but I am making a concentrated effort to provide some type of homemaking skills lesson every week.
We also continue to bowl once a month and have added ice skating lessons (yes, in Florida) to our weekly regime. We are taking part in several field trips this year as well.
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