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Homeschool in a Book – Ideas please!
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I’m doing some research and need to know:
If you or a friend were considering homeschooling for the first time and someone could hand you just one book to give you help what would you want to learn in that book? Anything and everything.
It’s been a while since I was in the ‘researching homeschooling’ phase (ahem, that was 12 years ago when pregnant with my oldest…) so I am sure there are things I’m not thinking about.
Not just the legality, but if you could have been a fly on the wall of a homeschool family’s home what would you have wanted to find out?
I love this question!
I would have wanted to know the following:
- No one day will look the same. Just be prepared and roll with things that come up since the kids will take their cue from you. Days that seem “empty” are much more full and educational than you can accept.
- Schedules and plans are great but should not be written in stone. Have easy alternatives.
- Always have your “car school” ready to grab and go.
- Your children will never learn like school children again and that is ok. And even better.
- Puberty will rock your schooling world. Nothing prepares you for hormones. Even your experiences with your own!
- Be solid in what you want the final outcome to be for each of your children. Have that sketch in your mind’s eye at all times. Know what you are aiming for so that when every Jane and Susie around is going in a totally different direction, you won’t keep reinventing what you want/do with your own children.
- Try not to compare. Anything. Anyone. Anytime. Anywhere.
- Steel yourself. You are going against the trend or the norm and that takes courage, faith and strength.
- Know that you will have days of doubt, saddness and frustration. Those are normal and not indicative of homeschooling just a part of raising children.
- Take care of yourself. Maybe even more so than you did before you homeschooled. You need time to breathe and learn and plan and do something that is important to you and maybe only you. You are a better Mom, teacher, wife when you are taking good care of yourself. This means more than a ten minute cup of tea a day!
- Create a good library of “you” books that support your method of homeschooling, are inspiring, help you plan, etc.
I’m sure there is much, much more so if I think of something I’ll pop back on.
I don’t know if this would be helpful at all, but I’ve been reading, “Things We Wished We’d Known” by Diana Waring. It is a collection of testimony from real homeschool families and it is really compelling! Fun to read, short chapters, intriguing because there are so many different families. I was purging my bookshelves yesterday and realized I had never read it so I took it to bed. Might be just the thing for your friend.
I had a friend sit me down and show me:
-The options of our province (register vs. enroll).
-Where to find the provincial learning outcomes for each year.
-The main home school philosophies: Charlotte Mason Method, Classical, Traditional, Unschooling, Montessori, Big Box, Unit Study. And she gave me suggestions of books and websites for each of the methods to explore. Like:
CM: A Charlotte Mason Companion~ The Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola, For The Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, and here on SimplyChalotteMason.com
Classical: The Well Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer….
Big Box: Sonlight, Konos, My Father’s World, …
Unit Study: Five In A Row, The Prairie Primer, …
you get the point.
– A subject list breakdown of all the popular curriculum sites (Math: mathusee.com, singaporemath, saxon…. Science: Apologia, RealScience4Kids, 106 days,… Language Arts: SCM, Queenhomeschool, Explode The Code, Veritas Press…)
– Gave me a copy of Things We Wish We’d Known by Dianna Waring as a general homeschooling perspective and intro of what can happen. GREAT read!
– Encouraged me to go to a home school conference and just sit and listen to as many workshops as I could handle. To walk the vendor hall and listen to all the booths spiels, to see what other mothers were buying… to observe. Before I even made the decision TO home school. It was an invaluable experience and I am SO glad I did it.
She pointed me the way to research all these things and did not persuade me in any particular method. But she let me observe what she did and ask questions. She was a great mentor and still someone I turn to with questions. It is her actions that guide me in passing on info to other mothers I meet who want to know more about home schooling.
If I could afford to, I would buy 3 things for these mamas:
Things We’d Wish We’d Known by Dianna Waring
A Charlotte Mason Companion~ the Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola
Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education DVD and Book set by Sonya Shafer
Those 3 resources have made an impact on our schooling regardless if we were following the CM method or not.
I would have liked to have seen a real hs day and saw that it was not going to look like school at a public school. I had envisioned “school at home” and couldn’t see how you could incorporate all aspects of life into learning. I am very scheduled or routine-ish, so seeing a “scheduled” or “routine-ish” day would have been helpful. I would have love to have been introduced to the methods of schooling available. It took way too long for me to find CM but nobody I knew was using any “method” so I didn’t even know there were any 🙁
I would have really liked someone to have told me that it was going to take time(unless you were one of the lucky ones who knew before your dc were born that you were going to hs, it takes time).
Don’t compare yourself to public school or even bother trying to keep up! There is no point as you are not in ps and it can be horrible to live with the guilt.
It takes time. I am not a “natural” teacher and my impatience got the best of me in the early years, which I regret 100%.
PS: All of the above are excellent resources/points.
I second how valuable attending a hs conference is. Also I got a lot out of the book by Lisa Whelchel called So You’re Thinking About Homeschooling. It shows what homeschooling life might look like for various families and gives examples of applying the various different methods. It helped me to see that home schooling is not “school at home”.
I love the “car school” grab and go that Claire mentioned. We have lots of audiobooks for science and history and literature to use for car school.
Oh, and now that I am completely biased, I would show anyone wanting to homeschool SCM or any CM related material. I think that CM’s philosophy can be a great starting point for anyone. It’s incredibly “freeing” to me, yet, covers the basics if that’s what you need at the time.
But, yes, knowing about all the “methods” and that they exist would have been wonderful.
I did read a ton of books but that was after I had already been homeschooling for quite awhile.
I’ve never been to a conference so if that’s not possible, the All Day Seminar/Books and Things would be great.
Educating the Whole-hearted Child By Sally Clarkson.
It is comprehensive and inspiring, complete with how tos, lists of living books, resources, forms to use, and lots of examples.
Tara
There is so much information and curriculum available that it’s overwhelming. If a beginning homeschool family can figure out what method (or combo of methods) best suits their style then they can focus on that and ignore 80% of what’s out there. That really makes the task easier.
That’s why I like to start people off with our free Getting Started in Homeschooling book. Obviously, it’s bent towards CM, but the book gives a good comparison and overview of all of the major methods.
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