Homeschooling

So I’ve been thinking about what I think about homeschooling lately and decided to blog about it (of course that was about a month ago, but better sometime than never, right?). I know homeschooling isn’t for everyone, but I think sometimes people have a really skewed view of it--like everything else we don’t know much about. There are lots of misconceptions and just plain wrong ideas about homeschooling, but this isn’t really to address those, it’s more just to get down what I’ve been thinking about. So there you go. Feel free to not read it.

My mom took my brother out of public school when he was in 9th grade. When we moved to Virginia my brother's teachers decided that he was stupid (that's after he was in the accelerated programs when we lived in Idaho). They wouldn't change their minds and treated him accordingly and he started going downhill really quickly. So my mom pulled him and Monica out of school mid-year. She actually started them over learning the basics from first grade up so that she could keep ahead of them. They caught up to where they should be in about a month. My other sisters and I finished the school year and then started homeshcooling, too.

There were two other families in our ward that homeschooled, so they kind of helped my mom to start. We also had lots of classes and activities with them. By the time we moved both those families had already moved, but there were at least two other families who had started homeschooling in the ward.

I think it really helps to know someone who homeschools so you can see what you like and don't like about what they are doing. We used a lot of different curriculum and my mom went through everything before we saw it. I remember going into her bedroom and she was always reading a science book or something like that. (Or she had fallen asleep while reading it.) It always impressed me that she went through our books first. And it was always great when you came to an omitted chapter.

I don't really know how Mom decided which books to use, but I really liked some of the ones she chose. And I really didn't like others. I suppose I should ask her some day how she chose. Or she could just leave a comment on my blog for once ;).

I loved being homeschooled. We usually could get our work done in about three or four hours (depending on what kind of a schedule Mom had us on at the time. I loved being able to get weeks ahead on school work and then having our friends over and playing town in real time.

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is that you can focus more on what you're interested in at the time. There was a time that I was way into math. I woke up early and went to bed late so that I could learn math. I think I went through about three years of math during that time. Mom finally said that I couldn't do any more math until I did some English. And that was the end of that. :) But I really believe that people learn better what they are interested in and that homeschooling gives you the freedom to utilize that. I definitely think that you need to learn and have exposure to as many different subjects as you can, but I think that comes easier with homeschooling, too.

Like I said, when we started homeschooling we lived in Virginia. We were fairly close to D.C. so we went there on field trips really often. We also took trips all over the east coast learning about history and all sorts of other things. And then there were the trips across the country and back stopping at historical sites and points of interest. It might have been a little much at the time, but we could definitely tell that learning was important to our parents and we might have picked up a little bit of knowledge along the way.

I think letting your kids know that learning is important to you is one of the most important things that homeschooling parents can do.

For a while we would have a class all together in the mornings where we would focus on different things. We would usually do a lateral thinking game (or whatever they're called). I loved being the youngest because I got exposed to how people older than me thought a lot earlier than I would have otherwise. If that makes sense. I got the benefit of being the youngest quite often, actually. One of the reasons that my sister decided to homeschool her kids is that I whipped out some Latin and Greek roots while she was helping me with my science while she was home from college one summer.

I think you have a lot better understanding of where your kids are coming from when they're homeschooled. Not that I wasn't totally misunderstood at times (yes--I know that Stonewall Jackson was a general not a wall), but at least they didn't make me stare at a globe when I said the earth wasn't a circle (thanks a lot, first grade teacher). Wow--that was more tangent like than usual.

Oh--another thing I loved about how I was home schooled is that we utilized the talents of the people around us and bartered a lot. I think it was neat that we were exposed to so many different styles of teaching and had interactions with people that were teaching us the things that they loved. We had music theory lessons and dance lessons and art lessons and childbirth lessons (that one was really, really weird when I was seven) and government lessons all from people who were professionals in those fields or who just wanted to share the information that they had.

One of my favorite classes and one that changed me the most was Cinderella class. My mom read some where that one of the most important forms of learning was learning how to serve. She agreed that that was pretty important, so “Cinderella class” was formed. Once a week, or twice a week, sometimes three times a week, we would go over to someone’s house and do whatever they wanted us to do. Usually it was a young mother’s house but not always. And usually it was the same person once a week for months. I cleaned a lot of bathrooms, mopped a lot of floors, and played with lots of kids. I went shopping, cleaned artificial plants, and learned to paint pumpkins. I made friends with people more than twice my age and less than half my age, and a few more than five times my age. It was awesome. I still think about all the people that I worked with and learned from all the time. I still love each of them. If I was less socially backward I would still be doing it, but it was so much easier when my mom made all the arrangements.

I don't think homeschooling makes people socially awkward.

I don't have anything against public schooling; after all, I'm a first grade graduate. I also went to the last half of sixth grade and took some classes in high school (unless you don't count study hall as a class, then it was only one class at multiple high schools). But it was definitely homeschooling that prepared me for college, homeschooling that gave me the confidence and discipline to earn an associates in a year, and homeschooling that got me into a graduate program that I absolutely (except the research part) loved. It was a big factor in making me who I am today and allowing me to change who I was and wanted to be occasionally.

So, I was home schooled from the time I was seven til about fifteen (I stopped doing my schoolwork around then). Oh--that's another thing that I love about homeschooling--it gives you so much more freedom to get a job. I worked a lot before I went to college and was able to pay my own way. And pay for my mission (which made my dad mad). And make a down payment on a house eventually (because I never had to go into debt for any of the other stuff).

Okay, that was a lot of the things that I've been thinking of. Like I said feel free not to read it. I just wanted to finally post this lovely blog post before it kept getting even longer.