Calling All Homeschoolers

[SandNOceanGirl]

I am homeschooling my 16 yr old daughter this year for the first time. I have thought about doing this years ago but have always been working and never found the time or thought I couldn't do it. However this year we moved from Mississippi to Alabama. Upon moving here we found out that the school district we are in is a bad one, so we made the decision to homeschool her and have been very happy with our choice. We are using the eclectic method.

What I am wondering is why you chose to homeschool and what method you use.

[Nishu]

Well, I initially decided to do the public-school-at-home approach, even using the same curriculum the school system hands out here.

Lately though, I've been reading a ton of stuff by some hippy liberals like Alfie Kohn, John Gatto and William Crain and at this point if I had to put a label on it, I'd say we're unschooling. This is, btw, absolutely NOT what we set out to do. I started out with Alfie Kohn and his "What does it mean to be well educated" and it pretty much just wiped out all my previous opinions about education. Right now I'm working on Reclaiming Childhood and now I'm reworking my opinions on childhood altogether.

We're a work in progress. At this point, I'm taking heart in the fact that my daughter is 7 and we have ten more years to work on it.

What I'm working on right now is deciding exactly what the goal of her education is. Is it for her to be employable? Is it so that she can get into a good college? Maybe so that I can brag about how smart she is? I eventually decided that I want to raise girls who are always curious and always learning, but I also want them to be strong and capable and to believe in their own abilities. I want them to be bold.

The entire system we had been using has all but been disposed of. I'm still working on where to go next.

ETA, sorry for the novel! And good luck with your homeschooling. I'm glad it's working for you and your daughter!

[Neeley]

We homeschooled our daughter 7th-9th grade. In our city 7th-9th is junior high and there are not any good junior high schools. There are only five to choose from and none are what I consider safe and all are on academic probation.

She decided this year she wanted to return to traditional school. She was given the option to go to a well respected private Christian school or to the public high school her dad and I graduated from. She chose the public school. She is doing awesome and is really enjoying it. Her school has 1400 students and she was one of only 120 to make honor roll and she is taking all AP (advanced placement) courses.

We took DS out of traditional school half-way through his 5th grade year (he is now in 8th grade). He has expressed an interest in attending the private school we offered to DD next year. It looks like this will be our final year of homeschooling.

As far as methods of teaching, I am very liberal with the kids and have let them guide me through their homeschooling process. DD is extremely self motivated. I never had to really do anything with her. I provided books, websites and trips. She did the rest on her own. She taught herself and did a beautiful job at it.

DS has done better by using an online "classroom" mixed with a little unschooling. He needs a little more guidance and supervision than DD did. If it were up to him he would skip the schooling altogether and play Call of Duty 4 on his xbox 360 24/7. Right now I am looking into sending him to another private tutor just for his writing skills. He could use a little extra help in this area and I am not confident enough to do it on my own.

[nandmsmom]

I am homeschooling DS7 and DD4. We originally started because DS was an extremely bright kid with way too much energy. I wanted to be able to challenge him without making him sit still for 7 hours a day. Since then is has come to mean so much more to us. We love the time our family gets to spend together. We love that we can choose to teach whatever we want instead of what someone else tells us to teach. Ds loves that he gets to play for a majority of the day instead of sitting at a desk. I love that I get to see him learn new things. We can run off down rabbit trails when we get interested in things. We can take a day off and go to the museum whenever we want. I really could go on and on about all the various reasons why.

As for what we use for curriculum, its quite varied. When I first started researching, I read The Well Trained Mind which is a neo-classical approach to homeschooling. Then I started reading about Charlotte Mason, then unschooling and the like. In the end what we have ended up with is a very eclectic approach. We use some of the curriculum and ideas in WTM and the short lessons of CM. Since science is a huge area of interest and one I feel quite comfortable with, we really unschool that one.

Enjoy your daughter in her short period of time with you.