Homeschooling is a hot topic. There are haters and there are lovers of it. There is also deep misunderstanding and mistrust of people who are homeschooling. There are people who believe that homeschooling means your child was a failure at public school, that you are a religious fanatic and want to isolate your child or even that your child doesn't like to socialize.
There is a million bazillion trillion reasons why we are now homeschooling independently. We had ventured into the world of homeschooling before through public school charter programs which were not bad at all, but were a public school at home feel. We started this year with a virtual school which was not a good fit for us at all.
But why are we homeschooling you ask? The hubs was not for it at all. He was a firm believer that you cannot succeed in life as a human being unless you go to public school, sit in a desk with 35 other kids just your age and learn what they think you should learn. At one time I thought this also. Just as my thinking changed so has the hubs. And we can thank the changing school system (thank you Obama Administration) for that and watching MC#3 and the progress he has made.
While I am not going to get into the common core debate in this post, it is one of the reasons we are out of the virtual school and do our own thing. Still haven't received a solid answer to why are you homeschooling? I can say I feel called to it, or give a million other reasons but it comes down to this. It is what is best for MC#3. (Please don't think this will be the only post of homeschooling and the why, what, how of it and our beliefs. I have a lot to say.)
The progress he has made has been tremendous in math and reading. At first I tried to mimic the public school at home. Guess what, yep, it didn't work. I found what works for him and we do it. Math - he went from thinking he was a math idiot to now loving math.
When I am teaching him a new concept half the time (more like 5/6 of the time) he doesn't want to listen to me explain it, he wants to work on figuring it out by himself using the tools available to him. That is a huge difference from being a child who is fed information to a child who is a free thinker and solver.
For being a reader, yes I was able to maybe get him to read 3-4 books a year. Now he reads anywhere from 4-6 books a month at the minimum. He loves James Patterson books, loves going to the library, getting a stack of books and reading them. He even has me read the books also so we can discuss them.
Do I think homeschooling is for everyone? No, I do not. It takes a lot of time and effort and it has it days where I just want to give up. But then something clicks and it makes everything worth it.
Thanks for reading - Julie
P.S - A quick note on socialization (biggest questions from people, how can they be socialized if they are not learning it by being in public school?) ..... MC#3 has no problem with that. He has a problem with over socializing. The kid won't be quiet. He is a talker. Will talk to anyone and everyone and yes he is active in church and 4-h. He gets plenty of socialization.
No comments:
Post a Comment