Reasons for Homeschooling

Parenting and Education (Other) General Parenting
7

It was very interesting to read this thread.

My daughter is not due for compulsory school (called pre-school here) till September next year. She has got a number of developmental issues and she needs a lot of one-to-one attention to overcome these and I am doing my best trying to give this attention to her.

Despite her developmental problems, she is a very capable girl and in some respects she may well be ahead of her age group. But she does not learn the same way as other kids and you have to know how to teach her. I doubt this would ever be considered in school with 30-40 kids per teachers. So this would be the most important reason for me to consider home-schooling in the future.

8

You really have a good list of reasons for homeschooling. From this i think that normally it is done by a none working parent (maybe especially mom) or as skylark somhow implies maybe it is done by a teacher you trust.
Thanks for clearing things for me but i have many question.
…
1.- how do you handle socialization, maybe you have many friends with kid of the same age as your child? Don you consider it important or the other points have more weight.
2.- how do you make the curriculum or know what can vbe taught at each age?
3.- Don’t they need to get tested and when in order to go to college?
Please can you say were do you live? Is it USA and canada?

9

I have the following questions:
18 Latin
What do you mean with this? Do you teache them Latin?. I took 2 years of latin in high school.
25 foreign languages
What languages you teach? Do you speak them too? If not, how do you do with the pronunciation?
I am showin Muzzy English to my grandson but he preferes spanish (our language). Maybe older we will start french.
28 early learning opportunities (she’s three and starting first grade)
Do you test her o know what topics are covered in each school year? Do you use any internet page?
29 no homework, less then an hour of seat work
How can you teache her so many things with only an hour seat of work. Does she writes already? My grandson knows the numbers and ABC (terrible pronunciation, i think mostly the song but i guess he knows the letter). He does not handles pencil too good. If getting better in coloring but still not numbers nor letter writing. Is this acquire at 1st grade or earlier?
32 no vaccine rules
Is not it a good thing that basic vaccines have to be administer. Or too many are asked for and are not good for your child.

10
  1. Socialization. I want to choose who my child socialized with. There are alot of bad apples out there and when children are young they have trouble picking between right and wrong. Besides in real life after school is everyone at your job your age? No you have to learn ringer along with people older then you and younger. There are coops people join, evening music classes. My son has friends his age over for play dates. Siblings. Ect. Most kids I know that are homeschooled are better socialized then some kids in public schools.
  2. You can visit the teachers libraries if your a himeschooler and look at the curriculum. Homeschooling confrences. Talking to other homeschooling families. Online info. Books.
  3. Depends. You as a parent provide then a transcript. Students will be on probation, but more and more schools are realizing that homeschoolers are very prepared(sometimes more so the public school kids)
    CANADA
11

Tatienna,
I hope not to bother you with all my questions but i am interested in understanding homeschooling.
If you do not have the time to answer it OK, don’t feel bad. Maybe someone else feels the same as you and can give some answers. Here the questions.

33 no learning labels (ADHD etc)
Do you mean children calling names to others?
34 no talking/teaching down to children
what do you mean?
39 learning how to interact with people younger, the same, and older than themselves
How do you do this. Getting in contact with other homeschooling children and their parents?
44 we have school everyday of the year
Shouldn’ they get vacations? In Peru parents spend time on weekends with their kids and sometimes go out of the city looking for sun in winter (school time since January through March they are on summer vacations.)
47 no standardized testing until they are older .
Whe do they HAVE to get tested
48 less sickness . Maybe the cold climate is also a reason for homschooling. Here children get contagious on perschool.

12

hi 2010BEBES
let me try and answer all your questions
if i miss anything or i am not clear please let me know
first off let me explain we live in mexico 9 months out of the year
and in new orleans the rest of the year
every two years we go as a family on a 3 month mission trip
but when i talk about the school system or home school requirements i’m referring to the US
because i know little about the schools here in mexico
and i don’t know ANY other home educators in mexico

33 no learning labels (ADHD etc)

it could be other children using these labels but i find that it’s the usually the schools that use them
and once you have a label it’s very hard to get rid of
i know kids that are diagnosed as “learning impaired” or “ADHD” in kindergarten
and have a long list of “helpful” drugs and special ed classes that they will “need” to function
it’s my belief that most of these kids need more time outdoors and better food not drugs and labels

34 no talking/teaching down to children
the curriculum used in schools are constantly being dumbed down
vocabulary used in textbooks today have far fewer words in them then in textbooks from 20 years ago
i find many people including teachers tend to “talk down” to children
not being respectful of the intellectual capability of young children, using baby talk and small words
teachers teach to lowest common denominator
the bright child is bored in class and may act up

a example of this is two years ago when my daughter was a year and a half old
i was in a bookstore with a friend of mine when i bought a lovely book of poetry for my little girl
my friend (who teaches first grade at a expensive private school) laughed at me for buying the book
she said,“why wasted your money it will be years before you can use that book with her, the kids in my class would never sit for that and they are 6 or 7”
i asked her if she had ever tried reading really poetry to her class and she replied,“it’s not on the curriculum for two more years at lest and besides it’s not age appropriate try some simple mother goose instead”
thankfully i didn’t listen and it soon became my daughter’s favorite book
her favorite poem being The Day is Done by Longfellow and anything by Tennyson

39 learning how to interact with people younger, the same, and older than themselves
we don’t force socialization we let it happen naturally the same way it happens in real life
when we have guest over or we visit people
at the market or in stores
at ballet class which she take 5 days a week with mixed age kids
at the park, in church etc
she is very social and plays well with mixed age kids

44 we have school everyday of the year
right now she is only three and loves school
so i don’t really see any need for a vacation from it
for us school is just a natural part of everyday life
learning takes place all the time and is not a bad or boring thing
besides on vacation we still take baths and brush our teeth so why not learning too?
also it keeps us from wasting time on review
any teacher will tell you the first six weeks of the school year is just relearning what the kids forgot on vacation
we also get a lot more done in the year

more later :smiley:

13

47 no standardized testing until they are older
When do they HAVE to get tested

in the USA it depends on what state your in
some states you never have to do standardized testing if you homeschool
we chose not to test while they are young
my plan is in third grade to start letting them play with standardized tests
so that they are very comfortable with them and it’s not a scary thing
starting at eighth grade i will use them regularly as part of the high school transcript

48 less sickness

when you have 30 plus kids in the same room all day with very little ventilation germs get passed around
as do lice and other woes
keeping my kids at home i have more control of the environment they are in
when friends are sick we don’t visit etc
partly because of this my girls have been ill very few times

18 Latin
we plan to start teaching Latin in second grade instead of grammar
Latin gives children a firm foundation for spelling, vocabulary and grammar
it also helps with learning the other Latin languages
in the USA children take grammar almost every year
but Latin is not required or if it is not until high school
instead of grammar every year i plan to use more of a Charlotte Mason approach
using lots of real literature, dictation, writing, and Latin in the early years
and teaching only two or three years of grammar rules starting at about fourth grade
i plan on learning Latin right long my daughter
there are a few good programs available now that we may use
or i may try to develop my own with my son-in-law who is a classical language professor in japan

25 foreign languages

my husband speaks French and we’ve been teaching it to her on and off for two years
i don’t speak French so i learn with her using CDs and books
as we now live in mexico we are learning Spanish as well

28 early learning opportunities (she’s three and starting first grade)
Do you test her to know what topics are covered in each school year? Do you use any internet page?

i look at what topics and skills are covered in schools, but i don’t teach based on what schools are doing
we use a few ready made 1 grade programs everyday for math and language arts
for the other subjects i teach her whatever she has a interest in
things like chemistry she might not get till years later if we stuck to only first grade work
World Book Encyclopedia has a course of study which can also be used to see what kids learn in different grades
www.worldbook.com/typical_course_of_study.html

29 no homework, less then an hour of seat work
How can you teach her so many things with only an hour of seat work?

Doman’s Encyclopedic Knowledge program: less then 3 minutes for 5 topics
(our personal EK program includes: music, physiology, art, biology, geography, and general science)
Math in Focus first grade (singapore math) : 15 minutes for 2 lessons
Miquon Math:10 minutes for 1 lesson
Sing, Spell, Read and Write 1 grade : 15 to 20 minutes for 1 lesson
BrainQuest 1 grade workbook : 10 minutes every other day
i sit with her for all seat work

other subjects we do informally
for science we use Janice VanCleave’s Science for Every Kid books
(great books of experiments on different science topics, right now we are using her chemistry one)
for geography we study maps, read about different countries and color blank maps
etc

the rest of the day we play, do puzzles, cook, garden, read, listen to classic composers, dance, bird watch, paint, sing
read bible stories, take long naps and enjoy nature
at night she does brillkids and plays starfall

because her fine motor skills are still developing i try not to have her write too much
she only writes in her SSRW books and some in her math books
so only 20 minutes total writing time a day
everything else is hands on work
writing is a physical function not a sign of how much you can learn
so i try not to hold her back by her slow writing we work on it a little at a time but keeping it fun and stress free
if she stops enjoying it we stop doing it

32 no vaccine rules

i feel she is still to young to get vaccines
so we are choosing to wait a few more years
hopefully they will also be safer then :slight_smile:

hope this answers some of your questions
feel free to ask me if you have anymore

14

Tatianna,

Thanks a lot for your response. I really have to congratulate you for your excellent job. You really know what you are doing and i think your child will appreciate that when she grows older.
Many of the issues you mention about schooling apply here in Peru too. Getting sick constantly especially for 3 yr old is one of them. Having to follow a curriculum is another. Maybe because to many kids learning at the same time does not let you pay attention to what one of them needs.
I feel that I know you more and that this FORUM is giving us an opportunity not only of getting information but of knowing marvelous people doing excellent jobs in raisnig kids.
If you need any help with spanish at any time just let me know.
KARMA for you for all the work an dedication reuierd in homeshooling and for World Book Curriculum.

15

thanks so much for your kind words
here in mexico i don’t get a lot of support for what i do
but i feel compelled to continue
it wasn’t a easy choice to make
as i was very happy helping to run a nonprofit school in Ghana before i had kids
but my girls matter so much more then my career
and by staying home with them i hope to give them many happy memories with mom

16

Hi 2010BEBES,
I was actually thinking of recommending this book to you since you are trying to decide if you will be homeschooling. It isn’t about homeschooling, but more about socialization and attachment theory. It is a great book to read before the kids go off to school.

17

I agree 100% maybe because I am from another generation??? lol lol
Younger parents sometimes do not realize the improtance of what you have said.
Lucky you can do that.
LOL

18

That is what I am interest in, thanks. Really there is not option for homeshooling, that would be his parents decision and we nor the systema are prepare for that.
I will look into the book.

19

  1. Some of my concerns to homeschooling is what if my son wants to go to IVY League school, competitive institute or play professional sports? How will his homeschool resume compare to those with top tier public or private schools?

  2. Could I honestly provide all that he needs academically/spiritually/physically/socially so that he will not feel he is missing out on anything??

I keep debating whether I ought to homeschool him, the answer has yet to come to me.

20

Reasons to homeschool.
First off I want to let you know that I homeschooled for 8yrs and this year my four girls are attending a brick and mortar school. A private school at that.

What can I tell you? Homeschooling is way more superior than going to a private or public school. When my girls were at home we were able to work on the basics yet pursue our own interests. If a particular curriculum didnt’ work we could drop it and use something else that got the point across that best suited their learning style.
As for socialization, honestly, homeschoolers do not tie their children to a chair at the table with a ball and chain. I think at times my girls got way more socialization than any child that attends a brick and mortar school. Today I spent a parent day at the school and to be honest the kids are told to be quiet and are seperated more than you think. I’ll bring up a saying my father used to tell me when I went to school " School is not for socializing its for learning."
We went on many field trips when homeschooling. This yea we’ve done one thing as a family and it was back in October.
What I have are kids that are tired at the end of the day.
There is so much curriculum that is avaialable online for homeschoolers that I couldn’t possibly type it all on this post. All you have to do its Google homeschool curriculum and it will pop up.

In the US it depends on the state you live in on whether your children have to take any state of standardized testing. Some states require of it at a certain age, some don’t require it at all. Children can go on to take the SAT’s for college whether they attend a brick and mortar school or are homeschooled. Actually in the US homeschoolers are what colleges are beginning to look for. They want to recruit homeschoolers now. The reason being homeschoolers are more focused on their work and not all of the other ‘garbage’ that goes on in college ( binge drinking and parties.)

I know just the other day my girls started talking about this boy and that boy and a boy not liking them and boyfriends. Mind you my daughters are in PreK, 1st , 4th and 6th grades. My oldest joyfully let me know that preschoolers have boyfriends. Hmmm. I can honestly say mom and dad are not liking this talk at all.

Again there is wasteful time in brick and mortar school. Like I said today I had a chance to sit in on my daughters classes and all of the wasted time is just insane. Waiting for the teacher to get all the kids in line. Waiting for the teacher to get the kids to be quiet in line. Waiting for the class to settle down, , in my 1st graders class, waiting for the teacher to go through all 16 children’s homewwork assignments to check off what they did and what they needed to get done. It made me wonder how much instructional time they honestly got.
As for school work my girls said we did way more at home than what they do at a regular school hands down. My oldest who loved history and science now tells me she hates it. My 4th grader who has always struggled with math but we always tackled it together, tells me she hates math and she isn’t good at it. She always knew math was tough for her but this is the first time I’ve ever heard her tell me she hates math. My 4yr old will now tell me that everything is borning. She is way past learning her abc’s she is at least reading at a 1st grade level and yet her teacher will not move her into the reading group. So now my 4yr old is associating school with boredom. She is not being challenged at all. Sadly this is is from a school in are area that is considered more advanced than our public schools.
I hate ripping my 4yr old out of bed when she isn’t ready to get up. I hate getting up before Im not ready to get up. I’m not a morning person at all.

Its easy to read about other’s thoughts on the matter but until you put your child in school and see them not working at the level they need to be in or not being challenged. Then you learn to think otherwise.
Honestly, homeschooling is superiour to sending your child to s a brick and mortar school any day of the week. ACtually most parents in the US already homeschool and don’t even know it. Since our school system here depends on parent teacher involvement. If you are an involved parent you are buying books and curriculum to help your children, and to be honest the American education is swaying away from its imaginitive creative learning style that it used to have., and going more towards the memroization learning. Why you ask? Because of a law that was introduced back in the 90’s called No Child Left Behind. Which has been a horrible curse to our education system. It is requiring children to learn to take tests. They are cutting programs that have no bearing on these tests now , such as art, musicchemistry. If its not in the test they are going to cut it.
That is another reason why we homeschooled because I wanted my children to learn. Not learn to take tests.
With all of this said we are going back to homeschooling for next year.

21

Thanks Tracy for the detailed insight. Many homeschool parents feel that way and as a former teacher, I can relate to how much time is being wasted just trying to “manage” a group full of students varied in academic skills.

I suppose when Ethan arrives closer to the age of elementary school the right course for him will present itself. He is already highly advanced, so finding a gifted school to meet & expand his abilties & personal growth will be sought. If there isn’t a perfect program in Hawaii then I’ll continue to try to help him thrive and teach him how to learn.

22

I plan to homeschool for a long list of reasons! Off the top of my head…

  1. I’m an American-Muslim, living in the States. I want to give my child a start in life that is centered on our values and beliefs and right knowledge.

  2. I think I can give my child a better education than they could get in ANY school, if the time comes that I’m not able to personally offer my children the absolute best, then I will look into getting them a private tutor/nanny, because, as they say, Public school is a rather necessary default for educating the masses, but a poor method for educating the individual.

  3. Homeschool can (and usually is) superior to public and private educations.

Academically superior education (even if it is delivered at a slower pace), more time to spend on your childs interest, you can take advantage of real life spontaneous moments to teach and learn with your child, there isn’t nearly as much stress and less of the unhealthy competition at home (or at least I won’t foster that in MY home school). Also, busy work, boredom and time wasting is eliminated in the homeschool. No need to spend 8hrs on just a few things, when one child could do these things in 1hr or less.

Foster a genuine love of learning and exploration by allowing a lot of learning to occur and be reinforced on your childs schedule/time table.

Parents remain in controlover what, when and how my kids are learning and can there for deliver to them the knowledge they crave, when they crave it.

I can teach my children what I wan’t them to know For example, I want to do a very detailed, gradual study of both human anatomy/physioligy and geography with my children in the first 4 years. We can play games, match pictures, make art projects, watch videos, etc to accomplish this goal, so that they will have the topic down pat.

Spend as much time as they want outdoors and in books. Real books, not textbooks. I don’t want my kids to learn primarily from textbooks especially before HighSchool. I hated them when I was little, still do and I didn’t even use them AS MUCH as my public schooled friends did.

No LABELS I have every intention of accelerating and streamliningmy children’s education, especially math, reading, science, practical skills and reading. I don’t want them labeled, as gifted, smart, ugly, cool, unpopular, or anything. I’m not even sure I like “__ grader.” I can see myself classifying them according to their age for official purposes, but I don’t want my children labeled, whether they are ‘bright’ or ‘dull’. Cool or not. :confused:

Exercise control over the influences allowed in my children’s life. I don’t want my kids pressured to be ___ or ~~~, I don’t want them learning abusive language, hitting, hating, intolerance, bad attitudes, etc, from outside sources. Of course, they could still develop these things all of their own, but then I don’t mind it as much as if they learned from “Timmy from class…”

Quality over Quantity as far as personal relationships go. Parent - child, between siblings, neighbor, etc. We can better control who they are with, doing what, why and for how long.

Quality over Quantity as far as curriculum and instruction goes also!

Language Its important to me that my children grow up multilingual. I’ll be able to dedicate more time, effort, and energy to this endeavor if we have more time to do things important to us as a family.

Peer pressure Need I say more?

Civil service, life experience and personal growth I want my kids to do volunteering and gain valuable community experience and have time to reflect for themselves and experience personal growth–not just in their senior year for a transcript, but for the sake of work.

Behavior and Personal development Its very important to me that I help my children develop strong character, good habits and be well rounded. Its going to be hard to do this if I have less than 1/2 their waking time each day.

Music, Creativity, Art, Drama etc Its important to me that my kids develop skills, talent and passion for these things and I want to make sure it gets priority whenever possible.

I hate homework! so I’ll just spare my children the drama and the heart ache. We can learn all throughout the day when we want too.

Quran and Islamic moral development I want my kids to be able to focus much of their “formal” studies during the ages 4-10 on the thing that is most important to me: My religion, Islam. I’m working on how to get as much of the Quran into them as possible as I’m constantly struggling to learn it myself.

TravelI hope to be in the position to travel the world and I want to take my kids with me.

There are many “modern/typical” things cropping up in American Society that I don’t approve of.

I want to raise my children, not send them to strangers, elsewhere to grow up

Childhood is a once in a life time event/opportunity and its being wasted in US schools. Think about this: If you sleep 1/3 of your day and 1/3 of your day is in an in efficient school that is 66% of your life that you are missing out on.

Allow my children to develop a healthy locus of control by setting their own schedules, picking many of their own subjects and following their own interests throughout the typical elementary ages.

No “dumbed down” education for them. If all goes according to plan, the first “graded” textbooks they’ll begin using constantly/primarily will be college level texts.

Lots more Field trips and car trips and camping trips and family time

No mandatory shots, testing, forced “procedures”, etc on my children!Vaccines, standardized testing, during emergencies schools are going to follow ‘procedure’ well being of the child and family be darned.(Thinking along the lines of the little boy a PS had committed to a pysch ward against his moms wishes)

Allow them to develop strong sense of self.

Learn personal, academic and practical skills right the FIRST time around. There is a lot of time wasted teaching children bad habits for one phase of their life, then twice as much time wasted trying to UNteach them those habits. (Counting on your fingers, using a diaper, ‘baby’ talk, bad habits, etc.)

Constructive Social Skills
Clear and efficient communication, ability to self motivate, ability interact respectfully with people of older, same and younger ages than themselves.

School year round (365 days a year) We can cover at least 2x as much ground as ‘standard’ and therefor will be able to afford to study more things of interests and core subjects indepthly.

Time for Personal Activities Hopefully my kids will love swimming (0-14), martial arts (3-15) and gymnastics (3-15), because those are the 3 classes and activities I wan’t them to grow up doing for the allotted ages.

Healthful meals provided for every meal Much of this common mass-produced food is poison. I wan’t to keep it all to a bare minimum in my kids lives.

Art of all kinds available to them whenever, they want through out primary years.

Early learning opportunities meaning both as babies/toddlers and for learning other topics/subjects/skills “early”

No institutionalized, arbitrary age-based discrimination
Confident, Independent learners

Allow for plenty of free time, physical activities, movement, etc.

23

mom2bee, you listed lots of valid and insightful reasons. karma to you for taking the time to share them with us parents.

24

It is not common (it is very unusual and to be honest not sure if allowed :slight_smile: ) to homeschool in Czech republic. I admire all of you that have decided to do so and do a good job. I am not sure if I would be able to … even if it was allowed here … :wink:

25

Just because you may not be allowed to homeschool, there is nothing stopping you from afterschooling. Basically spending a bit of time each evening to supplement your childs education :slight_smile:

26

I want to homeschool my son, but I am having trouble convincing my husband and my parents. I understand they want him to interact with other children but I do plan on enrolling him in physical and musical activities where he would be learning with a group of children.