Reasons for Homeschooling

[2010BEBES]

I have been reading in many threads about homeschooling but really don't quite understand why is this. Is it because you leave in the country or places where there is no school or are there any other reasons why you consider it a better decision?
The thing is that where I leave (Lima,Peru, South America) i think there is no one that takes that option (homeschooling). Those that can afford it go to private school and others go to public school that are not to good but at least they can learn something. Now they even have English clases in Public Schools.
It will be nice to know of you who decide to homeschool, why is this and how are schools in your area?

[waterdreamer]

I homeschool for many reasons.

1)My son is involved in a preschool ABA therapy program. He is allow to use this service for 3 years, we are on year one and it is going amazing. The second my son steps into a public or private school these services stop and he goes into school age ABA which is just in a piliot program with the government right now. His hours of therapy would be cut down from 36 a week to 10. And in the preschool program the government pays for the tutors, in school age I have to pay. So to ensure my son has the BEST therapy I choose to homeschool.

2)Because of right brain education, my son is advance in some areas. I think I could tailor his curriculum, so he is challenged. My fear is because of his language delay, his teachers would think he is slow mentally and not provide him challenging enough work. Right now we are doing Kindergarten printing, Kindergarten math, grade 1 phonics. With his math he is already over 1/3 through the kindergarten math and is not due to start kindergarten till September. Do you think his kindergarten teacher would have the time to keep providing him work so far ahead of the class. My son is the type if he is not kept busy, he gets into trouble in groups of kids.

3)Even in the best private schools in our city bad things are happening to our children (this for example http://www.globaltvbc.com/External+review+underway/3035782/story.html) Drugs are getting into our kids hands younger and younger. And even as young as kindergarten cliques and harrassment are going on. My "friends" little girl in kindergarten talked all the time about how was cool and who was a loser. I mean when I was in kindergarten everyone played with everyone. I want my son to be innocent for as long as he can. I want him to be caught up with his speech before I even consider sending him to "the wolves"

[2010BEBES]

waterdreamer,

KARMA for your quick and interesting response.
I see you have many good reasons for homeshooling. Herre in Peru we don't have any of those programs and nobody will pay for tutoring besides yourself.
About teachers giving the necessary attention or challenging your kid i understand it very well. When my daughter was in Middle school i decide to change her schools because in the first one (that was where i study) she had no real challenge. She was an honor girl without studying. So we put here in the american school that had a different method, less momorizing, more investigation, library task etc. She did very well and we were very happy with the decision.
About the third point of kindergarten kids separating others for any reason. That is something that is happening everywere. Here in Peru you also hear about that. Teachers really have a lot of work to do or have to pay a lot of attention to avoid that in their class or recess time. That is a topic that worries me cause my grandson is not pronouncing correctly many words and he is in class with kids older than him.

[tatianna]

i home educate for a number of reasons here are just a few

1 i feel it's the best education academically

2 lots of time to devote to her own interests
(ballet and violin)

3 healthful home cooked meals everyday 

4 learning happens all the time not just in a government approved building   

5 free from competition and social stress 

6 no busywork and wasted time

7 multi sensory learning for all subjects

8 many happy hours outdoors and in nature

9 opportunity to learn from living books (real literature) not some state textbook

10 learning about the real world everyday

11 freedom from labels (class clown, jock, pretty girl etc)

12 fine arts education everyday

13 better math curriculum then available in local schools (math in focus, abacus etc)

14 quality and quantity parent time

15 community service and volunteer work

16 less peer pressure

17 focus on creativity

18 Latin

19 tailor made curricula 

20 hands on discovery learning

21 travel

22  moral development

23 to encourage a love of learning

24 more sleep, no early wake up

25 foreign languages

26 safe loving environment

27 less pressure to grow up too fast   

28 early learning opportunities (she's three and starting first grade)

29 no homework, less then an hour of seat work

30 one on one instruction

31 more field trips

32 no vaccine rules

33 no learning labels (ADHD etc)

34 no talking/teaching down to children   

35 too much of the precious time allotted to childhood is wasted in school

36 for my girls to develop clear pictures of their own individual intellectual identities

37 critical thinking skills

38 constructive communication skills (listening, asking for clarification, evaluating without criticizing, etc.)

39 learning how to interact with people younger, the same, and older than themselves

40 a sense of family

41 i know exactly what our children are being taught

42 develop independent learners

43 to foster emotional security

44 we have school everyday of the year

45 more physical movement, less competitive sports

46 arts for arts sake

47 no standardized testing until they are older

48 less sickness

49 the girls dress how they like

50 i love being with my girls and do not want to send them away to be raised

   

[waterdreamer]

Great list tatianna
I still have the gitters when it comes to homeschooling too. I worry I'm not doing enough, or doing the right things. Somedays I feel confident and others what if I mess him up somehow. LOL the funny things that run through my mind at night.

[Skylark]

Here are just some of the reasons:


**  Affords maximum flexibility: Schedules can be adapted to meet the needs of  children and parents, while curriculum and teaching methods can be customized according to each child's needs, interests, and learning style.

** Homeschooled children often progress quickly if they receive sufficient attention and challenges.

** Greater freedom to focus on nurturing a child's talents.

** Can provide more practical learning experiences.

** Promotes well-rounded development of the whole person: Christian life and faith, character building, life skills, academics, etc.

** Gifted students can advance more quickly through their studies without regard to age or grade grouping.

** Can be beneficial for some students with certain learning difficulties if they have teachers who are experienced in this area and can give them specialized help and attention.

** Parents and/or teachers know and understand each student personally.

** Even if parents don't personally do the teaching, the teachers are people they know and trust.

**Parents are more aware of their children's scholastic progress.

**Parents can freely integrate their faith, values, and beliefs into their children's education.

** Parents get to choose what their children learn.—And when, or at what age, they learn it.

**Can create a close child/parent bond which is especially beneficial for younger children, and which lays a good foundation for the teen years.

**Less exposure to negative attitudes and behavior.

**Social issues/complications (dating, peer pressure, bullying, etc.) are minimized and/or easier to handle.

**Students are not exposed to education that is contrary to their faith and lifestyle unless their parents choose to include it. Unwanted political, corporate, religious, psychological, or behavioral agendas can be removed from a child's education.

**Home education can provide stability of teaching and curriculum progression regardless of travel or country of residence.

[LMsMum]

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.

[2010BEBES]

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?

[2010BEBES]

i home educate for a number of reasons here are just a few...

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.

[waterdreamer]

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

[2010BEBES]

i home educate for a number of reasons here are just a few

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.

[tatianna]

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
 

[tatianna]

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 

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

[2010BEBES]

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.

[tatianna]

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

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