Topic : Homeschooling

Quote From: puffypony

   Hi!
I have a painfully shy, slow to warm up 4 year old, who despite having been in preschool 3 years, will rarely talk to an adult outside her home.  She is very anxious in groups, but does well one on one with children her age.  She is scheduled to go to Kindergarten next year, although will be the youngest in her class. I could hold her a year to give her time to mature, but she is already reading on a second grade level now.(although no one but me would ever know it).  I find homeschooling intriguing and it appeals to my creative side. I have researched it extensively and have found two separate, respected trains of thought on this issue:  1) Homeschooling shy children will not allow them to stretch their comfort zone and they will be more inhibited and will have difficulty when placed back in school and will be akward around kids who haven't been homeschooled 2) homeschooling will allow shy children to blossom and gain confidence allowing them to experience more success which in turn helps them be less inhibited when returned to school.  I am now very confused as I obviously want to do what is best for her development. I might add that we live in a suburban area and I do plan on having her involved in out of home activities whether I homeschool or not.
   If I homeschool,  I do plan on having her go back to school perhaps mid to late elementary, although maybe a private school where the classes are smaller. Does anyone have any advice from personal experience to give me how homeschooled kids really  transition back to a school environment?  Thanks!

Quote From: sellingen

 Last year I used switched on school house...it was okay.  Im a kid whos into computers, and the way the software worked just wasnt sufficient for me, i constantly had to deal with glitches and software problems, and i seemed to know more than the tech support did.  it seems like many christian parents homeschool their children because either they dont want their kids exposed to the public schools or they want things taught withing their belief system.  Switched on school house appeals to those parents needs and wants.  My issue with the program was that i didnt want to constantly have to read through religious material during a subject that isnt even close to dealing with the bible.  i had to learn creation science for probably the first few months, and history was all religious history.  i have nothing against religious people, but i personally didnt enjoy studying something that was irrelevant to the class subject.  switched on school house needs to have seprate softwares for parents who arent homeschooling their kids for religious reasons.

i started homeschool because of my health problems.  i had been dealing with an irritable bowel so i would constantly feel sick and miss school.  last school year was my first year home schooling(9th grade).  The highschools new attendance policy was that if you missed 10 days you lost your class credits for that symester...i can miss 10 days like its nothing.  asthma, allergies, and of course flu season.  so with homeschool we(my mom and i) kept the same schedual as a public school would have, 5 day school week, weekends off, and obviously hollidy breaks.  because of my displeasure with the program i had last year my mom created my curriculum this year.  needless to say its better. 

one thing to make sure of is that your kids are happy with the homeschool idea.  because the worst thing you can do is have your kids be as miserable as they would be in an actual classroom.  and most importantly make sure that they have a social life.  i got so sick of being at home after being sick all of 8th grade, and homeschooling and still being sick in 9th grade.  Now, in 10th grade,  im taking karate. it gives me something to look forward to every week and gets me out of the house.  next year will be my last year of homeschool, i can graduate 1 year early because i will have enough credits.  The best advice i can give is to do as much reading and research about homeschool as you can before you start, it will go much more smoothly.

Quote From: missshari

 

 I homeschool my daughters, well just one this year cause my 16 year old graduated this past June after six years of homeschooling. Our 11 year old will be homeschooled this year, we start homeschooling from 5th grade on,cause I don't like the class size for the uppper grades and I always find out that my girls can't do basic math. 

 Our 11 year old daughter is ADHD with violent tendencies,not on medication cause when she is allowed to be a child,she is fine also with positive behavior modifications she has learned to control herself. 

  We use Sonlight ...just the catalog for great book recommendations, many free resources,cause I don't care for "box curriculum" as I don't like the structure and the amount of time that it requires. I have a friend who uses ABEKA video and to me that is just like being in a classroom,but she isn't planning on homeschooling through highschool. 

  Sounds like you are doing what you have found that works best for you and that is most important. We are starting the Monday after Labor Day,and following a Christian School's Calendar in our area, that doesn't take alot of days off. 

  Having outside activities is great,just don't get yourself to stretched cause that will cause burnout and such. 

 

Shari 

Quote From: danamikayl

I also make up my own curriculum and would love to give you some ideas and I'd love to hear what you do as well. I will post some great links we use as well. I have 2 girls, ages 11 and 4 and we LOVE homescooling. I will be back in a bit to share some ideas and links.  

Sherri 

Quote From: lamilo

My grandson is 9 and about to repeat the fourth grade because of his talking to those around him more than anything else.   When the school year starts in September, he does tremendous, but long around 2 months later they lose him every year. He wears glasses and has to be called four eyes on a daily basis not to mention now they  have added stupid to the lot.  We are tired of it.  When we asked him why he had chosen the person in the class to be his friend he told us that that person was the least mean out of the class.  Well we figure if he is not going to have friends anyway he should be out of that envoirenment and home and safe.  We  got him a skateboard and will be taking him on saturdays  to the skateboard  park.  Hopefully he can connect with some of the children there.  He is also interested in martial arts things but none of the schools for that do  weekend instruction and my husband can not drive after 5 during the winter, due to night blindness and we live in the country, not buses or cabs.  They want to know he is going to come all year not just on days that it is light enough for us to get there and back.  I bought him the Tommy Nitros karate for kids and he does that  every day  but that is only teaching him 3 basic blocks,  3 kicks and 3 strikes.  He would really need a class to get what he needs from that but as I said they only have the classses at night.  But for the scholastics they are failing him as much as he is failing himself.  The fact that he does tremendous the first 2 or 3 months every year, should be telling them that they  are losing him somewhere every year, and they try to say it is his fault.  I think he is bored but when we said that we were told we did not know what we were talking about. 

What we really need to know  is do we need college degrees to do this,  my daughter and I only graduated high school.  I will buy him any books he would need or anything else they said but we need to get him out of this bad envoirenment before we have a 16 year old dropout on our hands. 

if anyone knows about the rules for the sw corner of va, specifically Pittsylvania county,  I  would appreciate it.  Thank you.

Lorraine