Hello ladies, gentlemen too!

any of you home school your children?

What are your reasons for doing so?

My son just finished home school. Yay for us! There were a bunch of reasons we decided to home school, including that he was ready for school quite early (reading at 2), we could determine the quality of his education, and we could make sure he was raised in our belief system.

Deanna

We have four kids and we homeschool them. One of my main reasons is that when I graduated high school I couldn't do basic math (in spite of having passed the required senior math test!) I wanted the freedom to let my kids camp on whatever they were struggling with until they "got it" regardless of grade level. I have one who is advanced beyond her grade and I have another who is dyslexic and about a year behind her grade in some things.

Some of the reasons include our values, freedom to learn at their own pace, making sure they have the tools to learn and a love of learning, etc. Plus I just plain like to be around them!

My nieghbors home-schooled their 5 kids until college until recently (when 2 of them graduated and 2 started a private school).....1 didnt do well in the private school so she went back to home-schooling him. I think theirs is definately a religious values thing... they are the nicest family! I couldnt home-school....there is no way, they are very structured and I know kids need that but I just am not a structured person!

I went to private school myself until high school....my only regret was not going to private high school as well.....but my Dad thought I needed real world experience (he may have been right but it was BRUTAL).

Thanks, Melanie!

He's now a full-time college student at community college at age 16. He plans to take a year off when he's done with that before going to a 4-year college. My husband had him take an IQ test once, but DH won't tell anyone what DS's score was. He doesn't want it to influence anything, and he may be right about that. Who knows.

I went to public schools myself until 8th grade, then went to a private denominational school. Pretty much the same for my husband.

We have a wonderful homeschool association here that offers a lot of activities that isolated home schoolers sometimes miss out on, like yearbooks, sports teams, etc. While I don't say that home schooling is for everyone, having an association certainly helps.

Deanna

I have homeschooled my children and the oldest ( 16) just started college this week. She took the California High School Proficiency Test in spring and passed it so the state sent her a certificate.
The local jr college only needed that and a copy of the test scores to admit her.

We decided at first that we should educate our children at home for the first three years so that they would have a solid base of faith before being pushed into the peer pressured, test score driven cess pool that is the local public school system where we live. ( don't mean to start something with those who do send their children to school...just stating what the schools where I live are like. On year a fourth grader brought a loaded gun to school! )

Anyway, we loved teaching our daughter so much that we never did put her in school. It has been 12 years of ups and downs but wonderful none the less.
I have the best relationship with my children because there is nothing going on that I am not aware of.
I know when they need a moment to gather themselves ( those years of 11-13) can be explosive to a family if the child is not allowed to have a break -down in an understanding atmosphere.

We have eight children so far. I'll have 26 years of homeschooling in by the time the last one is done. I hope I'll get a gold watch for so many years of service.


I can't imagine doing it any other way.
The whole family celebrates when one achieves a skill they have been working on. Teaching someone to read: PRICELESS!

that is why we do it,
mommachris

Mommachris, I wish there was an avatar for gold watches! I'd give you one! Congratulations on your schooling success and for all 8 blessings!

I just have the one child, but he's a great young man and I've loved being there for every step of the way.



Deanna

Deanna,

I know what it's like with a child that is advanced at such an early age, my son was reading at 2 too. He is now ten and is scary smart. He cannot relate to kids his own age, his friends are all much older then him.

We started him in kindergarten in the local public school and every day when I picked him up from school he was crying and he had a great big red circle pinned to his shirt! (it means a really bad child) The teacher would shake her head and tell me what a behavior problem child my son was! WHAT!?! Just tattoo it on his forehead why don't you! Mind you, he was reading at the 3rd grade level when he started kindergarten, upon some immediate investigation we discovered that she would just give him a book 3 levels beneath his reading level and expect him to sit on the floor in a corner for two hours while she worked with the rest of the class. The principle was furious (and wanted rid of this fraud) but the teacher was tenured. The teach told us, "your son can already read, I have 21 other children to teach to read, I don't have time for your son." Wrong answer! She zapped just about every drop of self-esteem out of him. He was bored and was looking for something to entertain himself and she didn't like that (the entertainment part). The school could not offer an advanced placement for him until he had completed K-3 and was enrolled for the 4th grade to take advantage of gate/gifted programs. So at that point we pulled him out of public school!

We placed him in a private school where the children stayed with their age group but worked at their own grade level. He was there for the rest of K and through half way of 3rd grade. It was great until they lost their lease (which they had for the last 21 years). We moved with them to the next school site (which was only temp for 1 year) until they could find a more permanent location (move #2 in a year). During the 1st move and the upcome 2nd move they lost a lot of their staff and teachers. We got out before the 2nd move because the parents were doing the moving! The school just wasn't the same anymore so we opted to homeschool. And have been doing great.

Our reasons are purely securlar - 100% intellectural education of our son at his level which is beyond anything the local school system can provide him.

My son says he wants to go back to school when he starts middle school. We think we'll let him but he may want to leave it once he realizes that he maybe bored with it. We'll see.

I homeschool my daughter. There are many reasons why we do it. Originally, it was because we were in the military, and we knew we would be going to a place with a crappy school system. We loved it so much that we have kept at it, despite moving to a better school system. I hated school, and I don't think Em would do well in a classroom setting. We get to learn what we want and when we want. She gets to learn at her own pace. Her math is a bit behind grade level, but she's only 7, and she's reading at a 7th grade level.

There are lots of other reasons, but I don't want anybody to think I'm knocking them for having their kids in regular school.

We love it!

mommykicksbutt,

He'll be lucky if he lasts a week at middle school. They use that time to attempt to bring any laggers up to par for High school.
So basically it is review, review, review.

He's going to hate it the school part and the "socializing" will make him roll his eyes. Especially if his friends are older. So, be prepared bring him home when he gets tired of it all.


mommachris

Thanks for the heads up mommachris! I've got a daughter who is now 22 and is a senior in college (all done from home!) and we home schooled her while we were stationed in Japan (the DOD school system over there sucked!). Like my son, she has a high IQ, but unlike my son, she had a learning disability. Homeschool really helped her but she wanted the interaction with her peers so she went back to school starting 8th grade (with an IEP), she did very well and graduated from our local high school. We'll see how are son does and we'll be prepared either way.

I have homeschooled my youngest son since he was in 6th grade. He is now a senior. I no longer try to teach him much..he goes to classes at an umbrella school one day week and does the rest of the work at home. He also takes one course at the local community college.
My older 2 children attended large public high schools in the area and there were so many problems, I was sweating whether they would graduate-they both did and are now doing well, but the time with my son has been amazingly better. He is far from perfect, but he is calm and respectful of adults and other kids around him. I have no signs that he has even thought about using drugs, smoking or drinking. He met good friends through a bowling league. his classes that he takes at the school and through church. We have been able to take trips at times of year when things are not crowded.
I would not switch the past 7 years for anything. It has been quite an experience and I will be sad to see it end.

Yeah, vacation planning has been a breeze with homeshooling. We plan ours while everyone else in still in school so we miss the crowds and always have no lines and no waiting in amusement parks. We love to ski but with hubby's schedule we can only take 1 week a year so we plan early Feb. NO CROWDS!!!! there are times we are the only ones on the slopes and no one waiting for the left! We get lots of runs this way. I will definitely miss this part - the "no crowds" vacations. Hummmm....

I'm very new here, but I thought I'd pipe in too. We have a four year old daughter and two year old son. Our plans are to home school them. So far, our daughter can count to thirty (to ten in
spanish), is learning simple addition and subtraction, can spell quite a few
three letter words and a few four letter words, knows all her shapes (including trapezoids and other such shapes). .. so I don't think we've done too badly (she just turned four two weeks ago). She is so interested in learning every thing about everything that sometimes it can be challenging to keep up with her demand for information. She's also what I guess nowdays they are calling a 'spirited' child, and I'm not sure how well she'd do in a classroom setting at such a young age.

My son is not nearly where my daughter was at that age, and I'm not sure if it's because my daughter is gifted, or he is a bit delayed (he's 2.5 and really doesn't talk much yet although he seems very normal in other respects).

My friends have been riding my back like a pack mule for not putting my daughter into pre-k. . but I just don't want to. She has lots of cousins her age she plays with, and dance class. We have taught her more than she'd learn in pre-k, so I don't understand why my friends/family are so down on us to put her in, especially when a good private one costs close to $400 per month and the other ones aren't all that great and aren't places I'd feel comfortable leaving my four year old. They all see homeschooling as quackery and I guess they have just been conditioned to the idea that kids MUST go to public school for education. . .but I've been reading everything I can online about homeschooling, and I have a few friends that are teachers and in this state, they said if they had school age kids, they'd homeschool them. With the stories they tell me. . . we are going to try very hard to homeschool. My DH is just amazing at math/physics and grammar, and I excelled at literature, biology/sciences and history. . so hopefully we have the basics covered. I'm sure we have a ton to learn, but I believe we can make it work.

Hi Cholmberg, and welcome to CC!

Many people meet with resistance from well-meaning friends and family when the decision is made to home school your kids. It's normal, which is not the same as pleasant, haha. Depending on the state you live in, home schooling can be quite easy to do and you may have a lot of support systems in place already. Check your phone book and online to see if there are any home school groups in your area.

Oh, and don't worry about your son not talking much yet. Boys are in general slower to begin talking.

It sounds like your family's strengths are similar to that of my husband and myself. He has a degree in secondary math education. He loves all things science and technical. I love the literature, language and art parts of things. Between you both, your children will be exposed to all sorts of wonderous things to learn from people who excell at them. They'll catch your enthusiasm and will find what they love, too.

Keep a stiff upper lip and don't let your friends dissuade you from home schooling. They'll eventually realize you're serious and will leave you alone about it. There are Pre-K curriculli out there and if you want to really shut them up, purchase some of them and teach your daughter out of them. You can inform your friends that your daughter IS in Pre-K, thankyouverymuch. Remember - they're not the ones ultimately responsible for your children, you are. Do what YOU feel is right for your own kids.


Deanna

Hey cholmberg! Welcome to CC! Always glad to meet new friends!

Your family and friends aren't raising and educating your kids... you are! They most likely stuck their kids in daycare/preschool and let someone else raise them passing on the responsibility to strangers. Poopoo on them!

Here's a site to check out for those of you not already aware of them...

http://www.hslda.org

You can check what your state requirements are for home-school there.

Welcome to CC Cholmberg!

I don't homeschool my kids because I couldn't stick to a schedule for anything.
Don't let people dictate about preschool to you whether you plan to send your children to a school or not. I live in an area where the only preschool is HeadStart and they run 4 days a week from 9-2 so there's no way I'd send my child (I kind of wish that they had something one day a week for a coupld hours). EVERYONE has their kids in HeadStart here, only 51% have to be under income and it's a reservation so they have so many under income that anyone else who applies they let come too. I hear it all the time about my youngest, he's 4 and "should" have started last year and isn't going this either. I don't really get it because the only thing they learn at the preschool is how to walk in line, the teachers were thrilled when my oldest started kindergarten and knew his letters because most of the kids who've been in preschool for 2 years don't know them.

And my child who was "deprived" of preschool is in third grade reading Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. I have heard at times how he doesn't socialize as good all the time but I think some of that might have to do with his being so far ahead in reading (he's the top kid out of 120 in the grade).

Thanks for the welcome, I love it here. I've learned so much just by reading.
It's nice to talk to people of similar interest, the only time family/friends are interested is when they want a cake.

Fortunately my DH is of exactly the same mind I am, and we are going to do our very best to home school, and hopefully the naysayers will come around. But if they do not, we won't worry about it. They see it as some sort of avoidant (school was horrible for me, but good for the DH) or paranoid, insular behavior and I just can't get them to understand that home schooling is a viable option, and that yes, my kids can get a quality education at home.
Thanks for that link, mommykicksbutt. . .that is great. I'm surprised to learn how little my state requires, actually. I do want to get some materials and start 'organizing' her learning more.

And of course my daughter loves to help me make cakes. She's the
official frosting taste tester and she takes that job seriously.
And giving her a bit of fondant and a little flower cutter will keep her busy
for about three hours.

I home schooled my son from 5th grade until his sophomore year of school when he went back to public school. There are only 30 students in his junior class...It's a very small school but he likes it. The reason I started home schooling was because he had a learning deficit and the teachers were no help at this particular school.

I used the Switched-on-Schoolhouse software...it has the plan mapped out for you and will grade and test the child after lessons and units. You can also print out a grade report. So when he decided he wanted to go back, we had records of everything...every test grade, lesson grades, etc.

cholmberg,

you're welcome, anytime!

Hi cholmberg, and everybody else!

I also homeschool. I homeschooled our son from the beginning until this year when we sent him to a Yeshiva (Jewish High School) in Baltimore. And I homeschool our daughter (chani, 12, also a cc member). She spent 5th grade in our local Jewish Day school.

We chose to homeschool because our son was very advanced and the school in the town we lived in had a lousy rating. Ou daughter turned out to have some dyslexia issues (now mostly in the past), so homeschooling was good for her as well. We started becoming more observant Jews a few years ago and since I wasn't taught much about my faith as a child I really couldn't teach them about it either. We put our daughter in the day school, even though we knew it would only be a year (it was a K-5 school) and that helped cement her on the basics. Our son was already too old so I homeschooled him and the Rabbi tutored him in age appropriate subjects. He begged to go to a Jewish High School last year but we couldn't afford it, so this year, with our Rabbi's help, he was able to get a huge scholarship.

Cholmberg, you mentioned that you have a lot to learn, but to be honest, that is my favorite part of homeschooling! Their are so many things that I either don't remember learning or we never covered and now I can learn it right along with my kids. Sometimes they grasp something better than I do so they become the teacher to help me grasp the concept. This also teaches them. They learn how to patiently explain something and to appreciate learning. They learn that it's okay not to know the answer, and that it is normal to have to research an idea.

This year my daughter will be teaching me basic hebrew. I have a major block with languages, so she will help me in addition to taking her own advanced hebrew classes.

Oh, and don't let ANYONE tell you that your kids won't get into a good school/college if you homeschool. Just to use my son as a quick example. About a year ago, when my son first said he wanted to go to a Jewish high school, I was sitting aound with a bunch of ladies. One was in process of getting her Master's Degree in Education. Our sons are the same age. When she found out my son wanted to go to Yeshiva and that he was homeschooled, she laughed. She literally laughed out loud and said that no homeschooled child, especially one who wasn't raised in an Orthodox family, would ever get into a Yeshiva. She went on to talk about how her son was sooooooooo advanced and he had been taking special classes for years so he would be able to get in, yada yada yada...... Anyway, when we went up for my son's interview the principal was a little hesitant, he had never dealt with a homeschooled student. We were prepared for our son to be accepted a year behind his regular grade because he didn't have the skills in the religious subjects that most of the boys did. Well, by the end of the interview, they were excited about him coming, they said they would put him in his regular grade for secular studies and one year behind for religious studies, but they fully expect him to catch up to his grade level this year and they gave him an 80% scholarship. By the way the school he was accepted to is one of the most prestigious Yeshivas in the country, while her son is going to an average one.

You can do it!!
Kathi

kathik, congratulations on your son (and daughter) doing so well! That's great. I think it is really special when you can learn things right along with your children.

Way to go Kathi's Son!!!!

Just about everyone I know whose child(ren) is/are home-schooled outperform their public and private schooled peers. Hasn't the last few years worth of national spelling bee champions been home-schooled?

So many people homeschool now that there are groups in most communities that organize and do field trips and group classes together. There are several large groups in our area and they stay extremely busy. They do PE classes and science labs and a lot of the things that are hard to do with only 1 or 2 students.

Some classes I have had trouble teaching and I sent my son to classes for them. I couldn't do Spanish for the life of me. I tried, but I guess I'm just too old to grasp it, lol. I couldn't tell if he was getting it right or not, so I sent him out for that one. Other things like creative writing, I thought everything he wrote was perfect, so I had someone else more objective help him with that. I have learned so much, more than my high school years I think.

Overall, it has been a lot of fun. I expect to be lost next year, when he is off to college. Might have to have another baby just to have someone to teach. NOT!

I agree with the others, don't let others make up your mind for you. Some kids do better in the large schools, but a lot don't and you know your kids and your family better than anyone else.

Here in San Diego, some of the Museums in our world famous Balboa Park offer "home scholar" events. These are day classes, about 1 per month, just for home schooled kids. The Museum of Man offers one of the more interesting ones. Nothing like having a cultural anthropologist with 20+ years living (and raising - home schooling her two kids at an archaeological dig site) teach your kids about ancient civilizations! Can't get attention like this in private or public schools!

anyone started school for this year yet?

We school year round, our state law requires 180 days of school per year so we split that up so it's 15 days a month. We'll do 3 weeks on and one week off but we always end up with more than 15 days when you include science projects, field trips etc. I love doing this! Just about anything turns into a lesson and I've found that we're raising children who LOVE to learn! In comparison to their peers who are not interested in anything but tv, computers and video games, it's so cool to have my kids take notice of things and want to find out the who, what, where, when and how-and always the WHY's of everything from nature to clothing to buildings, etc.

We homeschool too(10 years so far). I have loved reading all your replies. Ditto to all those. We homeschool for faith reasons, because we feel they get a better education and I love my kids. I don't want to send them away all day every day. We like to be together. We all love it and it fits our life.

Cholmberg, don't worry about your 2 year old. Mine 2 year old is barely talking either. Our pedicatrician said that language development is more than speech. Does he understand what you say to him and does he follow instructions? If so, he is using language and developing those skills.

Our 2 girls are homeschooled....2nd and 7th grades. We started homeschooling after my oldest went to Kind. for 2 weeks. We do not homeschool for religious reasons. One of my main goals is for them to love learning. Sometimes schools kill that in kids. I want them to think out-of-the-box and they are thriving, both of them are doing advanced work. We travel often and I love being able to school on the road....very educational.

My oldest is doing advanced math and world geography online through a cyber school. It's wonderful....the best of both worlds.

The girls get their work done in the mornings and every afternoon they have outside activities.......art, P.E. class at the Y, Karate, homeschool bowling league, Spanish class and volleyball, science classes at the zoo and the the Science Center, etc.