Homeschooling – Give It A Try

Very often people tell me they really wish they could homeschool but they feel like they cannot for various reasons.

Usually people tell me: “I would love to homeschool Timmy but I just do not have enough money to do it, that’s why I send him to public school,” or “I truly wish we were able to take him out of state programming, but I just don’t think I am teacher material,” and sometimes “but what about socialization?”

These sound like very legitimate reasons and at some point my wife and I believed we were unable to embark in the homeschooling train due to some variation of these.

We enrolled our daughter in a private school in Dallas that belonged to the Hare Krsna community. She started there at age 4 and she really enjoyed the kids, the learning, and the teachers. Everyone in that community was (and is) quite lovely. As she started her third year in that school, a lot of teachers left and new ones arrived as well as students. A lot of these students were behind since they were coming form public school and our lovely daughter would get bored rehashing the concepts she had already learned the previous year and we decided to take her out and start homeschooling her.

The decision was not really easy. Wife and I did a lot of research and she read Sandra Dodd’s Unschooling book and she shared with me about this new ideology and persuaded me to give it a whirl. I was honestly quite hesitant but we decided that she would slow down quite a bit on her work… In short, we made a decision to be more frugal and spend more time with our kids facilitating the learning. This is where the rubber meets the road.

We chose to make less money but to spend more time with our kids. We came to the conclusion that she was our child and we would rather raise her and grow a healthy bond with us instead of having a 3rd party teaching her about life and more. It is my suspicion that some parents enjoy the school system because it gives them a break from their kids and we are on the total opposite end of that. We wanted to be near them and offer them what we thought was best in life instead of expecting some random people to raise them.

We found several tools at our disposal. Some free, some very cheap and some relatively inexpensive along the way. We really like Khan Academy. If you haven’t seen this project, you totally must. It is an individual that created a website where he posts short lectures on a lot of subjects and you have the ability to keep track of your progress. It is free for users and receives grants from private enterprises and individuals.

The Ron Paul Curriculum is something we really considered but we could not use since they didn’t have 1st – 3rd grades when we started. It is truly a wonderful resource and from a legitimate team.

Wikipedia is a free resource that answers all the questions the wee ones happen to ask that we do not know about. I remember I used to buy Encarta back in the 90’s and prior to that, growing up, we had whole shelves of thick books that you really couldn’t carry around whereas nowadays, everything is accessible from our iPhones.

Lately, our little guy decided at 8 years old he wanted to start coding and he has made a couple of his own games. Tynker is an excellent and inexpensive resource that allows you as a parent to keep track of your kid’s progress.

Meetup.com is a great way to find homeschoolers in your area. If you don’t find a group that fits you, you can start one for just a few dollars a month. You’ll see how people will start joining and going to your events.

Lastly, remember that it is okay not to be always busy. Often times, when we create a learning environment with books and other supplies around the house, the kids will gravitate towards them and find creative ways to fill their time and imagination and we learn so much through play and make believe.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out! We are happy to hear from you

Also on my website: https://emancipatedhuman.com/homeschooling-give-try/

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Enjoyed your post. I just joined Steem and am posting about my own obsessions with homeschooling, math education, art museums and more. Would love it if you followed back!

I work in the oil field and for years I had a rotation offshore. When I was home, I'd get bored.

A friend of mine owned an Irish pub that served lunch and sometimes I'd join him at lunch to serve drinks, cokes, run food, and kill some time during the day.

There was a small band of home schoolers that would come in with their moms and eat.

These kids, around the age of 12, were very impressive. They were all well behaved and intelligent. But what stood out most to me was the ease at which they were around adults. Manners were the rule, not the exception. Ordering was smooth. And they didn't need to be glued to a smartphone for entertainment.

I send my kids to a small private school that has a home-school like atmosphere. But my wife and I have pledged to each other that if private school ends, homeschooling begins.

Great article.

keep doing what you do. thanks for sharing your experience. I will follow you to keep track. One day when I have kids I will do the same.

Took a chance

Great read, gj. My daughter has been homeschooling for 2 years now and she loves it so much. We currently have her enrolled through http://start.k12.com/, it's tuition-free and we rarely have to purchase anything. The funny thing is I was very apprehensive at first because friends and family were telling me that homeschooling isn't good for my child, but I took a chance and enrolled her.

Community
K12 has a great community that supports her growth. We are a Christian family and want to keep our child within a school that supports our faith, well, K12 did just that. They arrange meetings every 1-2 weeks to meet with their peers and enjoy the learning together.

Grades
OMG, her grades are better than mine ever were when I was her age. Their learning curriculum is great and helps her develop from the ground up besides throwing unfamiliar concepts or definitions that she doesn't understand yet. Overall, he's been getting a 4.0 for the last 2 years and she loves doing her homework and projects.

My daughter wrote an article on Steemit about homeschool also and if you wanted to check it out here's the link below. I followed you, please follow us back.

https://steemit.com/homeschool/@oceancoinz/what-i-love-about-home-school

  • Cheers

You should blog on the guru, just saying! Hot! Great work!

I'll give it a try, thanks for the tip!

this is great!!!

It's so cool how the Internet can give us so many tools for socialising and learning.

Btw, when you put the link to your website at the bottom, it's probably worth putting text with the name or a description of the article, for SEO purposes.

Homeschooling - Give It A Try

great feedback. thank you sir.

Homeschooling has been an amazing journey for us and I'm so excited to see where it takes us!

Like you, my nine year old son loves coding! We have loved www.arduboy.com for real life coding experience that's fun! In fact, after my son got one, I had to get one for each of my daughters and myself because we all love them so much!

that is truly amazing. im learning a lot through this process too.

It truly is amazing! For my son, I use an unschooling method and let him learn about whatever he wants while incorporating necessary skills (math, language, science, etc) through life skills. He really focuses a lot on video games....in face, we are watching a documentary on the history of video games right now. He LOVES this stuff. When your nine year old can spout off facts about the Atari 2600 and the developers behind his favorite games, you see that he is really soaking up a ton of knowledge.

My wife and I do not have children. But we have already decided to homeschool them if/when we do.

The fact that I see younger people getting out of college and high school unable to think straight or formulate a coherent idea/argument is all the evidence I need to know that "education" as it is sold now (by government) is really indoctrination and aimed at making people less intelligent.

My kid is not old enough for school yet, but I don't want him to go to a "normal" school. Here in Mexico there are some private special schools that makes special programs for each kid depending on their interests and skills which sounds interesting to me as I hated school! Was a waste of time for me for the most part.

Great post. Who is to say, that traditional school is the best way. What i miss most, is that i did not have any financial education. They do not teach you about challenges of life, but most of the time is about useless information, that i never ever needed in life.

i will read this later. i want to homeschool my children. resteemed this.

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