But you're a teacher!

"But, you were a teacher" they say. I say, "Exactly. That is WHY I am homeschooling our children right now." Funny, because when I WAS a teacher, I thought that homeschooling was crazy. I thought that homeschooling parents were just overprotective and weird and that they were in turn creating weird kids. I didn't really know any homeschoolers, maybe met a few, but I sure had an opinion on the subject! How embarrassing. I also took offense to the fact that homeschooling parents didn't trust the teachers to educate their children. I, for one, had a good education myself. I have a masters degree from the University of Washington in Elementary Education and endorsements in Special Education and English. I understand now that there are a multitude of reasons for homeschooling. Some reasons are academic and others are social, while other reasons still are related to a lifestyle choice, like travel, having a more open schedule, and having more family time. We are homeschooling because we see advantages academically, socially and familiarly (hmmm.... I m not sure if that is the right word, but you know what I mean.).
In the last few months I have been constantly challenged about our desire (or MY desire as Mike just goes along with it pretty much, trusting me to do the right thing) to homeschool the kids. I hear a lot of opinions about academics and socialization and curriculum. So, if you are interested, read on! You can now understand why we are homeschooling and how we are doing it. I, BY NO MEANS, judge those of you who put your children in school or judge you if you do homeschooling differently than we do. This is just the way that works for US, with the knowledge and wisdom that we have now. I am pretty passionate about this subject, so I have a feeling that this post will be long!
I have read a LOT about child development and how children learn and have also observed MANY children over the years, including our own. Here is what I understand (and research backs me up! Check out books/research by John Holt- very interesting). Young children are natural learners. What I mean by this is that children learn without a curriculum in place and that they are naturally VERY inquisitive. They want to master the world around them. When children are given time to think, to process, to create, and to ask (and an adult takes time to answer!), they learn. What happens to children when they go to school, is that they are then subject to learn what the teacher/school district decides is important, not what is important to the child. There are also lots of children to one teacher, usually 25 children or more to 1 adult. Because of this, children are encouraged to be quiet and to not ask too many questions. The teacher has important curriculum to cover, remember? And if the question doesn't have to do with what the class is working on at the moment? It is usually not answered. So then the child just dwells on their question/thought instead of even thinking about what he/she is supposed to be learning. What eventually happens is that many children stop being curious, stop asking questions, and stop really learning. Many children do what I did. They didn't learn things because they were curious and wanted to learn, but because they needed a good grade or a gold star or an affirmation from mom and dad.
I/we want our children to become (I know this sounds like a cliche, maybe it is...but it's true) life-long learners. We want them to remain curious and precocious. We want them to know how to search out information, whether that be by asking, by reading, by experimenting, by observing, or by looking online for an answer. We want them to also retain information and skills. I can tell you that I remember NOTHING from my 5th grade social studies (This is just one example, I could go on and on about not really learning anything in my classes.), except that we learned about latitude (like a ladder) and longitude (the loooong part of the ladder). The reason? I hated it. I found nothing interesting about the history we were learning. The textbook was beyond boring. It seemed so distant, unreal, and unimportant. So, starting in the 5th grade, I decided that I didn't like learning about social studies, that it was boring. Pretty much everything I know about history I have learned in the last couple of years as I have come across interesting things, like a Lewis and Clark documentary and some other good books.
Our children have way more "social studies" knowledge than I did at their ages or even twice their age. Why? They have been read to and talked to about different events, time periods and countries. They have traveled, giving them a great interest in knowing where things are in our world and events that have happened there. We have a globe and atlas and maps in our house that are of interest to the children. I am always hearing, "What's that purple country? What ocean is that?" and I take time to answer. When children want to learn something they are like sponges. They just pick up the material soooooo easily. Our children know about longitude and latitude, not from sitting in class at social studies time, but by geocaching, helping Daddy and Mommy find the treasure by looking around the right coordinates.
So, this is how we "school" right now. We don't! There is actually a name for it: We "unschool" our children. This means that we don't play school, don't follow along with what the school district decides is appropriate for kids of certain ages and don't look at learning as a chore. Learning is all about excitement and fun and curiosity. Our children are given lots of time to be kids, to play, create, think, imagine, listen and just be kids (Childhood is becoming so short. We want our children to have a real, happy childhood without lots of stress.). We do have a routine of our day to keep us all sane, but it is pretty flexible as, for now, we only have half hour swim lessons twice a week and church/Sunday school on Sunday. Those are our only things we feel we must make it to.
We have tons and tons of books around the house and read them often. All types; nonfiction, fiction, storybooks, novels, books on tape (Oh, how we LOVE Beverly Cleary books on tape in the car!!!), easy readers, magazines... We take regular trips to the library with the stroller. The stroller is used solely to bring materials back to the library and then to take things back to the car. Last time, I paid attention to the number of materials we checked out. 45 items! And this was a typical trip to the library. When we get home we read and read. Reading brings forth copious questions from the children. Often I answer questions, but sometimes then we get online to answer something more fully and/or I place holds on more books or videos from the library based on something they wanted to learn. Our children learn about science concepts, math concepts, vocabulary, spelling, history, art, everything you can imagine- from books.
We also DO a lot of things in our home. Paige, who LOVES art, is able to paint, watercolor, color, draw, and create pretty much whenever she wants to. Sometimes she asks for an art "lesson" from me. She has learned how to draw still-lifes, different kinds of lines, how to draw many things... She is sooo creative, but she is also very analytical and her ability to make a design that is symmetrical, interesting and bold is amazing. I love that she gets to do what she enjoys so much. If she were in school, she would not get to do this. She would get to create on her own a little bit, but would mostly be told what to create and how to do it. I don't think she would like this as well. Right now, she says she wants to be an artist when she grows up. I want to nurture that. It is such a confidence builder to be able to create art and have it look aesthetically pleasing to yourself and others.
We, as you have read in our other posts, do a LOT of cooking and baking here. While we cook, we talk about fractions and we count (math) and talk about ingredients that do different things in the food (science). We taste and compare and try lots of new foods (nutrition, right? Unless we are talking about marshmallows!) So, we learn math skills by cooking, but we also learn math skills while shopping. Paige helps me find the best prices. Jonah counts foods into the cart or bag. Paige has been known to come to us and say "I like to play math. Can we play math"? This means that she wants to be asked a series of addition and subtraction questions to answer.
Another activity we do here is play a lot of games! We like Candyland, Checkers, Chess (Paige is really good!), Mancala, Memory, Chutes and Ladders, Scrabble Junior, Go Fish, Guess Who... There is a lot of learning to be had with games; social skills, like taking turns and being good sports, math skills, like counting and number recognition and addition and subtraction, spelling and reading.
It is really important to Mike and I that our children read, write and do math well. Not right now, but later on. This may mean that we feel the need to buy a textbook, but it might not. There are soooo many ways to learn, so many more exciting and interesting ways of learning material. A textbook though, may be the answer for Paige when she gets older. She tends to teach herself a lot of things. I can see her learning algebra on her own, just reading the text and figuring it out. For now though, the kids learn math, writing and reading through typical activities, like reading the calendar (including the numbers!), writing thank you notes and cards, just reading books. I cannot say enough good things about books!
Okay, I think you get the idea. I could go on and on. I bet you're thinking, "Boy don't I know it. This post is soooo long. Do I really need to read it all"? Of course you don't, but if you've gotten to this point, you are somewhat interested, right? I bet you're waiting for our "SOCIAL" reasons for homeschooling the children, huh? Here's my answer: So far, our children are very social and well-adjusted. Paige is a lot like I was (am) and has one really good girl friend, Gabby. She sees Gabby at Sunday school, but we get the girls together to play a couple times a month as well. Paige is also very confident. When we go to play at the park, she ALWAYS (except when there are no other children) finds a friend to play with. She very comfortable goes up to other children, no matter what their age, and asks them to play. They always say yes (She is awfully cute!) and she has a wonderful time. Jonah has Paige for his BEST friend. He adores her and plays with her for most of every day. Besides Paige though, he prefers adults who actually have conversations with him and answer his questions. He is beginning to search out other children at parks and things now, but this is new. He is only 3. Children of this age often do parallel, rather than interactive social play. And Jack, he's a baby. He is shy and loves to be with Mama. I have found that keeping my children close and loving on them is the best way to make them feel comfortable around others. Usually around 2, they will just wave me away if I go somewhere. They know I will come back. So, socially, the children have each other, they have me, they have swimming lessons where they are given instructions from their teacher, they are in Sunday school, and they go pretty much wherever I go (and I expect them to behave socially appropriately- Saying hello, good-bye, and answering questions that others ask of them). I am sooooo thankful that Paige is not learning the not-so-good social skills that happen at school. Paige is really impressionable and will copy the actions and voices of others. I would rather her copy Angelina Ballerina than a bad attitude played out at school. I can think of so many things that I would NOT want my children to emulate. It's all part of training. We are constantly training our children in their social skills. When they pick up on others (that might be really bad), it takes time to stop those behaviors and move forward. Hopefully I am making sense to you all. As the kids get older, they will probably be in more activities, but for now, it works for us to be together most of the time as a family.
If you are interesting in unschooling, you should read "The Unschooling Unmanual." I have read lots of books and portions of books on the topic and lots of really interesting articles online. Did you know there is a huge debate in the Christian community of whether Unschooling is Godly or not? Very interesting. Very heated. Very funny in a way.
Hmmmm.... I think I have gotten this out of my system. I needed to write this out for myself. I just keep thinking about what we are doing, but have never written it down. If you have any questions, ask away. I am sure I have an answer for you. But beware, it might be a looooooooong answer.