Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Another great thing about homeschooling

In the public school, if you just aren't getting it you have to find outside help. Stay after school, get a tutor or just fail. In homeschooling, you can adapt! Our kids use Switched on Schoolhouse for school. It is pretty self-contained and self-paced, which fits us well. The kids weren't getting the math module though. So we invested some money and got Teaching Textbooks for math and it seems to be making a world of difference for the older ones. We are actualy taking them backward to rebuild some basics, but that is OK too! We aren't locked into one curriculum, a "one size fits all" curriculum model selected by the school board because we are the school board. Yet another great reason to homeschool your kids, you use what works best for them and you can adapt as you need.


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obviously Randy and I have "religious reasons" for wanting to homeschool, but even if they brought back school prayer and Bible reading and all that jazz, I think it's just a system that doesn't work. Of course, I actually don't think they should bring back school prayer and Bible reading, but that's another topic for another day. :)

I was considered a "gifted" child in elementary school, and so I was put in these accelerated classes. Thing was, I wasn't gifted at everything. But because even the gifted program was one size fits all, I breezed through English and science, while struggling so hard through math that it made my head hurt. It just doesn't work.

Arthur Sido said...

April,

I had a similar experience. The school kept trying to push me ahead a grade throughout elementary school because in reading I was so far ahead of the other kids. In middle school I was in the gifted/talented program which basically amounted to warehousing the smart kids because the school coulnd't figure out what else to do with them.

As far as school prayer and Bible in the classroom. Yikes! When people bemoan that we don't have prayer in schools or Bibles, I wonder what they are thinking. Do you really want someone who may or may not even be a nominal believer or perhaps Jewish or an atheist or a mormon leading your kids in prayer or teaching them from the Bible? The Bible and prayer has no place in the public school and neither do Christian kids!

Bethany W. said...

Arthur,
Thanks for using your blogging platform to share with others the positive aspects of homeschooling! I always enjoy hearing about what the bigger and more experienced families are doing.
Bethany

Unknown said...

That's definitely the best reason to homeschool, however I could see small groups of families (100 or so) banding together to do this in a small group dynamic to pool resources. That's how schools got started, and it worked well. Now we are all forced to pay for the giant educational industrial complex. If we had no "public schools" this these small (better) schools would pop-up over night. Until we stop being slaves to the Gov't, we've got homeschooling or high-priced private schools...

Anonymous said...

Arthur--they actually did bump me up a grade. I was 17 when I graduated and was still 17 when I started college.