Alternative LearningAre you a homeschooling mama? or maybe you unschool... or maybe you are interested in another alternative learning style? or maybe you don't have any idea what i am referring to?? this forum might just be for you! share your thoughts and ideas
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Want to Homeschool...need input. Please post what method you use and why...
It would be so helpful to read what others are doing, how they do it and why. It would give me a jumping-off point to further my research. I'm trying to figure out what style/method to use and am overwhelmed.
Also, whatever resources you found/find helpful would be a bonus!
Thanks so much for taking the time, mamas.
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I did a lot of reading, mostly overview-type books at first, to figure out what would work best for us. Some of the books I liked were the Homeschooling Handbook and the Unschooling Handbook. There's a bunch of books by Linda Dobson that are set up like a Homeschooling FAQ. I'm certain you could find a lot of these in your local library.
There are so many flavors of homeschooling - it's wonderful because you can pick and choose and decide what works best for your family and your individual children. For us, that method is child-led learning, which some people also call unschooling. It works for us because our son is so motivated and curious; I can leave good books around the house and he will just inhale them. He's also very good at articulating what his interests are so that we, as a family, can help him learn about them. Both my husband and I are fans of the idea that knowledge is most meaningful when a child learns it in their own method, timeframe, and for their own reason(s). I realize that this isn't for everyone, though. The ironic thing is that for all of our unschooling enthusiasm, Sam's following a classical learning method (similar to the Well Trained Mind) all on his own.
I mention the Well Trained Mind because that's a popular book about another HS method (classical) that is fairly common in the HS community.
Some people buy an entire curriculum in a box, where others pick and choose, or maybe buy part of a curriculum and then supplement with other items.
Right now we are using K12... which I am finding out is following a lot of Well Trained Mind. Actually, the author of WTM is a one of the co-authors of K12's hostorym, which is awesome.
Next year, we are not re-enrolling in the cyber charter. (big decision!) We are planning on Well Trained Mind, pretty much as suggested in the book. The ideas really make sense to me, so that is what I am going with.
So, we are going to be mainly studying the medieval/early Rennaisance periods of everything. :-) Science will be earth and space science. We'll be doing some dictation - because I really think the kids need to learn to write well. It was a skill that was NOT taught to me, and I really think that the kids need to learn form a very early age to write well.
So, we're planning on using WTM next year... but no cribs.
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Tara and Laurie,
I'm intrigued by unschooling/child-lead learning, but one of my main questions is: does your state require yearly testing? If so, what if the child isn't interesting in learning...say...math? How would they pass?
See how ingnorant I am?
Our state (PA) does require testing, but not every year, and only after the child is 8 years old. PA does require annual evaluations by a certified homeschool evaluator, but that does not involve standardized testing. PA also requires annual portfolio and 'school' logs, among other things.
Regarding testing, we haven't had to do it yet because our son is only 4. But it's my understanding from talking to other people that if a child 'failed' in an area of learning, the parent would be required to amend their learning objectives to include remedial learning in that area, much as a school would do for the child. Honestly, I haven't spoken to anyone that has actually experienced this, but that is what I have heard.
edited to add: I think I misunderstood your question as it pertains to unschooling/child-led learning. Let's say that our son isn't interested in learning math. I would try to introduce it to him in nontraditional ways, which might interest him more than workbooks or problem practice. For instance, we might do a lot of cooking together, and he would help me measure out the ingredients. This teaches fractions. Often, the no-pressure approach helps children learn a skill without them even realizing it. Other nontraditional math lessons could take the form of telling time (addition, subtraction), shopping (using coupons, sales, etc. use subtraction and division along with percentages), trip planning (the mileage calculation could help with addition), even just simple everyday stuff like counting steps, jumping rope, hopscotch, etc. can teach basic math skills.
cyber charter... well... in the homeschooling world it's pretty controversial. basically, it's a public charter school, but the learning is done at home and the parent is the learning facilitator.
We used a K12 based charter. We used the K12 curriculum (www.k12.com) for PA. There are a few states who have them through K12. Connections Academy also has cyber charters... they are through Sylvan. When I first started looking into cyber charter, there was even one in PA that was using Five in a Row and Saxon as their main curricula.
With the cyber charter, we were actually part of the public schools still. BUT.. the learning was done at home. We have a teacher who we are in contact every couple of weeks. She listens to the boys read to her, she asks them questions, talks to them, etc. They enjoy the conversations. We do have some things that we are supposed to still do because it's a public school (like standardized testing). With K12 all the attendance and progress is all logged online, which is cool. My kids love to see the bars fill up as they complete more lessons.
I do love the curriculum, really. BUT... I want something that I can just take outside, and most of the curriculum is written online, so I have to get online, download, print, etc if I want to take it with me. Well Trained Mind is basically the same Histry program, from what I have heard.
Oh, another cool thing about the cyber charter is that they have outings and classes together that are optional. Our group just started having a coop of the music classes. And they have outings all the time, a couple of times a month. We are in NE (military... our home of record is PA which is why we are able to be enrolled) so we can't participate in the outings... but if we were home (PA) we would most definitely be at all the outings so that we could meet other families using the same curriculum... and possibly garner some school spirit for the boys. :-)
I'm not leaving the charter for any reason in particular... just ready to do it on our own. It has suited our needs well, and I really am impressed with the curriculum. As a matter of fact, I am still using K12's scope and sequence to build next year's math program. :-)
We unschool. My daughter is eleven, and I joke sometimes that she's doing the musical theatre curriculum, because most of her timeover the past couple years has been spent performing in community theatre shows. She read fairly early but didn't do much writing until about the time she turned 10, but she's really taken off with it lately, lots of stories and poems. Her spelling is suddenly very good, sort of like magic. She IMs her friends a lot and emails them, and I know she runs spellcheck on emails sometimes, but I think she was just ready to write and spell now.
I gess I'm a radical unschooler, because I believe that if she's not interested in math, that's fine, and I won't try to make it "fun" or give her math "lessons" in ways that she doesn't notice. I don't see that as honest, I guess. She seems to have enough math skills to cope in the real world, she buys things, keeps track on the money I owe her and she owes me, cooks... but I don't see my role as creating these opportunities for her, they just happen or they don't. I did notice recently that she can tell time with an analog clock, which I didn't know she could do - I know she couldn't at 7, and I haven't thought about it much since then.
We have talked a little about the California High School Proficiency exam, because passing it would mean she didn't have to go through the hassle of work permits for shows where she gets paid, and technically the school district could refuse to give her one, although thy've been great so far. If she wants to pass that she'll have to know certain things, but so far she'd rather deal with the district....
We don't have any testing or portfolio requirements. If I lived ina state where we did, I would probably join an umbrella school that supported unschooling so I wouldn't have to deal with them.
Dar, just so you know, the only place I have heard of umbrella schools is in CA. We've lived in 4 different states, and the homeschool laws have been drastically different in each state - and umbrella schools weren't an option. I wish there were all the options in all states, but there simply aren't. :-(
I think you're thinking of independent study charter schools, not umbrella schools. Independent study charter schools are only an option in a few states (California, Alaska, Colorado, maybe a few more) but umbrella schools are accredited private schools, and many can legally enroll students in any state. Clonlara (www.clonlara.org) is located in, I believe, Ann Arbor Michigan, and the director (Pat Montgomery) told me that they've had homeschoolers from all 50 states as students, as well as students in many foreign countries. And they're very unschooling-friendly. Santa Fe Community School is also an unschooling-friendly umbrella school, first established in the seventies.
You do have to pay to enroll, although they're fairly reasonable, but they handle the paperwork so you don't interface with the state at all, you avoid the testing thing and the being judged thing, and you do what you chose. Some people have told me that they felt like they didn't get *enough* support from some of these schools, so if you're looking for someone to tell you how to homeschool and answer your questions this may not be the right road... but if you mostly want to be left alone it works well.
If you're unhappy with the homeschool regs in your state, do email Pat from the Clonlara website, she's very friendly and helpful...
Hi Laurie You know, sometimes I'm not sure if Rain's theatre passion is a blessing or a curse. She often has to miss things because of show conflicts - she's missing a cool homeschool camping trip in May, for example...
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Hi Dar! I'm also happy to see you here. Your posts at hM and other places have been an inspiration to me in parenting & unschooling.
I don't think I'd fall along the radical unschooler lines, though. I thought I did...but I'm a little more structured than that. My son is turning out to have some developmental delays (how I hate that term, but it's succinct) and thriving on some structured play sessions I'm doing with him. Anyway, it's challenged my ideas on what I thought I would do.
I have though, been much more relaxed with my daughter Katie. She's 5 1/2 and totally into hours and hours of imaginative play, often talking to her imaginary friends, making fairy houses in the yard, and doing circle time and a story with me each morning. We get our circle time/story/craft ideas from the Enki K resource book (www.enkieducation.org) and we follow a weekly rhythm with a different craft or activity each day. This was my idea, but Katie loves it and asks what we'll be doing each day.
She has recently expressed interest in doing more with math and phonics, so we got Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (though I don't know if she'll dig it) and Games for Math by Peggy Kaye. Mostly for math, she is having fun counting out change with Daddy and using it to explore ideas about place value and conservation of number (trade five pennies for a nickel...she makes piles and trades coins among them to keep them all the same amount, that kind of thing). She also likes to play math games in her head and will tell me in the car how many ways you can put two numbers together to make 8, or 12, or whatever. And things like, "Mom! 2 million plus 2 million is 4 million!" She's just getting that idea, too.
Anyway, all that just to show how unschooling might look in the early years. Somewhere between radical unschooling and relaxed homeschooling is I guess where we are? Some input is from me but I follow her lead as to where we go next.
Here in Florida regs are simple. We need an eval done by a certified teacher each year as one option for complying with the regs. My husband is a certified FL teacher so that is um -- pretty easy! But most hs'ers I know here just know of several unschooling-friendly evaluators who they use for a charge of about $30-50. Some use Clonlara but not any in our unschooling group...some of the Christian homeschoolers I know use Clonlara as an umbrella.
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I was confused on the umbrella school.. .thanks for the clarification! :-)
We used the cyber charter for a few reasons - one is that we are military, and it saved us from looking up homeschooling laws in every state we live in the next 15 years. But - it's a lot of computer time for me, it's all logged online, lessons plans online, etc. I would rather have books to hold - take outside, etc. We could do our lessons anywhere with the cyber charter, but we have to get the lessons online before that. I do love the curriculum they use - it's a classical curriculum and fits our family well.
Ordering a BUNCH of books from Usborne tonight that we plan on using for next year. And some for this year, too. :-) I can't wait!
Want to Homeschool...need input. Please post what method you use and why...
Military wife of a deployed soldier. 
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