I've wanted to homeschool Connor and Lex for the first part of their education since before they were born.
I don't know how long we would continue to do homeschooling, but I know for sure that I want their early education to take place with me, at home.
So, while at the library the other day, I noticed a homeschooling magazine, and I picked it up.
It's called Homeschooling Today. It turns out that it is a magazine about homeschooling with a Christian bent. I liked it, and I'll probably check out the newer editions in the future.
Here are a few things in the magazine that I liked:
"Generally, people have no idea what it is like to homeschool. I think most picture us standing in front of our neatly dressed children, textbook in hand, washer and dryer quietly humming in the background, and our children sitting at orderly arranged desks in an extra room in our house while we explain the finer points of the periodic table of elements to children who would rather be playing outdoors. What they imagine is not homeschool; it's school at home. It is their school experience superimposed on a home." - Steve Murphy, Publisher
There was an article by Hope Meaux titled "Writing in Books" which advocated allowing children to write in their books. This is something that I believe in. We had to purchase many of our own books in high school, because our school encouraged us to write in our books. In fact, they even taught us how. Best advice from the article: Instead of buying a new grammar book each year, buy a 12th grade grammar book for every 7th grader, and let them study it and mark in it for the next 6 years.
My other favorite article from this issue was by Ruth Beechick, titled "Kindergartners are Unique." This article reinforced many of the reasons why I want Connor and Lex to have their early education at home. Some food for thought:
"Compared with older children, kindergartners have unique ways of thinking. It is important to understand these differences because of the government's tendency to push academic learning down to inappropriate ages."
"Two important words for the kindergarten age are preoperational and egocentric. Preoperational describes what the child cannot yet do; he cannot perform mental operations. Egocentric describes the view from which he sees everything - his own view."
This article was derived from a book written by this author titled Teaching Kindergartners. I think I'm going to try to find a copy to read.
1 comment:
How old is C? M is 3 1/2. We talked about sending her to preschool this fall. And then we stopped and really thought about our reasons why. She knows all of her letters and most of their sounds, can spell and write her name as well as half a dozen other words. She knows the seasons, can count (more or less) to 20 and knows colors, shapes...all that jazz. So what did we need to send her to preschool for? We thought about sending her for her Spiritual formation (the school we would send her to operates under four pillars of formation: intellectual, spiritual, human and apostolic formations) and human formation. Annnnd, if we wanted her to be ready for kindergarten there, then she had to go to prek-4...and to be ready for prek-4, we should send her to prek-3. But we're not sure we're going to send her to kindergarten...and if we (and by we, I mean *I*) did a little more deliberate focus this year on her spiritual and human formation, couldn't we conquer that at home? Plus, I'm not sure I think a 3 1/2 year old needs "school"....she seems to be learning plenty without it right now.
So, the plan is to do something school-ish twice a week and being more deliberate about things like crafts and activities. We'll see how it goes :)
Post a Comment