Homeschool Resources
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We homeschool, primarily because we move around a lot, but also because regular schools tend to be less focused on science and technology, and essentially opposed to any sort of creative learning or problem solving, and more focused on rote memorisation. This is especially true in the English-speaking world. Regular schools are also a lot of wasted time, we teach twice is much in half the time, sometimes much more, depending on the subject of course
It's hard to find a lot of resources because a lot of homeschoolers are religious fanatics, science deniers, and all around weirdos. So, I'm making an appeal to anyone here who homeschools, what sort of resources do you use? What sort of lesson plans do you provide?
What kind of other activities do you get involved with, because, after all, apparently most people believe school is for socialisation, as if schools aren't full of bored, anti-social children?
If you dislike homeschooling, why? And it better be a real reason, "homeschool kids are weird," isn't a reason, plenty of obnoxious and isolated religious weirdos attend public schools as well. And on that, almost all serial killers went to public schools, so if we want to use bad logic, we can say that too. In all seriousness, please provide detailed information of criticisms.
My biggest criticism of homeschooling is that parents often avoid topics they don't understand or just don't teach them at all. If we are ever limited by knowledge or understanding, we hire a tutor, and it surprises me how most parents we've met don't do this.
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We have homeschooled from the beginning and @Minion-Queen and @art_of_shred did from nearly the beginning. Once we are settled somewhere and she has Internet access, I'll get @Dominica on here with some of the info that she has. She does tons and tons of research on this. Our kids are quite young, so most of what we have found is geared pretty young.
Like you we travel and have little choice but to homeschool. Putting kids into different schools in different languages every few months would be impossible. They would never learn anything.
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@tonyshowoff said in Homeschool Resources:
My biggest criticism of homeschooling is that parents often avoid topics they don't understand or just don't teach them at all.
That's one of my biggest criticisms of normal schools. They don't know computers, so they don't even teach what they are. They don't know physics, they just skip it. They use time wasters like wood shop, home economics and PE to fill the time to make it seem like they are doing things when really they are just babysitting.
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@scottalanmiller said in Homeschool Resources:
@tonyshowoff said in Homeschool Resources:
My biggest criticism of homeschooling is that parents often avoid topics they don't understand or just don't teach them at all.
That's one of my biggest criticisms of normal schools. They don't know computers, so they don't even teach what they are. They don't know physics, they just skip it. They use time wasters like wood shop, home economics and PE to fill the time to make it seem like they are doing things when really they are just babysitting.
Well public schools are based on institutionalised ignorance, so that isn't surprising to me. I'm largely referring to homeschooling parents I've met through various organisations over the years, and it's pretty disturbing, then again the amount of Young Earth Creationists, well, I need not say more.
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What ages/grades?
I did use some of the Christian Curriculum when my son was younger however. The history was seriously lacking and so was the science. I started purchasing things from the local college. Obviously I had to bring that down to his level but it gave me a basic lesson plan to follow. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sciense+kits Science kits were awesome!For history we did a ton of reading biography's and since we live in Western NY we did lots of local history stuff (there are tons of museums etc here) and we did travel a ton so every state became a lesson about that state and famous people/events and always a museum stop.
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@Minion-Queen said in Homeschool Resources:
What ages/grades?
I did use some of the Christian Curriculum when my son was younger however. The history was seriously lacking and so was the science. I started purchasing things from the local college. Obviously I had to bring that down to his level but it gave me a basic lesson plan to follow. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sciense+kits Science kits were awesome!For history we did a ton of reading biography's and since we live in Western NY we did lots of local history stuff (there are tons of museums etc here) and we did travel a ton so every state became a lesson about that state and famous people/events and always a museum stop.
14/9, 8/3 there abouts, though they perform above their years.
I actually had downloaded via torrents a long time ago all of the homeschooling material I could find, and went through it all and sorted it out. That's my insane approach. It's hard to find something more science and technology focused.
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@Dominica does that too, she pours through an insane amount of curriculum material to pick what she wants to use.
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I should also note all of my children are educated in English for the most part, despite not living in America or England. This is a problem for my first wife, her English is terrible, but the latter ones it's not such a big deal.
Additionally the two ages/years I mentioned above are my daughters which live with me, I have other children elsewhere, unfortunately not with me all of the time, though from time to time that's not the case, though they are younger.
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@tonyshowoff said in Homeschool Resources:
My biggest criticism of homeschooling is that parents often avoid topics they don't understand or just don't teach them at all.
I would cite the documentary "The Waterboy" for full examples of this.
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I forgot to teach Nursery Rhymes. @Dominica made a reference to my son when he was like 10 and he totally missed it. I was horrified I missed them. But it was good in the end as we ended up going through the actual origins of them and since they are generally creepy and gross right up a 10 year old boys alley.
I think planning on what you are going to use to teach was a full time job.
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@Minion-Queen said in Homeschool Resources:
I forgot to teach Nursery Rhymes. @Dominica made a reference to my son when he was like 10 and he totally missed it. I was horrified I missed them. But it was good in the end as we ended up going through the actual origins of them and since they are generally creepy and gross right up a 10 year old boys alley.
I think planning on what you are going to use to teach was a full time job.
Nursery Rhymes?
Also, it is. It's also a full time job to keep things up to date, thankfully all my (ex)wives do that for my kids now, I just pay all the bills, I don't have time to teach much or research much anymore.
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Did anyone have any other specifics, general information? A friend of mine is considering taking her child out of school and she's asking me tons of questions about things like "how do you structure learning, courses, syllabi, etc" It's hard to come up with a generic response and saying "we tested things out and found the best fit," doesn't clear enough, and come to think of it, it really isn't.
So also for the sake of other potential readers who could take their kids out of school and spare them the institutionalised beat down when it comes to creativity and intelligence, how can I answer these questions without being so vague as to sound like a pretentious dufus?
As I said, I downloaded tons of information and went through it all, but this has been years ago.
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@tonyshowoff said in Homeschool Resources:
It's hard to come up with a generic response and saying "we tested things out and found the best fit," doesn't clear enough, and come to think of it, it really isn't.
That's exactly what we do. Every kid is different. Why treat them with a single formula like traditional school does when you don't have to?
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These books were a good outline for helping me design each years curriculum. http://www.amazon.com/What-Your-Fifth-Grader-Needs/dp/0385337310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462407603&sr=8-1&keywords=what+a+5th+grader+should+know
Again just an outline.
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@scottalanmiller said in Homeschool Resources:
@tonyshowoff said in Homeschool Resources:
It's hard to come up with a generic response and saying "we tested things out and found the best fit," doesn't clear enough, and come to think of it, it really isn't.
That's exactly what we do. Every kid is different. Why treat them with a single formula like traditional school does when you don't have to?
What I meant was rather where can I tell her to get various resources instead of saying "download hella torrents and spend a month going through them." See this is the problem, I don't even know how to answer this question myself.
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This is just a website that lists some curriculums and a brief description of each. http://howtohomeschoolforfree.com/full-online-homeschool-curriculum/
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It's hard to answer some of the questions that info-seeking potential homeschoolers ask, because I truly believe that the best advice is for them to actually do the research on their own. There is no better way for them to understand what homeschooling is about, and to understand that there are a ton of different ways to go about it.
I always check http://cathyduffyreviews.com/ whenever I am considering new curriculum or materials. I don't buy her book, because I feel that it isn't necessary, but her reviews are very helpful in determining if something is a good fit for us.
Here is a free, secular online curriculum for preK - 12. It has a new parent account that allows you to print reports and closely monitor your children's progress, and it will soon let you choose different grade levels for different subjects. Some of it will not be useful for non Americans, but a bit of it is relevant: http://discoveryk12.com/dk12/
Easy Peasy Homeschool is free and has some good content, but it is heavily indoctrinated with a Christian world view. https://allinonehomeschool.com/
I use http://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/ to get great deals on curriculum. I always check there first before I buy anything.
Here's a link to a good explanation of some of the different approaches to homeschooling: http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeschooling/five-different-approaches-to-homeschooling/
Discovery Education Streaming Plus is an awesome resource for videos on just about any topic, nicely indexed and organized for easy searching. I bought a subscription through the Co-op. http://www.discoveryeducation.com//what-we-offer/streaming-plus-digital-media/index.cfm
I've just recently discovered this free resource for educational videos, but I haven't checked it out extensively yet: http://www.watchknowlearn.org/
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How about unschooling?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnschoolingAlso lets not take potshots at the religious as if they only homeschool in order to indoctrinate, and we need the mighty seculars to save our children.
Let's not forget it was religion and its ideas and beliefs that created schools and hospitals and much of science to begin with. They elevated the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, not destroyed it.In my experience, people homeschool mostly due to poor performance or safety of local schools, that's about it. And also the complete overreach of schools that seem to take over the role the parents are supposed to play. And thirdly, because they simply witness the little horrors that are being created from factory schools. Kids with no sense of direction, no respect for authority, no honor or decency or sense of responsibility.
This is not even to mention the complete lack of any sort of training in actual useful topics. No real world skills, no homemaking skills, no mechanical or handyman skills, no finance or business or investing skills. No understanding of government or economics. Instead, they come out entitled little America-hating socialists who want to play video games all day and live off the government while hating all rich people, religions, hard working business people, and capitalism.I would rather my kid have a solid education and be a decent, respectful, hard working person but also have been taught young earth creationism, than to come out an entitled little disrespectful socialist brat who thinks the world revolves around him and owes him a beautiful life, but not have any real world skills and thinks all businesses are greedy while enjoying his daily Starbucks and iPhone.
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@guyinpv said in Homeschool Resources:
In my experience, people homeschool mostly due to poor performance or safety of local schools, that's about it.
As homeschoolers this seems hard to believe. The availability of materials and resources for sound education are rare and the number that exist for homeschooling in an indoctrination mode are myriad. There are plenty of both camps (and likely other camps too) but that the indoctrination and or "avoiding education" camp is an extremely large one. Enough that even within homeschool groups it feels almost like a foregone conclusion.
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@guyinpv said in Homeschool Resources:
How about unschooling?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnschoolingWe mix that in a lot. I posted a TEDx talk on that just last week. Can't remember what thread it was in, though.
We are big proponents of unschooling or at least... very relaxed schooling.
