Kaye and I have been publicly discussing our views of home schooling vs. schooling out of the home (as homeschoolers would call it). Kaye’s last blog has asked so many questions that I have decided to answer them in three blogs instead of just one!
The next section of Kaye’s questions are best answered Q and A style. The answers are so varied for each individual family, but perhaps some of you considering homeschooling can get a picture of what my day looks like.
Can you share with me what a typical curriculum for homeschooling looks like?
No, actually I can’t! Homeschooling curriculums and philosophies vary widely. I liken it to sending your child to a Montesorri school, vs. a Waldorf school vs. a classical school vs. a magnet school. . .you get the idea.
Our family actually follows a curriculum that is literature based. For those of you reading this, wondering what that means, it means I read out loud a lot to my kids. It also means that we don’t use text books to teach content but rather we just use books like you would find at a bookstore or a library.
However, I think a family that doesn’t have the funds to buy a curriculum or isn’t sure what to use can home school pretty successfully without one. I think it is important to have a scope and sequence. For ideas on what your scope and sequence might include, you could check out A to Z home school’s Content Standards Page.
Do you have actual lesson plans and activities that you follow?
Yes and no. We do follow selected readings as laid out in our curriculum. We do very few, if any worksheets. As far as major activities, I allow my children to dictate what we do, unless of course they have failed to grasp a particular concept and then I would teach it again as necessary until I feel they‘ve mastered what I want them to know.
Something to remember, when you are thinking about home schooling, is that it doesn’t need to look like school to be effective. One reason kids in school do lots of activities, worksheets and assessments is so that the teacher can be sure that all of the students grasp the concept. I used to try to present a particular concept differently using an activity for each learning style. With my oldest daughter, I present the majority of the information I want her to learn visually, because she is a visual learner. I also don’t need to “test” her to see if she knows it, her understanding of a concept is apparent in our discussion of the material.
I have found that there are those ideas, that it simply suffices for my children to acknowledge that they’ve learned it, they’ve seen it and they get it. There are other things that simply fascinate them, and since they are all pretty young, I think it’s important to allow them to explore at will. Thus, we have studied in depth, the engineering of a bridge, violent weather, pyramids, ancient history, and I think we’ve done all conceivable experiments on oobleck!
Where do you homeschool in your home?
The correct question for us would be, ‘where do adults go in your home?’ How our home is set up for home schooling really has more to do with the fact that we live in New York City and there isn’t a lot of space, then it has to do with any particular educational philosophy. Our house is great if you are 7 or under–we have very kid-friendly furniture and toys in almost every room. However, adults are resigned to sitting on folding chairs if they’re not comfortable lounging on the huge bean bag that occupies our living room! My best friend on the other hand (who lives in a house) has a classroom set up in her basement.
To specifically answer your question. . .we have a reading area in our living room with a giant bean bag for the kids to have a comfortable place to read or for us to read to them. I also home school in our dining room at the table. In addition, we have science and art centers set up so that while I’m home schooling my oldest child, my younger ones have access to things to do. The science center includes a videoscope and prepared slides. We also home school outside, and we home school at the museum, and we home school at the gardens, and we home school in the zoo, and we home school on long drives in the car. . .are you getting a picture here?
There are no regulations in any state that I’m aware of, that specify where you can home school. There are some states that regulate where you can give a standardized test but most people who choose to do standardized testing are able to do it in their homes.
Do you have a classroom set up with all the things a typical public school would have?
First of all, remember that I live in the inner city. A typical classroom here, most likely does not have what you are envisioning. I have a friend who had to buy textbooks out of her own money one year because the funding ran out and her students wouldn’t have had anything. She of course, did get reimbursed but teachers here regularly have to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to ensure that their students have what they need.
With that said, we more or less, have what a classroom might have as is necessary. We have manipulatives for math, lots of art supplies, and we make it a high priority to keep books, either that we’ve purchased or from the library, accessible on a giant book shelf. We happen to be closet scientists, and so we actually have lots of science supplies as well that were given to us by another teacher who had been teaching for 30 years and finally got to clean out her closet. We don’t use chalkboards or a white board for homeschooling, although each of my kids has a small chalkboard to play on and practice handwriting on. We also have a giant dry erase map to help teach geography.
What Kaye is really asking, is if homeschooling looks at all like public school. If it doesn’t, are the kids missing out? I personally don’t want my day to look like it would if my kids went to school. I think at their age there are a lot of experiences that should not be missed. I would also point out that home schooling doesn’t need to look like school to be effective.
The other day, I sat on my giant bean bag with three of my kids and we read a book about different classifications of animals. While on the bean bag we had a discussion about different criteria used to classify animals. (So humans are not like birds because we carry babies in our tummies. . .but we are like horses in that way. . .etc.) My kids learned all sorts of stuff about animals that they’re probably very willing to share–all accomplished on the giant bean bag.
However, in a classroom this scenario would be impossible. While maybe you may allow one student to read on a special carpet, couch or bean bag, the idea of having 30 students lounging around while you teach them about mammals is absurd. Schooling must meet the needs of the majority of students and in order to accomplish this, you have to have, in my opinion, desks, chalkboards, etc. However, I only have 3 students right now, and so I can easily meet their needs and teach them wherever learning may naturally occur.
I would also like to invite anyone else who has questions to ask away! I will respond as appropriate, by blog or by comment. What have you been dying to know about home schooling?