I love the philosophy but the practicality won't work for us... I'm hoping it's ok to ask, but what would you do if your homeschooled/unschooled child came to you and asked to go to school?
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I love the philosophy but the practicality won't work for us... I'm hoping it's ok to ask, but what would you do if your homeschooled/unschooled child came to you and asked to go to school?
Yep you can ask that :D We have discussed this and we believe that a child at the age of 5 or 6 isn't old enough to know what is necessarily 'right' for them or old enough to make these big decisions themselves. We feel that perhaps at the age of 8 if our DD is asking to go to school and really really wants to try it out, we will let her. We are honest with her about school and what it involves and we even talk to her about it now. We NEVER are negative about schools because we understand there may come a day when she wants to go or needs to go for whatever reason (although we aren't planning on this happening). But life can be unpredictable so we aren't ever saying a complete 'no' to school if that makes sense.:
We respect schools have their places but are not for everyone. We also understand some families use schools AND home education too! I know some families (on forums) who send their kids to school then have them home for a year then they are back at school.... whatever suits the child and/or family at the time :)
Our DD will, as she does now, be always in contact with other kids whether it's at the local parks, beaches, play centres, sporting events, swimming etc..... and I don't feel kids at the young age of 5 or 6 need to be with other kids EVERY day anyway. 2-3 times a week is plenty. Plus they have their siblings too.
I'd ask why they want to go.. I'd probably send them to school, but my concern would be once they are in the system I assume it would be harder to get out of, so I'd really want to make sure it's what they wanted to do.. It would depend how old they were etc.. If it was for the social aspect I'd do more to try and accomodate that at home..
I agree with you BAL.:
I have heard of many families who have sent their children to school after they asked to go and they lasted a week or two!!! I think many kids who have been home educated would find it pretty tough in that they are 'told' what to do and what to learn etc, not as much freedom etc.... less play time etc....
BAL - I think a Steiner school is a wonderful option especially if you aren't able to stay home and home educate :) I would love to have that option nearby to us but the closest school to us (the one you know) is just simply too far!
Yeah, if my child wanted to go to school I would first find out why and try to meet their needs in another way. And then if they were old enough and I thought they understood the decision they were making I would let them try it out and see what they thought! My main goal at the moment is to delay their entry into school. I do think my children will go to school one day, I'm not sure when. Maybe not until yr 11, maybe long before that. But one of the reasons I started looking into homeschooling in the first place was because I thought kids started school too young. I think in these early years the most important place for kids to be is at home. I definitely think school has benefits but I would like my children to be older, more sure of themselves, confident in their own beliefs, and have better decision making skills by the time they're out there in the big wide world :)
Yes, this!:
My main goal at the moment is to delay their entry into school. I do think my children will go to school one day, I'm not sure when.
Thanks everyone! I really enjoyed reading your responses
Heaven: thanks for that information about unschooling, it was very informative.
The thing about my kids asking to go to school... I fully expect they will ask about school, because it's completely pervasive in all society, in tv shows, all the neighbourhood kids. It's impossible to ignore or avoid. However, when they're young and we, as parents, truly don't believe school to be the best choice for them, we'll simply have to do our best to ensure our children aren't missing out on anything positive that school could offer. Also, it will be important for them to be friends with other unschooled kids so they don't feel left out.
When they're older, if they need to study formally through some kind of institution in order to do what they want (in terms of work or hobbies), it will be up to them.
Yep we're the same. We believe children start school and even prep programs etc way too young these days. My niece was only 4.5yrs when she started prep 5 days a week, that is waaaayy too young if you ask me!!! My sister thought it was great though but she has different beliefs to me.
I even pulled DD3.5yrs out of kindy/daycare as I felt it was headed towards the whole 'preparation for school' thing which we decided was not for us at this stage...... they need to be kept little for longer!! Plus she hated being away from me and I hated being away from her. Even though she loved seeing her friends and the fun activities they did each day, she missed me.
I think the best place for them while they are really young is at home with their parent/s. We will take home education ONE year at a time, ALWAYS. We will never look ahead longer than that and perhaps one day they will go to school, maybe only one of our daughters will end up at school whereas the other one won't ever go to school, not sure! It depends on the child at the time..... many families even send 1 or 2 of their kids but the 3rd one ends up never going to school as it just didn't suit them, ya know? Depends....
I agree Kuraiza. It's a bit challenging for me at the moment with my DD3.5yrs because she thinks school is cool because her neighbours go to the school up the road from us. They are 6,6 & 8 and she plays with them sometimes and when I talk about home education she says 'but I'm going to go to school mum' and we talk about it briefly about how school is a long day, don't get to see mum and sister all day, not as much play time etc..... she's so influenced by these neighbourhood kids already about school, it kinda sucks being surrounded by a street full of kids who do mainstream school. But we'll get past that I am sure..... I want my DD to realise it's ok to do things differently and that she doesn't have to be like all her friends ;)
First and foremost, home education for us is a 'lifestyle' choice followed by a whole range of reasons! I can't imagine having to get up every day 5 days a week for the school drop offs and pickups, making the lunches, and following the school schedule. Also I don't like the idea that once you drop your child at that gate, you lose responsibility for your child's wellbeing and the school becomes in charge.... DH and I aren't OK with that, not while they are so little (5,6,7yrs old).
Wow I had such a great lead given to me via BB that I'm now being invited to join a local natural learners group. I'm so excited.
Meanwhile, I commented on FB that I was feeling heart broken because my 4yo son tried to play with some big boys at a play centre and he told me "I made some new friends.... They didn't let me play with them." he's just becoming aware of other people, so this is the first time he's understood it when bigger kids don't want to play.
Anyway, my sister told me I need to put him in school so he can make friends. This just upset me because she knows we are unschooling and not only that, her son (my beautiful nephew who I adore) is currently being bullied at school, so why does she think it would be so great for my son? I don't understand that, and even though my opinion on the matter is so different and I don't believe exposing a child to bullying, leaving them exposed to it, and making them go back day after day to be bullied some more is at all good for a child, I would never say anything to her or question her choices for her children, so why does she have to question mine?
That's great kuraiza! I hope I can get involved in something soon. Maybe after Christmas when it's a bit less hectic!
Sad when that happens isn't it :( That happened to DD the other day and she just stood off to the side with this heartbroken look on her face. Made me want to cry. That was unfair of your sister too.
I also wanted to share this realisation I had this morning that really knocked my brain around.
I went to a private girl's school and was given all the best in educational opportunities. I've commented before how that didn't work for me, but this morning I was lamenting how unfair it was that the boys schools offered cadets (which, more importantly, offered flight training in real gliders), and wood work, and tech drawing. My school offered all the normal subjects plus textiles and design.
I was thinking how much practical learning value in geography, geometry, mathematics etc there is in learning to fly and it hit me, single-gender schools offer a sexist selection of subjects based on gender biases and the end result of such a supposedly high level of education is that the students miss out on amazing opportunities.
Hi Kuraiza , I have met a couple of mums from that group, although briefly. I was at a drumming workshop in burleigh with some HSer's :)I am really keen to be a part of the group next year.:
Where abouts are you on the GC? We are just south of Coolangatta. We should meet up in January :)
And ignore your sister, she doesn't know what's best ;)
I hate it too when my 3yo asks another child "will you play with me?" or "will you be my friend?" and they look at her strangely or say "no", then she'll say "mum she didn't let me be her friend" it breaks my heart :(
Quite often it's school aged kids with anti social behaviours they've learnt from school!!!!!
Just wondering how you're going now Kuraiza??
We're working on setting up a club house for natural learners. We have a small space in a market village where we've been taking the kids to be free to run around and do crafts or whatever without worrying about the state of the house, which can get crazy with the kids home all the time. We met up with some other unschoolers and they were really nice, but that group seems to be going through something atm, don't know what, some kind of rift so I don't know what's happening there. Anyway, we've had lots of interest in our club but no one has visited us, yet.
I'm going a bit stir crazy with life. Don't seem to find time for myself as much as I would like. A big sacrifice having the kids home all the time. No free babysitting at school. That's the honest truth of it.
Sounds great kuraiza! Glad you have met up with some other people.
I just read this article and thought it would be good to share here :)
:
How My Children Learned to Read
by Pam Sorooshian
Do you remember how much fun it was when your child was learning to talk? How each word was just adorable? How you'd strain your imagination, at first, to figure out what the sounds he was making might mean? How he slowly became easier and easier to understand? How he surprised you sometimes when he popped out with a word you didn't know he knew? How he just "all on his own" started putting the words together and how they slowly turned into phrases and then sentences? Do you remember how he made mistakes by putting words together in ways that made sense logically, but just weren't the way we speak the language? Did he make up words? Did he mispronounce them? Wasn't it amazingly wonderfully satisfying to watch the slow, but inevitable, progress he made in speaking? Think for a minute about what your role was in that development.
I remember my oldest daughter, hearing a knock on the front door, standing behind it and shouting, "Whobody is there?" I remember the first two words she put together were "Hi there," which she often shouted while waving at people as we cruised the aisles in the grocery store. Everyone around her responded with hugs and smiles and nods of encouragement and, especially, we responded by talking to her a lot and by listening to her very very carefully.
Learning to read can be just as joy-filled as learning to talk was. If you are lucky, your child will do a lot of it in your presence and out loud, so you can respond with encouraging approval, just the way you did when he started putting sounds together to make speech. Some kids, however, do their learning to read in relative silence, mostly working it out within their own head. We parents can respect that by not interfering by demanding regular demonstrations of what the child prefers to keep private. We'll still notice that the child is making more and more sense out of printed language, that he is reading signs, for example. And we can always do our part by reading to him as much as possible and by surrounding him with print materials of all kinds and with a wide variety of opportunities to begin using print himself.
Books are the most obvious of the printed materials. At our house, we look at books as being just about as important as food to eat and air to breathe. We get excited over them, we drag them everywhere, we talk about them, we give them as presents, we ooh and aah over the illustrations, we read bits and pieces out loud to each other, we pretend we are characters from the books, we develop favorite authors and try to read all their books, we read books of funny poems and lovely poems, we read for information, we listen to stories on tape, we go to book signings, we spend hours and hours in the library and in bookstores. We are not, in general, very careful with our books, the house is cluttered with them piled here, there, and everywhere. So is the car. Kids fall asleep with books in their hands nearly every night. Over the years, though, we have collected certain favorites that are treated especially tenderly, read carefully and never in the bathtub. Many of our books have been purchased at garage sales and thrift shops, by the way.
We also subscribe to lots of magazines. Every year the Girl Scouts sell magazines subscriptions as a fund raiser and we spend hours poring over the list and each child chooses a couple of magazines. Some favorites over the years have been Ladybug, Cricket, Highlights, Ranger Rick, and My Big Backyard. As the children have gotten older, they've selected Puzzlemania, Zillions, American Girl, Kids Discover, Muse, National Geographic World, and more.
Children who are learning to read usually want to create the written word, too, right along with learning to read it. So we provide lots and lots of writing materials. We include good quality colored pencils, crayons, markers, stampers, stickers, stencils, paint, and anything else that might be fun to draw or write with. The house is filled with paper of all kinds: from recycled paper with one side already used to various beautiful papers of different types. Kids LOVE to play with business forms such as a receipt book or a restaurant order pad or an unused check register. I know many kids who have had hours and hours of practicing writing and learning to understand how sounds are represented by letters and how letters make up words, by taking pretend food orders from their family members. My kids have often made lovely decorated menus for dinnertime. Post-It Notes, which now come in many sizes and colors, are very attractive to kids, who usually just LOVE to write or draw on them and stick them all over the house. At their grandma's house, my children and their cousins have developed a tradition of writing little funny things on post-it notes and sticking them in unexpected places. Grandma might, for example, reach for the band-aid box and discover a post-it note that says, "Ouch!"
I have never given any of my children a "reading lesson." My oldest two learned to read when they were still four years old. By the time they turned six, they were selecting lengthy books, such as the Little House series. The oldest learned to read in such a way that I could observe the process. She asked questions about letters and words, she followed along in books as I was reading, she started reading signs, we played rhyming games, she started asking me how to spell words, and, pretty soon, she was reading.
I never saw it coming with my second child. I only knew she was actually reading when, one evening, her older sister called me to their room and complained, "Roxana won't stop reading out loud and she's bothering me." I thought she had memorized the book and was pretending to read. But, nope, she was really reading and quite fluently. Big sister said she'd been driving her crazy for a couple of weeks, asking her, "What does this spell? What does that spell?" during the evenings when they were in bed with their books. I had no idea.
My third child is a very different learner than her sisters; she learned to read at about the time she turned eight years old. It took about six weeks for her to go from barely reading at all, struggling to sound out simple words, to reading Shakespeare. I am absolutely serious. She and her sisters were performing as fairies in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream and, one day, I discovered her reading the script, out loud and with lovely inflection. I admit, I had started to get a little anxious over her not reading yet, although I'd been careful not to let on to her that I was having any twinges of nervousness. As she turned six and then seven and then eight years old, I couldn't help thinking about the many, many books her sisters had read on their own by that age. But, she's making up for any "lost" time now. (I don't really think of that time as lost, by any means, she was always busy, always learning.) Yesterday she read Charlotte's Web. The day before that she read Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. She is in love with books. I came home with a copy of The Borrowers, the other day, and she squealed with delight just at the prospect of reading it.
Who could ask for more?