By now a lot of schools have let out for the moment students and teachers look forward to all 180 days of the public school calendar year -- summer vacation! No more pencils! No more books! No more teacher's dirty looks! Yay! Only, not so yay if you live at my house because we home school year round.
That's right. We do school year round. Last week we finished up our 2011-2012 portfolio review, and the boys passed with flying colors. Phew! Planning the 2012-2013 school year started months ago, because we never really take a long break. School goes on year round, because life goes on year round.
We have some really great friends who also home school. We also have some really great friends who send their children to public school. Each family has to do what's best for their family. One thing they have in common is that most of them look forward to summer vacation. Many choose the time during June, July, and August to go on a family vacation, or at least a trip to the beach.
Our family doesn't do any of that. We home school during the summer because we'd rather be inside where it's air conditioned than outside in the hot, sticky, humid environment. This frees us up to take longer breaks in the fall and spring, often traveling when everyone else's kids are in school.
It's not uncommon for outsiders to look at our lives and accuse us of being on one big, long, extended vacation. A lot of times that's exactly what it feels like! Just a few months ago while millions of public school students were stuck in their classrooms, we were doing math on the beach in the Outer Banks. And a few weeks after that, we were enjoying learning the science of trains.
You might be wondering where we found a textbook on that topic. Textbooks? Ha! While we do use them for some subjects, and not necessarily the same topics two years in a row, we studied trains by researching online, reading information at the local library, and then - the coup de grace - a visit to the North Carolina Transportation Museum, where the boys spent time talking to a train conductor and riding in the engine with him on a 30 minute train ride. And finally, we spent a couple of hours at the museum studying exhibits inside the roundhouse, as well as a dozen or more different train engines, cars, and cabooses on display. It's worth mentioning that we live about an hour outside of Washington, DC and are nowhere near either of those places.
Our family is fortunate that the Fireman's job allows him such a relaxed schedule. The only reason I work is so we can travel. And because I freelance, I can work from anywhere in the world -- as long as I have my laptop and a WiFi connection. While our decision to home school was initially a way to stick it to the public school system (think Katniss versus the Capitol here...yeah, it was THAT bad) after a particularly horrible IEP meeting, but it's turned out to be a real blessing. The Fireman and I are better parents for it. We don't have to deal with a lot of pop culture that goes along with raising teenagers. But best of all, the boys are growing up to be
Do you have any public school nightmares? Have you ever had a nightmare IEP like my good friend and fellow blogger over at Dragonflies@Dawn? Do you home school and dream about the day when your children will beg for you to send them into the public school system? If you have a moment, I'd love to read your comments about children and education!
I envy you and your family homeschooling. We are still trying to figure out if we can do it somehow and still get Minion #1 everything he needs as an autistic teen. If nothing else, we do supplement the school system, reinforce what they teach and we indulge the interests the kids have in geology, archeology, palenontology and cooking.
ReplyDeleteIt's not an ideal situation, but we do the best we can.
Supplementing the school system is awesome. We just un-lucked out and had some horrible, horrible experiences with the public school system here. (They tried to put Thing 1 in a learning disabled class because "being too smart is a disability, too" and Thing 2 "graduated" from 5th grade without knowing how to do long division. Failing at one end of the spectrum or the other would have been bad enough...but both? C'mon. But, I digress.) I've actually apologized to my kids for not home schooling them all along. If I had it to go back and do over again, I certainly would have.
ReplyDeleteHome schooling is awesome for us because we don't have to be structured and stick with a daily routine. Given that your Minion #1 likely thrives on structure and routines, public school may do a good job of providing that? (Given your IEP nightmares, maybe not?) A lot of times we aren't even home when we're doing home school. Quite a few places in town (Panera, the ice cream shop, the tavern bookstore) have free WiFi and if we subscribed to an in-home connection through the local telephone company we could even connect to the internet while at the park.
Our current curriculum is a hodgepodge of textbooks, online classes, and hands-on activities. We keep samples of work in 3-ring binders (1 per kid) and at the end of the year the boys create a PowerPoint that they present with their work to a portfolio review person (who we selected). That's one thing I love about this state and would hate giving up if we moved -- WV doesn't mandate standardized testing for home school students, which is great since Thing 2 freezes up at the sight of them. (He gets it from his father. Thing 1 is like me and actually enjoys them.)
A lot of people worry about "socialization" which makes me giggle, every single time. The county where we live is very home-school-friendly. Between activities with home school groups, visiting friends in the neighborhood, and youth group events they stay pretty busy.
We've done all the sports things, and they decided that they'd rather spend several afternoons per week fishing than one hour a week practicing a group sport. And that's okay with us. They also like to play golf, bowl, and swim. But the important thing was that they were willing to try.
This summer we're reading the Hunger Games (together, as a family). They're learning about plans through doing yard work (Something you probably already do with your boys.) which will count for science. And they're doing a lot of woodworking projects. Our county fair is coming up and they're each toying with the idea of entering stuff. (It helps that ribbons are accompanied by monetary awards, and a friend of theirs won over $30 from his various entries a couple of years ago.)
Not sure about your state, but in ours if a home school parent requests it, the public school system must allow their children to mainstream with other students for specific classes. We did this for 3 years in middle school with Thing 1, for band and electives, and for 2 years with Thing 2. They also took a library science class, giving me a couple of hours a free time in the transition between full days of public school and full days of home school. And now that they're old enough to stay home alone, I can still run to the store, have coffee with a friend, or just drive half a mile away to the mail shed to get 5 minutes of peace and quiet, which helps a lot on days when I am ready to tear my hair out and ask myself what madness made me think home schooling was such a great idea in the first place. Fortunately those days are few and far between now, although the first year of having both boys home together had its fair share of nightmare moments.
If you ever decide to make the big jump, let me know and I'll get you a list of useful websites. :)