I am a subscriber to several homeschooling magazines – among them The Old Schoolhouse.
I was reading through their email newsletter this morning and found this from their editor, Nancy Carter:
“It’s so easy for us to see the absurdity of focusing on teaching a duck to climb instead of encouraging it to swim. But many of us are guilty of being so concerned that our kids are “keeping up” with where the other kids are that we focus more on covering our bases than allowing our children time to explore and develop their interests.”
Carter points us to another blog with a great post on creating homeschool transcripts that reflect letting kids explore their passions.
This is so true! I do, often, get caught up in what the other kids are learning – or doing. But I have to remember, that it just doesn’t matter – as long as my children are happy and learning the things they want to learn.
Liam, for example, did almost zero math for the last two years. No, really. We did it once in a while. He really hated it, got stressed out and cried. So we stopped. This year he said he’s like to do it again. I bought him the appropriate Saxon math book for 5th grade and we just started at Lesson 1. Without having done any formal math for the last two years (of course, we cooked and made things and used math, we just didn’t “do” math), he got right into the swing of things and after a week, is happily on Lesson 10, without a problem. Would he still be a crying mess if I had forced him to do math these last two years? And what does it say about a kid’s brain that they can pick up on the right grade-level stuff after not having done anything for two years? I’m not sure – except that I know it wasn’t until this year that he was “ready” for more formal schoolwork. I’m glad I gave him the time to play and explore and just “be” – not that he doesn’t get that now – rather than stress him out over something like math!
Just watch this short film, Animal School, it’s simply wonderful:
http://www.raisingsmallsouls.com/wp-content/themes/179/aschool012008.html
It would appear that I have created a number of bees, as well…and aren’t I the happier for it?
We may not be the best behaved bunch – but our dinner table conversations are very interesting!
Noah James says:
i was also home schooled when i was younger and it is also a great weay to get your education.**.
10th September 2008 at 2:09 am