Home schooling - please explain this to me
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Anonymous
Your a lawyer so that explains a lot. |
Anonymous
Are you sure? Maybe it's heresay? As of 2 yrs ago, you had to ho yo a testing center...as the PPs mentioned. |
Anonymous
Wait. What? What does being a lawyer have to do with critiquing school choices? |
Anonymous
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I homeschooled my son for K-7. He had a traumatic start in life and did not speak. Eventually we got him to the point where he spoke at home/with immediate family. I was able to work part time, from home.
DS did 45 minutes of English/reading, an hour of foreign culture/social studies (I wanted to do foreign language but since he didn't speak I'd have no way to know he was getting proper accents), 45 minutes of math, 45 minutes of science. We'd do a half hour of "gym" together and then he'd do at least a half hour on his own too (trampoline, basketball, skating, swimming, tennis, etc.). "On his own" just meant without me - he could play HORSE with siblings or neighbors. He also did a half hour of music each day. We did a field trip once a week, and a fun multi-subject project once a week. He was sort of socially awkward simply because of his mute-ness but he started 8th grade prepared to talk and with a few friends. Though he was quiet, and still is, he thrived. He'd often come home and complain of being bored at school, frustrated at sitting around waiting. |
Anonymous
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I thought my SIL was homeschooling because she wanted a better, more engaged learning environment for her children.
Then I asked her how science class was going (my kids love it) and she told me they were still on Genesis. I was crushed. Really? Now I think she homeschools to keep her two children from interacting with people who think differently than she does. |
Anonymous
Unless you apply for a religious exemption from oversight. That's allowed in VA. This is a fascinating story about it: http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/debate-on-virginia-s-homeschool-law-encapsulated-in-buckingham-family/article_f76001bc-fd53-11e2-8bbf-001a4bcf6878.html |
Anonymous
You did a wonderful thing for your son. He is lucky to have you. |
Anonymous
You don't know how to use the correct form of "you're" so that explains a lot. |
Anonymous
Those stations do keep kids busy but the kids are actually doing work during this time too. In our local school the "short lesson" is typically one that either all the kids need to learn or is specific to each leveled group since they switch classes starting in 1st grade most days. They do several spelling and vocabulary activities several times a week which would take close to the same amount of time at home. The "literacy stations" involve actual writing and reading themselves. I'm guessing any homeschool would also have this time where a parent was working with other children and why wouldn't we want our children doing some work independently? The rest of the time is in small or individual writing or reading groups with the teacher about three times a week. I'm sure a good 30 minutes of the 2.5 hours is not used well but I bet that would be the same at home too since kids need breaks. I agree that more one on one time would be helpful especially in public school with large class sizes, but I'm convinced that the time it would take me to plan the lessons and administer them to all our children would equal the amount of time that is "wasted" in public school. My children have been identified "gifted" anyway and have been nurtured at school with little additional help at home. So far we are happy enough with public school. |
Anonymous
Yes, I'm sure. |
Anonymous
I concur, I homeschooled my child from 2008-2010 and administered the state mandated testing. Here is the statute: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+22.1-254.1 |
Anonymous
I have editors, so that explains a lot. |
Anonymous
| I only have anecdotal opinion , but the 2 women I went to school with and have worked with were very sweet , pleasant , and good at their jobs. Clinically at par , but their social skills, sense of humor , nuances of a situation, navigating difficult professional scenarios ,appropriateness of a story , and things like that were off. The complexities of situations were just not understood as well, they were slower in communication, rapport, office politics and even the typical back and forth camaraderie in healthcare |
Anonymous
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It's estimated that something like 30% of your child's day is spent in time off task. So if your school runs 6 hours of which 4 hours of that is spent in reading/writing/and math and almost a third of that is spent in time off task, that gives an individual kid in a room with 25 other kids somewhere around 2.75 hours of on task learning for reading and language arts.
Many homeschooling families do the more academic reading, writing, and math activities during those two hours in the morning and use classes, field trips, etc, for science, social studies, art, pe, and music classes that they are not counting into the two hours of schoolwork. As for whether or not parents are qualified to teach their own child. There are obviously data points on both ends- some parents shouldn't be homeschooling their children for a variety of reasons, but there are also some teachers that shouldn't be teaching anyone either. There really isn't a ton of specialized knowledge that elementary teachers magically get by going to college and studying education that a parent who knows how to access information isn't capable of doing him or herself. As for the original questions, I can see a parent wanting to homeschool their young boys for the first couple of grades for a variety of reasons - many kindergartens are not developmentally appropriate learning environments, parent may value more exposure to content knowledge at an early age, there may be religious reasons, they may have very slight special needs that aren't being addressed by the schools, there may have been bullied even if their neighborhood schools are considered good. |
Anonymous
We started homeschooling because our boys were those troublemakers. |