Homeschooling Introduction

I homeschool because I love learning, and I want to share that with my children. There are many benefits, but that is at the heart of our homeschooling.

If you know about the various types of homeschooling, our approach is closer to unschooling than it is to anything else. I don’t usually call us unschoolers because we do have a certain bit of structure to our day (if we didn’t, I’d end up playing Bionicles with my younger son all day). Maybe “interest-driven” is a better way to describe our homeschooling. 

“Interest-driven” can play out in various ways though. It is obvious when my daughter spends lots of time looking up Broadway musicals on IBDB.com (Internet Broadway Database) or reading about marine wildlife, when my older son spends lots of time drawing or studying insects, or when my younger son, today, wanted to look through the pop-up book of architecture again. But it also shows when my daughter does math, even though she doesn’t care for it, because it will get her into college to study her beloved crabs. And it shows when my older son studies for the SAT or the SAT subject tests so he can study what he wants in college, although he’s still trying to figure out which of his passions he should major in. 

Kids (or probably anyone) learn so fast when they’re passionate about something, and what they learn that way really stays with them. 

Along with encouraging their individual interests, my husband and I bring in our own, and we all learn from each other. My husband brings in art and philosophy, I bring in classical music and politics (though the kids have limited tolerance for that), we watch lots of old movies, and we read lots and lots of books (some colleges want homeschoolers to send in a list of books they’ve read – they’d get tired of reading our lists!). The older two children have various activities that they’re involved in, but we try to not overdo those so that they have time to think and create.

This doesn't even start to cover all of our homeschooling, but, at least it's a bit of an introduction.

Comments

[prncess shardai]

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