Homeschool World Forum

Hi,

looking for some outside opinions!

I am starting the homeschooling adventure for what seem to be some pretty standard reasons, with two children, a son currently 6, and a daughter currenly 4.

Both are attending a local Christian school at the moment.

I had intended to start in "earnest" this September, but because we want the children on board, started talking about this and introducing homeschool things now. Our house is huge, so one of the things I did was set up a room. I have always had a craft room with art supplies, etc, which the children had pretty free reign in. But because of its location and my night working husband's need to sleep in the day, I have set up "our classroom" in a different location.

I am trying to follow the steps, joined a group, reading, joined this forum, etc. I have been hunting out cirriculum. One that I have purchased and am so excited about is the Math-U-See program... which will work perfect for our son. When it arrived he confirmed my thoughts on this issue!

Anyways... the children are over the moon about this! My son is coming home from a full-day of school, and wants to go straight to the classroom and work away (at the Math stuff in particular, one of his strong subjects).

Now he has required a lot of tutoring from me to stay on grade level, one of the reasons for homeschooling. But I have never seen him so positively charged!

BUT... should I be following this path? I am allowing them to do both for now. Thought I would ride the wave so to speak. BUT I don't want to make it harder for me later on.

From my readings today, I think that I will likely be starting them in earnest this summer instead of waiting till September. I have visited 7 families that homeschool and know that it doesn't take all day and I do want to keep momentum going here... but in the meantime, regular school goes until almost the end of June in Canada and I don't want to kill this spirit before then!

Help! Advice! Comments! I'm listening!

Roberta

If your children actually want to do homework, you certainly shouldn't squelch them. They will eventually arrive at subjects that aren't as easy or fun, and any time they gain now can be used to take things easier then - or if they happen to like everything, to advance themselves in their majors. As long as you have the time to spare, you should go while the going's good.

How much tutoring / grading time do they need daily?

My daughter required no extra time with normal school. She will willingly pull out her "sounds" book, aka phonics and play with it.

My son however... spends an average of 10 hours a week in Resource. And was coming home with work from that class, which would average at least 1 1/2 hours. Then there was the regular class stuff, like spelling. Which at first was almost impossible to get him to do. Because his current class is a grade 1 /2 split, with 31 boys and 3 girls, the teacher was finding that he was becoming so distracted while she was teaching he had to be sent to Resource to be re-taught. Or it was coming home to me. He also has a very strong reflex, if he thinks he can't do it perfectly, he doesn't want to try!

So I told the resource room, much to their utter disgust, that we would no longer be doing their materials and focus on his regular class stuff instead. They are not the most supportive of the homeschool idea, but his teacher and principal are very supportive.

I managed to find a way of making the spelling more fun, and we can breeze through it in about 20 mins a night, with him averaging 90%. Which is considerably up from an average of 20%.

The Math stuff we have been working on from our future homeschool, I entirely gauge to his energy and desires. Sometimes he wants to continue, but I insist he plays. Sometimes I can catch a whiff of frustration and I send him away.

On the three days a week that my daughter doesn't have pre-school, we are working on phonics, penmanship, alphabet recognition, days of the week, calendar, seasons, weather, etc. We spend between 2 - 3 hours on this. Then in the afternoon, I read her several stories. Lately she won't play alone, so she then spends the rest of the day baking and doing housework with me.

Every night I read to the kids. Currently we are reading Ribsy by Beverly Cleary, Matilda by Rhold Dhal, and The Reptile Room from a Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickett. We have just finished the Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis. We couldn't decide on just one other book, so we just read according to our collective whim.

My son is being encouraged to read to me from a phonetically friendly children's Bible. We have taped $10 to the inside rear cover as a reward. There are 52 stories, so he will have some work to do! So far so good on this front.

okay... asked me a queston, got a mouthful! Sorry, I type rapidly, and think twice as quickly!

Roberta

Sounds like you're doing just fine