Homeschool World Forum

[birdy]

Hi,

I'm Birdy, aka Roberta, a nickname given me by my younger brothers when they were learning to talk...

Currently my family and I reside on a Chicken Broiler farm (meat chickens) near Stratford, Ontario. My husband works off the farm at GayLea and "makes" the real whipping creme in cans. He also chores the farm barns and so on.

I was working in Long Term Care as a Restorative Care Aide. I was in charge of helping Seniors with serious disease maintain or regain their physical abilities. Loved it!

But my reason that I worked out of the home was because my husband used to work at a dairy that laid him off for half a year each year and we needed more financial stability. Then he got this new job, works all the time, and I was getting too upset watching the children spend lots of time under other people's care, etc. I finally quit my job and went back to being a full-time mom. I worked for just under two years.

Our son is six, and is currently schooled at a local Christian school in grade one. Our daughter is four, and is at the same school in Junior Kindergarden, or Pre-school would be the equivalent I guess.

I always wanted to homeschool our children.

My husband actually has a four-year bachelors degree and a teachers degree, but hated every minute teaching. We met in University, married halfway through; but I didn't finish becuase of the unexpected blessing of our son.

I think that hubby's distate for teaching made him strongly opposed to my desires in that adventure.

So our poor son has attended two public schools (we were forced to move with six weeks left one year) and the Christian school this year. But now that we can't afford the money to pay for the Christian school, and the schools principal and our son's teacher and family friend have strongly talked to my husband that home schooling is the best thing for our son... my husband is getting on board with the idea.

I have slowly started introducing the homeschooling idea. We have had serious problems getting our son into school, this was the first year we haven't had to "chain him to the bus" to get him into school.

Aside from what appears to be a standard fear of "my friends." Our son has readily embraced the idea.

Our daughter was given the option of traditional schooling, since she excells there, but choose to have "mommy school" instead.

I plan in starting in earnest this summer. But have been slowly building up my cirriculum, etc. I have been visiting homeschools for several years, trying to talk my husband into this, so I am actually very confident.

Anyways, the timer for my computer time is ringing!

Roberta

[momo3boys]

Welcome to the forum, I hope to we can help if you have any questions
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Phi 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

[birdy]

Thank you very much!

Lately I have been reading about Un-schooling... which, I am gathering can be very radicle, but for the majority does seem to have structure.

Do you practice this?

I absolutely love the idea, but know that without guidelines, myself, I tend to evolve into circles of unaccomplished days. I spent three years as a Flybaby and have managed to set up structures and routines that allow me to give greatly to my family and fufill my God given purpose.

So I am leary about possibly trying this method of homeschooling since I've learned that routines and structure actually give me a huge amount of freedom.

The question is then, is it easy to blend un-schooling with cirriculum and a bit more formal style of learning? A suggestion given to me, was to offer the kids two or three choices and then as a democratic whole we follow the one choice. Then the next time, the other child choose.

Yet on the other hand, there is no reason we couldn't pursue two agenda's at one time. Just my own energy levels!

Advice?

[Dragonfly]

Welcome Roberta,

I'm Jane - new here too......I'm in Alberta. I've been homecshooling off and on for several years. We are quite 'eclectic' - we tend to do a little more work in winter and in the summer months we lean more towards unschooling.....it works well for us......

Good luck with your plans!! You won't regret it...homeschooling is wonderful and I especially love how close it brings us as a family. Life is much less stressful than it was when the children were in school.

Bws
Jane

[birdy]

Thanks for the encouragement!

I am really excited by this so far. It's taken me 4 years, 2 of serious persuing, to have my husband and parents on board with the idea. Actually my parents thought I would do this from before I have had children.

My husband's parents and family are very tentative. They are "red-neck" in background, and my husband is the first family member on record to go on to University and recieve a degree and then a post-graduate degree. And then there is me who didn't finish her degree, since our child arrived, we knew it had to be God's plan since we were following standard newly married University couple practices and our son came anyways!

So it is hard for them to see the success of their son, and then watch his crazy wife who rarely does stuff the normal way pull the kids out of school. It was one of the reasons I was trying to be careful not to "force" my husband into homeschooling.

Anyways, I am excited for my son in particular. He has never enjoyed school and I just want to awaken that confidence and joy inside him that occassionally peeks out and help him be all God would have him be.

Roberta

[momo3boys]

birdy, we do unschooling for some things, like science. and we actually have workbooks and games for the reading and math. You will be surprised how much children can learn just from being curious. My "red-neck" parents were a little aprehensive at first but now that they see the difference from last year when they were in school, they know that this is working much better.
P.S. we plan on dropping most of the structure for the summer, although I am sure that my 6yr old son, will beg me to do his math with him, his brother think that is SO wierd
_________________
Phi 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.