The greatest thing about Boston Magazine’s cover article on homeschooling is that it says stuff we already know, but it says the stuff in a mainstream publication, about mainstream parents:
Every homeschool parent wishes for self-confidence. There is always the time when someone challenges you or your child in public: “How are you learning math?” Or there is the time your child is unhappy and you worry it’s because of your choices. And there are those times when you realize your child hasn’t learned something that you always expected they would know by now. (Confession: Just yesterday I discovered that my ten-year-old son can’t spell his last name.) Read more
Last week I published a post on LinkedIn about how people decide how many hours to work. The arc of the post will not surprise you: I worked long hours, I regretted the time I missed with my kids, I cut back on work, then I started homeschooling. It’s the story of connecting with my kids, more than anything. To me, it’s a nice story. Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
Yesterday my son came into the house, crying. He had been swinging from the tree fort when he fell on his arm. I didn’t think it was broken since he could move his arm. I have had many kids with broken body parts, and he didn’t fit the bill: no swelling, no bruising, no disfigurement. Read more
This is a picture of my son on his first day of school after we moved to the farm. I like looking at old pictures of the boys because I have the feeling I had at the time of the picture. And the feeling I have is sort of a breathlessness. Which is what I felt after I worked so hard to get him to school, with what he needs for school, at the right time for school, and then he is gone…
I look at this picture and I can’t believe that I didn’t start homeschooling sooner. I missed so much time with him. One of the reasons I write this blog is because I can’t make up for the time I missed, sending my kids away every day. But I can help another family avoid doing the same thing that I did.
And you guys do that with me. Thank you.
I have linked to a million articles about why rich kids grow up to be rich and poor kids grow up to be poor. If you want a nice summary of that data, check out this article in the Atlantic. The big takeaway is that the reason rich kids grow up to be rich is that they don’t have debt. Read more
I was going to write about the book Yo Miz! by Elizabeth Rose. I was going to tell you that it looks good to me. A substitute teacher taught in 25 schools in one year and then wrote about how messed up schools are.
She has good bullets in her promotional material.
We all believe in freedom. That’s why we take our kids out of school. We take them out because we want the freedom to raise our kids the way we think is best.
Many of us also want our kids to have freedom to learn in a self-directed way. After all, the data is nearly universal that self-directed learning is the most effective way to educate kids. But of course that’s only feasible in a home environment, so the data never drives a discussion in a world that insists on sending kids to school. Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
When my mother had me, she became the first generation in our family to stop passing abuse on to her kid. And I am the second generation that’s stopped, and by the time my kids have kids, the effects of abuse will not exist. Read more
Personality type is an important part of homeschooling because personality type provides guideposts to how your child learns and how he or she finds fulfillment.
Microsoft just bought Minecraft and made it an educational site. It’s education for a lot of reasons, but the core reasons Minecraft is educational is because kids are able to learn in exactly the particular way they are interested. It’s a near-perfect opportunity for self-directed learning. Read more