Seriously considering home school - Page 2

[dannic]

My kids are 7, 5, and 3 and one on the way...our days work like this:
We get up, eat breakfast, get dressed and do chores (no set time, really). After that, we spend about an hour doing whtever I've planned: nature walks, games, reading, devotional, Explode the Code, whatever, then it's lunchtime. After lunch, the kids are free to explore whatever they want and it's my time to finish what I need to do, research, work on my projects, education ect. We're pretty relaxed, child-led learners and we love it!

We knew we were HSing from the start (I was HSed), but DS is much like yours: bright and very active! I am sure they would have been pressuring us for adhd stuff as well.

We spend 100-200 yearly for both kids. Ideally, I'd like 500, lol! We spend most of ours on books and games. And toys.

[linclane]

We're having ds1 finish out this school year. He's doing well in his class though, and we are happy with his teacher - sounds like you are not.

We plan to spend the Summer just following his interests, and lots of trips to the zoo and science center and museum. Very light curriculum to get us started. I don't want to skip the Summer because I want to spend those months figuring out how we'll work together when we dig in deeper in the Fall.

I got a couple books from the library on homeschooling, and started asking around, and getting advice. I loved that I knew 3 homeschooling families and they all have completely different styles - ranging from unschooling to full structured curriculum. I've gotten good advice from each of them, and done my own research and feel like it's the best choice for us.

For us, having a Montessori vibe will be important - and sticking to a daily routine will be important. That's just ds1 - he needs that. And we're going to try Singapore Math and All About Spelling to supplement the Montessori work.

Good luck!!

[phathui5]

Do you take weekends off like a "normal" school would?

We never take time off from learning. Yesterday, dh and I took the kids to the park and rented a 5-seater bike (surrey) and pedaled it around. Today dh and ds#1 played Monsterpocolypse and watched "Dirty Jobs." While we don't do bookwork on the weekends (and I do assign bookwork on weekdays), I still think of weekends as learning time.

[kittie313]

OK I'll go out on a limb. I waited until the end of last school year to pull my oldest out of school, and I'm really happy that I did that. It gave us the time to prepare mentally for this and do some research to figure out our best option for homeschooling this school year. If you knew me personally, you'd know exactly what I mean by that too. I have a hard time with not having enough time to prepare mentally for things, if I don't prepare enough mentally then I am set up for one heck of a disaster. I LOVE hsing now that we are wrapping up our school year here next month, and I don't regret waiting to pull her one bit. It was the best decision for our family, especially since we wanted to see what the K year-end test she took would show us as far as her weak areas (we weren't surprised one bit by the reading problems that it showed, and she's now catching up nicely) We wanted to have some kind of idea where we were goign to have to start in every subject, and have a general idea of what was and wasn't working with teaching her (we were in VERY close contact with her teacher the whole school year). Most parents wouldn't say they are happy they waited to pull their child, but for us it felt more natural to wait til the year ended before pulling her. Especially since they closed our elementary school and she was moved to a different one so it would have been an upheaving of her "normal" routines anyway.

I just wanted to speak up with a different opinion on the pull now vs. wait thing. I wanted so badly to pull her as soon as we had decided for sure that she would be hs'ed, and I couldn't stop thinking about it and talking about it. But at the same time, I would have probably regretted pulling her right then instead of waiting because I wouldn't have had the time that I personally need to prepare mentally for big events like that (really makes me glad that pregnancies are 9 months long, gives me enough time to get ready for sleepless nights and all that one more time lol). Pulling her right then would have been a disaster, and she would have ended up back in ps, along with her K sister, by Christmas break.