[indeospero]

Hi there homeschooling/unschooling mamas,

I'd like to introduce myself and to ask a few questions.

I am the mother of a newly-minted two-year-old, and thinking more and more seriously about homeschooling and how it might work for our family. The concept is not new to me at all -- my best friend growing up was from a homeschooling family (went to Harvard, now at Berkeley for math PhD!), and I was constantly campaigning with me parents to be allowed to leave school (no dice -- I think they were too frightened by the "radical"-ness of it). During college and ever since, I have been working with homeschoolers, tutoring privately and organizing classes in various subjects (Latin, Euclidean geometry, algebra, German, etc.). It's been a wonderful source of supplemental income and a great way to learn about homeschooling.

My DH (a huge John Holt / Grace Llewelyn fan) and I have always known that we would consider homeschool for our children. (We are also interested in Montessori classrooms.) Now that my dd is 2, I am beginning to think more seriously about this (some of her friends will go to full-day "preschool" 5 days a week in the fall! yikes! not for us!).

I suppose my main question at this point is, how might homeschooling look for our family over the next few years (the "preschool"-kindergarten years)? I realize there are many possible answers, and I'd love to hear a sampling!

What resources would be the most helpful to us now? Books, articles? Theory, philosophy, approaches, options? I'd really like to learn about the range of possibilities.

I find myself worrying about whether I am a good fit as a homeschooling parent. I am well aware that not all homeschooling parents actively "teach" their kiddos, and I do think that we would lean towards a more US approach in our family. Nonetheless, the most inspiring HS families I have known have been led by the sort of parents who have an intuition about how to create a "teaching moment" -- taking advantage of everyday occurrences (a pair of birds in the garden, for example, as a mini observation project, or an art project, or a music project) to show their children how to pay attention and interact more richly with the world. In the face of this, I have to admit I feel inadequate. I am very well-educated and well-read, but I am also distracted a lot of the time, lost in my own thoughts... let's just say it would take a major metamorphosis for me to become this sort of parent!

Well, I've gone on and on. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these issues. I'll be hanging out here int he HS forum, listening in, learning from all of you. Thanks in advance!

 

[melissel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by indeospero Nonetheless, the most inspiring HS families I have known have been led by the sort of parents who have an intuition about how to create a "teaching moment" -- taking advantage of everyday occurrences (a pair of birds in the garden, for example, as a mini observation project, or an art project, or a music project) to show their children how to pay attention and interact more richly with the world. In the face of this, I have to admit I feel inadequate. I am very well-educated and well-read, but I am also distracted a lot of the time, lost in my own thoughts... let's just say it would take a major metamorphosis for me to become this sort of parent!

:

Just wanted to say I'm right there with you on feeling this way. I read some of the things other HSers are doing and I feel very inadequate and uncreative. I'll definitely be checking back to see what kind of support you get.

 

[ColwynsMommy]

My plans for the next few years (my kiddos are 3.5 and nearly 2) include lots of playing, field trips, gardening, and reading stories. Anything more will only be if my kids want it. Sure, I'd love to have a 4 year old who knows how to read, but it's not necessary at all.

Our days are more or less the same as they have been since the kids were babies. We read stories and go out to parks, museums, and playdates. We play with toys and they help me with chores. We get new books from the library every other week. We work in the garden and play with the sand/water table. We do lots of drawing and art projects.

We happened to find some tadpoles in a pond at our local park, so we're raising those. Then Colwyn found a caterpillar outside and we're raising that as well. I knew those were things that I wanted to do, but I didn't really actively search them out.

I've bought some Montessori materials and we pull them out once in a while. A lot of our play can be counted as lessons.. like when we sort toy dinosaurs by height or by species or by what they eat.

Your description of yourself sounds very much like me. My kids are learning loads and I don't do a whole lot of "structured" stuff with them, we just live our lives.

As your child gets older, it'll be easier to do projects and create teachable moments. A two year old is still very young.

 

[curly_mommy]

Hi mama, I'm in your same boat, age-wise! My little one will be two next week, and dh and I are fully intending to homeschool her (and her soon-to-arrive little brother, when the time comes). Right now, because she is so young, I'm basically following her lead, while still introducing new things. We sing a lot (the ABC song is one of her favorites), read a lot, go to the library, do really simple art projects (coloring, painting, clay), and basically just explore a lot through trips to the park, museum, and zoo. For her, even a trip to the grocery store is exciting right now. Of course, the majority of the time she's doing very unstructured play, which is fine with me. From talking to other homeschooling mamas, I've decided that she's still a little young for anything too structured, but I am looking into getting some preschool curriculum (possibly Waldorf or Montessori) for next spring or summer.

 

[mags]

I have two boys, an almost 2 yr old and an almost 3.5 yr old. We are going to homeschool. I got the oak meadow K for my preschooler (he already knows his alphabet, so that is why we went with the K program), and we will probably start that in the autumn. Otherwise, we are very laid back. The kids have lots of free play time, we try to do nature walks, they play outdoors quite often (except for today it's 97 degrees out and *I* do not want to go out!), we take them to playdates, the zoo, science center, museums, etc.. Learning opportunities arise in everyday life. We read a lot together, and my kids, esp my oldest one loves nature documentaries, like "the blue planet, "planet earth" any type of nature/animal documentary, he loves and he soaks up the information and we talk about it and he includes it in his pretend play.

For the preschool and early elementary age, we are going to be pretty laid back. I would like to have a curriculum to loosely follow, but I'm not going to force them to complete it by the book if it doesn't seem to be something they will get much out of. I don't thing we'll be relaxed enough to be considered unschoolers, but I think we'll be eclectic relaxed homeschoolers.

 

[2 in August]

I think you all are off to a great start! My dd is almost 6yo (yikes! lol). We started just the same as you all. No curriculum, just going places doing things, playing, reading, learning. She learned her letters, numbers and colors when she was two because we played with her abc and 123 puzzles. By the time she was 3 she knew words that started with each letter. I didn't really mean to teach her any of that. But I'd just say "Where is mommy's letter?" and she'd find the M. We did daddy and Alison. Then she started asking for words for the other letters. Pretty soon she knew words for every letter. When she got to be 4yo we did simple unit studies that I pulled together from stuff on the web. We did seeds/plants, animals (zoo, farm, pets, ocean), any holiday that came our way (she loves parties, lol). We get tons of library books (we usually have 20 or 30 out at a time). Sometimes they are random ones that look interesting while we are browsing, most of them I order to go with whatever she wants to learn more about. Just keep it simple, have fun and things will come up for you to do. (I also check the newspaper for free activities and we go to lots of those.)

 

[zeldamomma]

You sound a lot like me. I am NOT a natural born teacher. But my kids really do lead the way, and as they get older we have more common interests, if that makes sense with a 5 and 6 year old,

, so I'm not as lost in my own little world as I was when they were smaller.

I'm not actually a huge proponent of the "teachable moment" for my kids. When I start trying to make a random event into an excuse for a lesson, they resist in a variety of ways. I have very self-determined children. When they are interested in something they do take off with it, and they generally will appreciate suggestions for fun activities, but we don't do big projects now. I suspect we'll grow into them over time.

What I did during my kids' preschool years that helped my confidence immensely is exactly what you have planned-- "eavesdropping" on homeschool lists to find out how kids begin reading, what are fun projects, or good books, and just generally to get a better idea of what homeschooled parents do.

You have lots of time! Enjoy your kids.

ZM