Your kids and high school - pls share experiences

Have you contacted any of your local homeschooling groups? Groups around here fill in with many activities that you think hsers would "miss." There are theater groups, soccer groups, art classes, skating classes, musical groups, chess clubs, robotics clubs, proms etc. etc. In addition to the homeschooling community, there are many activities in the general community.

I'm not sure I understand this part of your concern:

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If subject is indeed important, why wouldn't an individual study it? Why would you need a school to do this?

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Again, you could look to local homeschooling groups for social activities. Hsed kids also make friends just through whatever activities they're involved in, or through their jobs, volunteer activities, the neighborhood, etc. My kids haven't been looked at as odd--they DO hear a lot of "You're sooooo lucky." though.

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Homeschooling is a legal option in every state, although the requirements differ from state to state. Indicating, "I was homeschooled" might be enough for some purposes. Depending on your state's regulations, a hsed teen might have a diploma from their homeschool, or might take a GED, or have some other option. Many times though, a diploma is not necessary. Colleges often have alternative application processes such as essays, portfolios, interviews, etc. for homeschoolers.

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It's not "fabricating," it's taking what the student has done and wording it in a way that's understandable to an admissions officer. A schooled student might have studied American history in a classroom from September to December and earned ____ credits. That's a simple, straightforward way of reporting. A homeschooled student might have studied history through visits to various museums, or through an internship at a historical society or by interviewing people who have lived through a particular time period or through reading on his own. There are a number of books out which help hsers to record and organize what they've done into something that fits into what a college would expect.

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I've known a couple of kids who decided to go to high school after being homeschooled. They had no trouble fitting right in. We're planning on hsing all the way through, but it's entirely up to my kids.

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This comes up a lot on this board, and it's always parents of little ones who ask this question. I've found it really becomes a non-issue as they get older--they are more independent, they're involved in activities, they visit friends' houses...being "homeschooled" doesn't necessarily mean they're home much.

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There is a small group here. I don't know how many extracurricular activities they have.

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Every person has preferences for certain subjects. If I had been able to pick and choose my own subjects in high school, I wouldn't have bothered with any of the history or literature classes. Geometry wasn't particularly fun either. Yet these are things that colleges expect you to learn. If homeschooling is child-led, there are bound to be subjects that he/she would quickly lose interest in. What then?

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Heh. Okay, so it applies more when they're little than when they're in high school. But that's several more years of being with your children all the time and toting them everywhere you go. One of the reasons I'm interested in HS is because I don't want to be separated from my kids for 6+ hours a day. But a couple of hours would be a nice break.

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Some homeschooling is child-led. Not everyone does it that way. There are some people who follow a curriculum at home, some people unschool and there are many other variations that are homeschooling.

But, using history as an example, even kids who don't set out to specifically study history, still learn history. It's everywhere and unavoidable. History is in music, dance, movies, sports, cooking, fashion,etc.etc. So, even if someone doesn't take a history course, they still learn history through the pursuit of other interestes.

Of course, history comes up in daily life too, as we read the newspaper or have a conversation about current events and questions arise about why things are the way they are in the world.

Or maybe the person truely has no interest whatsoever in, say, algebra. But they may choose to study it because they really want to get into a particular college and that college requires algebra.

A theory behind unschooling is the trust that people will learn what they need to learn. Not all homeschoolers belive this though, and some do sit down with a regular course of study to match the school's, or as college prep. There are all different ways to do it, depending on your goals and beliefs.

I think school ruins a lot of subjects for people by making the subjects dry and not relating them to the student's life. I've known people who have hated history all through school, then later, on their own found they loved historical fiction, history museums, historical reenactments, etc. etc. Turns out, they didn't hate history, they just hated the way it was presented.

[/QUOTE]But that's several more years of being with your children all the time and toting them everywhere you go. One of the reasons I'm interested in HS is because I don't want to be separated from my kids for 6+ hours a day. But a couple of hours would be a nice break. [/QUOTE]

How do you get a break now? Does your dp ever take your dc so you can have some free time? Does your dc ever go to visit relatives for a few hours or to visit friends? Can you get a "mother's helper" for a bit? My kids were joining activities long before "high school" age, as well as staying home alone before then. Even if they are with you all day, once they're old enough not to need constant supervision, you'll find time to pursue your own interests.

Lately whenever I write a lot I seem to annoy people so please, if anything I wrote rubs you the wrong way, call me on it and I'll try and explain ok? I just like to type and maybe I type too much sometimes But being annoying is not my intention. Maybe it's just my personality :

Joan, you should have a website or something

I'll ditto what Joan said about the kids being little. My daughter is 7 and my son is 3 and life is a LOT easier than when she was 3 and he was a newborn (or when she was little - she was NOT an easy baby/toddler). They play together a lot and they both happily run to Grandma's without me (I mean, the kids wouldn't even say goodbye if I didn't say it first, ) Unfortunately, the younger they are the more you need a break and the harder it is to get one (especially if you believe in nursing on demand, have a child who doesn't want to leave mom and you don't believe in forcing it, etc.). IME the older they get the easier it is to get that break but the less you need it,

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Depends on your area. I'm in the same state as Joan and all this (and more) is available to homeschoolers *if they want it*. That's important to note. When I was in school (regular old public school) I didn't do many extracurricular activities. I can probably count on one hand the ones I did in 12 years of public education, and I didn't stick with any of them for long. Dh, on the other hand, was into tons of stuff. So whether your child does things like this largely depends on his/her personality.

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Unschooler here. If a subject is truely not important to one of my kids then it won't get learned. If my child doesn't learn something and then needs it for a college exam then they can do what school kids have a long tradition of doing - cram the knowledge into their brains, dump it out on the test and promptly forget it And again, not everyone goes to college. I do hope my kids do and often talk it up, but there are plenty of traditionally schooled kids who don't go (like my dh, my sister, my mom, lots of kids from my graduating class, etc). No matter how they are schooled it's not a definite and it's not like going to public High School will guarantee anything.

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Being one of the unpopular, geeky, dorky, nerdy kids in High School (but under the radar enough that I didn't get beat up or overly picked on) I don't pay any attention to social standing I have to admit so far almost all of my dd's friends are other homeschoolers, but that is because that is who we hang out with. I do want her to feel normal and I think that would be hard if every kid she knew was in school except her, so I made an effort early on to get to know other homeschoolers. Now, at 7, she has FAR more friends than I had at her age (at her age I was being picked on and teased on a fairly regular basis).

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There's a lot of different ways people handle this. Different colleges have different requirements as Joan said so some may just require exams, SAT scores, essays, stuff like that (if I'm remembering correctly, when I applied to college I had to write an essay, take the SATs and do some entrance exams too). Or there's the GED, or there's taking a class here or there at community college and building up a transcript, or there are charter schools out there that you can earn homeschool diplomas from, etc.