I have always been against homeschooling. Now I find myself in the position of being one. Life is surprising like that. My son has had some severe issues in our school district, despite having a 504 plan in place and we found ourselves home-schoolers earlier this week.
I'm having moderate difficulty finding curriculum that isn't god-based and severe difficulty finding any kind of network for socialization for kids that isn't god-based. If anyone has experience in this, I'd very much appreciate it on my son's behalf. Thank you.
?2008-09-12T21:07:06Z
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Laptop, when my oldest was a junior he became rebellious and wanted to quit school. It was a little worse than that, but to make a long story short, I homeschooled him so that he would finish his education.
We did this for 2 years, and were so successful that we continued on with my two youngest until they reached the 4th and 6th grades.
It didn't seem to harm the kids at all. My oldest is an EMT (who delivered his first baby 6 days ago!) and is studying for his Medic. My youngest 2 are always on either the principal's list or honor roll, and my middle one was offered a chance to study in Italy (he turned it down, to my dismay). My youngest is striving to attend an Ivy-League university.
The only real difficulties we had were with socialization, but we just went out and found friends in town. Kids are usually pretty cool with meeting new people if we don't show our concerns or make it an issue.
As for curriculum, what's wrong with asking the school to supply you with copies of their workbooks and texts? That's what we did, and when the kids returned to the classroom they went in with the same knowledge their classmates had. It kept things on an even keel.
There are homeschooling websites out there, but I'm sure you already knew that. Really, just speak with the superintendent of your school, and he'll probably cooperate with you freely. I'm sure there were words between the two of you, but in an instance such as this he'll probably be willing to talk. It's worth a shot (and this would save you a lot of expense).
I know there is a huge homeschool podcasting network. You could get onto this from I-tunes (which is free). I'm sure that not all of them are fundies. There's also a movement called un-schooling. Frankly, I don't think unschooling is great, but there must be someone who it works well for. This might be a starting place anyway.
Could I also suggest trying a different school or district? Some schools do not do well with students with special needs or behavioral issues. Finding a school with appropriately trained administrators is just as important as appropriately trained teachers, in my opinion. If the public school is not working, you could try looking for specific charter schools. That seems to be popular in my community.
There is also a series of books out at Barnes and Noble that provide the full curriculum for which ever grade you pick. They're expensive, but they look very convenient to me.
I have home schooled all 3 of my kids at various times. My son should have started JK this year but as he has Aspergers we are keeping him home because socially he would be behind and doesn't really like strange kids, definitely not 25 at a time. On the other hand when they try to teach him his ABC's or counting to ten he will be so far ahead he will be bored out of his head.
My oldest daughter was not getting the extra help she needed and we pulled her for about 18 months until she started high school.
We debated pulling my youngest daughter as she is too easily influenced by her peers. I know all teens are but she becomes a different person and not for the better. Her grades as she has become more involved have plummeted from A''s and B's to C's with the odd B, she is way too smart for that.
Here in Ontario there is endless curriculum put out and there is not a single mention of god anywhere unless you are teaching a catholic curriculum but I think god in general just plays a smaller part in our country. I can go to and decent book store and find almost every book I need to do JK to grade 12.
It can be a lot of work but in the end given time and the choice I would home school all of them. I think we can do a better job than most overburdened and often uninterested teachers.
Yes, we homeschool and do not consider ourselves to be Christian.(our beliefs lie a lot closer to Judaism) This has caused a problem finding material because much of what is marketed to homeschoolers has an extreme Christian bias. Probably your best bet will be to look for used school books that weren't intended for homeschoolers to begin with. We have found a lot of books on ebay. You can also try yard sales, flea markets, and places like Goodwill.
The "network for socialization" will probably be more difficult. I'm not sure where you are or what the homescool situation is there but here almost all homeschoolers must operate under a "cover school" and these tend to be Christian organizations. I am aware of one pagan "cover school" in our state so look around and you might find something that suits you. For us there is another family that we are friends with that have similar beliefs and also homeschool. Our kids are able to get together with theirs once a month or so for a field trip or just for a visit.
My family is Pagan, we ran into some of the same issues, What you might try is looking for newer used textbooks for sale on-line. When my son was in the third and fourth grade, we found a book called what every fourth grader should know. And I'm telling you, they never taught me any of the things in this book in the fourth grade. You can get better than the "curriculum" provided, and as long as the child can pass the tests, you're fine. If you wanted to, and you got software versions, you can create your own curriculum based on the other ones that does not have to be religiously slanted. If you live in a state where the curriculum has to be approved, write your state department of education and ask them about it. They may have some very valuable information.