Homeschooling Main Page

Established On:
December 2, 1999

Last Update:
May 19, 2000

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me an E-mail!

We have been homeschooling since 1995; this is our eighth year. We started for the following reasons:

1. My daughter was reading at a third grade level in sixth grade and I didn't think she could keep up with seventh grade work even though she was in a learning "differently" program.
2. I wasn't happy with the way the school was not challenging her to do better. At the same time, they put up bureaucratic stumbling blocks to hinder her from doing her best. (See her story below).
3. She had been harassed by a boy at school in the lunch room and the school staff wasn't doing anything about it because he was careful to do it when they weren't looking.

I found out about homeschooling in July and sent in our paperwork in August. Our first year was the same as most people's first years: we were scared that what we were doing would "ruin" our child.

It is natural to be scared to death at first. Our system has encouraged parents to think that they are incapable of teaching kids and that teaching is too mysterious for anyone who doesn't have an education degree. Consequently, we question ourselves. Usual questions for beginners include: am I doing the right thing for my child? Can I do this? The answer is yes. How much work does it take? Homeschooling takes a lot of work when the children are young and less as they get older.

Should you homeschool?	Advantages of Homeschooling Methods
How to Begin	Beginning Assumption Traps, Special on High Schoolers
Resources	The Library, HS companies & catalogues, TV, Movies, Computer CDs, Field Trips, Vacations, Life
Subjects	English (My college-bound reading list)

My Daughter's Story: My daughter was tested at the end of 6th grade with a 3rd grade reading
level. At the beginning of 8th, she tested with a 9th grade reading level. What changed was that we
began homeschooling and she developed her own method of learning to read.

Part I: Getting her to enjoy reading--She was not able to read a certain book that she wanted to read during school because she read slowly and the teachers would not allow her to count a 350 page book as 2 books (the book had to be at least 150 pages). During the summer, she read it with an audiotaped version of the book (It was Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery). When the tape broke in the middle of the book, she had to finish it on her own.

Part II: Getting her to practice reading, writing, and vocbulary (keyboarding is extra)--She decided on her own that the book should be made into a movie and that she would like to do it. We researched the format for scripts at the library. She took that information and began typing the dialogue into the computer. She typed 80 single-spaced pages in one year. So she learned computer skills by using a word processing program, vocabulary by using the thesaurus to find out the meanings of words she didn't know, and spelling. Increasing her keyboarding skills was an added bonus.
Getting online also helped. For several months, she had a LARGE dictionary by her side to look up words people used that she didn't know. We found that this last put her at risk of being intercepted by people pretending to be kids. Be wary of who is communicating with your child.