Holly over at Unschool Days asked if we could describe, in ten words or less, why we homeschool. My answer: So my kids can grow from the inside out.

It’s so good, it deserves a trademark, doesn’t it?

Too bad it’s not my phrase. I plagiarized it from an acquaintance who was explaining why she enrolled her daughter in a Friends school: she wanted her daughter to grow from the inside out, and not the other way around. That’s it, isn’t it? This mother felt, as many homeschoolers and parents who chose nontraditional schools for their kids do, that conventional schools don’t allow children to grow naturally, that they spend essentially all of their energy trying to squeeze all those young, excited, unique individuals into the same small box. It’s not that the people in the schools are big, bad, kid-loathing meanies; obviously most of them love kids and love teaching. It’s that the system itself is designed for just this purpose, to turn out legions of young people who think alike, behave alike, and know the same body of information (which they often quickly forget).

Our family came to homeschooling after a few years of thinking and learning about what homeschooling really means. We ended up with a laundry list of reasons for taking the plunge, some more pressing than others. But I can honestly say that “growing from the inside out” perfectly encapsulates the entire list. Each item points back to respecting and loving our children for who they are today and for giving them the space and time to grow and develop with as little outside/institutional pressure as possible — especially while they’re still so young.

My hope is that my kids will never feel pressure to give up an interest because it’s not considered “cool” enough, that they’ll never have to spend time on meaningless assignments just to pass a class (I’m all for meaningful assignments, if there has to be an assignment at all), that they’ll never care more about a letter grade than about what they’re doing/learning and why. I want them to follow every interest to see where it leads them, regardless of what other kids their age and/or gender are doing. And I want them to be happy, content kids (and later, adults) who feel loved and respected and free to follow their hearts.

Jeez, this is getting high and mighty, isn’t it?

But it’s true. That’s really what I want for them. And it’s happening. Yesterday, The Duke (son, 8.5 years) said to me, “I really like my life. I get to do so many cool things.”

Growing from the Inside Out™. That’s why we homeschool.

Tags: homeschooling, why homeschool,

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s July, but I’m still trying to catch up with my blogging. In any case, back in April, after spending too much time at home during the winter months, I went a little field-trip crazy and signed the us up for a grand total of 12 field trips or activities — out of 20 weekdays in the month. By the end of the month, as you might imagine, I was hearing things like, “Where are we going this time?” and “Do we have to go?”

We’re going here and yes, we have to go, because I already paid for it.

Hey, I was a homeschooling rookie this past year. Now I’ve learned my lesson: take it easy on the spring activities, no matter how eager you are to get out of the house.

Luckily, Walden Pond was one of our first trips early in the month, so we had yet to succumb to field-trip malaise. The weather was mild (for April) and sunny. Our tour guide did a nice job of summarizing Henry David Thoreau’s life in his Walden Woods cabin.

Of course, you can read all about Thoreau’s two years there, sometimes in excruciating detail, in his book, Walden. One detail he left out — I know, because my 7-year-old asked the tour guide — is where he read the Sunday paper, if you catch my drift. Apparently, Thorough avoided writing about such unseemly bodily functions in Walden. But if you’re into famous-people quotes, Walden is the book in which Thoreau penned the “live the life you’ve imagined” and “march to the beat of a different drummer” lines, except that’s not exactly what he wrote in either case, but most people don’t exactly care as long as the gist is right, and it is.

I understand why Thoreau wanted to live near Walden Pond: as you can see from the photos below, 160 years later, the pond is still beautiful, even before the leaves on the trees around it are in full bloom. Unfortunately, my photos don’t show just how sparkling blue the water is. The pond was formed by receding glaciers from the last ice age, and the water is still absolutely brilliant and blue.

Makes me want to jump in, now that summer is here.

In the summer, this is where you find the swimmers.

During the two years Thoreau lived in Walden Woods,
he measured the pond’s dimensions and depth,
and amazingly,
more recent measurement with modern tools have shown
Thoreau’s to be accurate.

Tags: Henry David Thoreau,, Walden,, Walden, Pond

And who am I to argue with the eloquent, hard-working Pioneer Woman?

I think part of being a homeschooler is being somewhat of a nonconformist, somewhat of an anarchist, with a healthy amount of “freak” thrown in there somewhere, as well as an overall absence of good sense.

The rest of the post is, as usual, funny. With photos.

Check this out: a study by Vanderbilt University indirectly supports the value of homeschooling. It concludes that kids learn best when they explain what they’re learning to their mom. Previous studies (if not oodles of personal experience) have shown that people learn more when they generate explanations of what they’ve learned. The Vanderbilt study examined whether it’s important if the explanation is for oneself or for a listener, and also if the specific listener mattered.

In other words, do children learn better when they explain something to someone else?

Don’t we all?

And does it matter if that someone else is one of the most important people in a child’s life?

Shouldn’t it?

From “Learning from explaining: Does it matter if mom is listening?”
The goal of the current study was to examine whether explaining to another person improves learning and transfer. In the study, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 54) solved multiple classification problems, received accuracy feedback, and were prompted to explain the correct solutions to their moms, to explain the correct solutions to themselves, or to repeat the solutions. Generating explanations (to selves or moms) improved problem-solving accuracy at posttest, and explaining to mom led to the greatest problem-solving transfer. The study indicates that explanation prompts can facilitate transfer in children as young as 5 years and reveals that it matters if mom is listening. [emphasis mine]

Well, DUH. It always matters if mom is listening. And she usually is, as is dad. Most parents naturally help their babies and young children learn new things by talking to them (even when they’re too young to “talk back”), answering their questions (even the thousandth “why?” for the day), and listening and otherwise showing genuine interest when their kids say, “Hey, Mom, look at this!” or “Hey, Dad, guess what?” This is the natural state of early exploration and learning for all humans raised by other loving humans.

Should this relationship be any different as kids get older? Would a parent’s genuine, natural interest in what’s going on in his/her child’s mind (and life) not continue to exist and nurture the child’s learning? It seems obvious to me that if a parent doesn’t drastically change the way s/he interacts with and listens to his/her kids, the benefits of having that parent as a “listener” would never dissipate. It also seems obvious that the more time a child spends with his/her parents actually learning and talking to them, the better.

Homeschooling, then, naturally provides a superb learning environment for children.
Keep reading… »

Tags: moms help kids learn, homeschooling, listening, learning

ere’s a good article about unschooling in City on a Hill Press. In it, I found several worthwhile snippets about unschooling, but also some concise and precise explanations about problems with today’s public school model.

Take this tidbit about how schools have changed over the past 100 years or so, for example:

“Before there was all this standardized curriculum and testing — all that began in the late 19th century — there was no such thing as school failure,” Glass said. “People just went to school or they didn’t.”

Now that the curriculum has become more rigid, it has begun to create problems. Glass said, “It’s the system that produces winners, losers, those who pass, those who fail, those who count as somebody and those who count as nobody.”

So true — and definitely something that has contributed to our decision to homeschool.

However, the article also states that “Children with two working parents must attend school,” which is patently false. Many single parents homeschool while holding down a job, and many families with two working parents homeschool. Where there’s a will, there is very often a way.

Tags: unschooling, homeschooling, school failure, City on a Hill Press,

Blogger and homeschooling parent Celeste has written a terrific post, “Show Us the Body,” in which she compares demonstrating the benefits of homeschooling to providing evidence of Big Foot’s existence. She writes:

I still don’t know whether Bigfoot exists, but I do empathize with the poor believers who are struggling to produce evidence. As a homeschooling parent, I’m very familiar with the challenge of working with intangible evidence and trying to convince people that SOMETHING is happening, even though it can’t be seen or measured.

How much do my children know? How much did they learn today? How long did it take them to learn it? Are they ahead or behind? Homeschoolers are constantly being asked questions like these, and it’s really hard to give answers that will convince a skeptic.

Of course, we all know the benefits of homeschooling are real, whereas Bigfoot is just a big hoax.

We do, right?

Celeste’s post resonated with me, not so much because I need to explain homeschooling to others but because I sometimes need to remind myself of our goals. As a new homeschooler (year 1) of children who previously attended day care, preschool, and K-2, I know how hard it can be to trust that homeschooling is “working.” In previous years, I had some level of certainty that the kids would eventually learn to read, write, and do algebra. I was never big on whether they were “on track” with a particular schedule of learning because I believe that kids should move at their own pace and learn when they’re ready. But at least I knew they were being exposed to structured learning opportunities that were covering the basics.

But look who’s supposed to cover the basics now! It’s up to me and my husband to make sure our kids have the opportunity to learn what they need to learn. (Let’s ignore for the moment the huge debate about what kids “need to learn” in the first place. That’s a book-length post.) As I expected I would, I do sometimes panic: Are they learning enough? Am I doing enough and providing everything they need in order to learn? Are they still interested in what we’re doing or am I boring them to tears? Do they still love learning, as they have since they were born, or will I, like so many schools, unintentionally stifle their passion? Are they figuring out who they are and what they enjoy doing with their time?

Taking the Long View

I’m discovering that in the short term — and I consider looking back within a single year the short term — it’s almost impossible to answer those questions. While it’s vital to reflect on the short term and make adjustments to fit the kids’ needs, it’s also important for me to keep it in perspective. These are events or trends that happened during a relatively short, fixed period of time; they don’t necessarily predict future trends or events, nor do they exist in isolation. They exist in the context of everything that came before them and, eventually, everything that will come after them. And they reflect the whole child and all of what he or she was experiencing as a human being during that time, not just subject matter knowledge.
Keep reading… »

Tags: homeschooling, stock market, bigfoot, long-term investing

What do homeschoolers do when they’re not busy winning spelling and geography bees? They make things. Give homeschoolers a simple tool, and look what they choose to do with a little free time. And a lot of snow.

Because, you know, it’s important wrap up your study of the Alaskan Inuit with a hands-on project. Or something like that.

The kids did have help from Dad to finish the igloo. Well, okay, they had a lot of help from Dad, especially when it came time to put the roof on. And then that night, it warmed up and rained. And rained. And rained. And by morning, the igloo was nothing but a mushy foundation.

No worries, no tears. Around here, we enjoy the process as much as the product. Or something like that.

But then, like a phoenix from the ashes, another igloo emerged from the snow, this time in the backyard.

Hey kids, you must really love igloo building, huh? Congratulations on some fine brickwork in that there v2.0 igloo. What? You didn’t build this one. Not a single snow brick? Dad made it all by himself? It took him all afternoon?!

He must be planning to show the kids the proper use of a keystone in an arch. No, wait: he wants to show them how the laws of thermodynamics apply to life in Alaska. Yeah, that’s it. Next, when we study ancient Greece, we’re going to build our own Trojan Horse and storm our next-door neighbor’s yard.

Because we homeschoolers really like to immerse ourselves in our learning.

Or something like that.

Tags: homeschoolers, igloos