Homeschooling

On March 22 and 23 we went to the Virginia Homeschooler's Conference. I had taken my husband because I knew of no other way to get as much information into him as possible without distractions. It worked. We started with the two Friday sessions: Homeschooling 101: Homeschooling for Non-Homeschoolers and Beginning Homeschooling. Homeschooling 101 was WONDERFUL. Aside from the amazing turnout (ever seat was filled plus people were standing up along the wall and sitting on the floor) there was a lot of the stuff my husband needed to hear: numbers. Jeanne gave a ton of statistics, showed us graphs, then gave us a lot of real life examples of thinking outside of the box. My favorite was a creative way to get information into her very active boys: she stood and read while they rode their bicycles in a circle around her. Brilliant! In a world where we know our kids need way more activity than they get, I just loved this idea! Beginning Homeschool went through all the legalities of homeschooling, what the requirements are, how to show that your kids are learning throughout the year, etc. That was great timing for me, because the rest of the sessions were convincing us to homeschool so we didn't have these nagging questions of how it would be possible to get our kid out of school.

When we decided to go to this conference I had a very hard time figuring out what sessions to take. There were so many great options! I am hoping that many of the ones I missed out on will be available next year. This time we took a sessions on Waldorf Homeschooling (a type of curriculum), Beginning Homeschooling, Part 2: But What Do I Do Monday? (several other curriculum types), Eclectic Homeschooling: Combining It All and Making It Work (where you take several types of curriculum and use them all together), Homeschooling Preschool (for our son), and finally Homeschooling Questions: Asked and Answered (which I figured would be a great way to finish off the day). Each speaker not only gave us different information but they echoed a lot of the same sentiments. Some of the big things we learned:

Socialization: The dreaded "s" word which has somehow come to be every non-homeschooler's reason for NOT homeschooling. We learned that not only is there not an issue with not socializing, that many times there is an issue with *too much* socializing! Case in point: By 9am this morning, Monday, I already had 3 homeschool activities planned out of the next 5 days, and they're recurring.

If you build it, they will come: Sometimes there is an activity, or coop, or field trip that you want to go to/on but everywhere you look you can't seem to find one. Start it up yourself. It is almost guaranteed that there will be interest. Case in point: a friend of mine posted that she was hosting a playdate and she found 6 families within her *neighborhood*. Another friend started up a Lego day every month and it was so popular she had to lock down the Yahoo Group for it.

If there are tears/frustration then STOP. The beauty of homeschooling is that you aren't on a schedule to learn XXX by XXX date. If one of you is crying or yelling or otherwise frustrated then learning is not happening and you need to put it away for the day, or the week, or whatever you're comfortable with and change the subject. It is also okay to switch curriculum in the middle of the year (or multiple times during the year) to find what works for both of you. How many times have YOU been frustrated with an assignment as a kid and wish you could put it away and go back to it? I failed MISERABLY at geometry the first year I learned it, but the next year I aced it.

The only question that could not be answered for us was how to handle one particular situation: an unsupportive family member. Speakers were asked this in almost every session and they danced around the topic well. My mother-in-law is not crazy about homeschooling and she has made that known from the get-go. We had agreed at some point to share the cost of private school but that was before I was as educated about homeschool as I am now. Most of the speakers explained that, in most cases, it was a fear of the unknown that caused the family member to not support it. On our drive home to pick our kids up my husband and I were going through all kinds of scenarios to figure out what to say if they said *this* or *that*. We got there, and didn't say a peep about the conference. Neither did my in-laws. My daughter exclaimed "DID YOU LEARN HOW TO HOMESCHOOL ME?! WHAT DID YOU LEARN!?!?!?!" but thankfully that was out of earshot. ;) The next morning my mother-in-law called and spoke to my husband enough to find out if we were truly considering it. He says that she knew that there were a lot of education options and knew we wouldn't have a problem teaching her, but she was concerned about -- guess what? Socialization. He did a great job explaining to her that it's actually an issue of too much in our area. She said she needed to digest it. Whereas before I would have been so anxious about her opinion, I feel absolutely certain in our decision to homeschool. We would not have had that without this conference. I have pages and pages of notes and supplementary handouts and I have spent nearly my entire day looking at websites and curriculum and books and figuring out The Plan which is more than I could have ever done on my own.

We got great suggestions as well. One was to start a blog or use some sort of calendar or list to write down what you're doing every day or week. The idea is that by the end of the year you will forget all that you have done, unless you have saved work, and it's nice to go back and see the progress you have made together. That's what has spawned this renewed interest in my blog. I have been scouring Craigslist and Ebay for deals and so far I have found a few which I'm waiting on my husband to look through. I have joined several local homeschool groups for support.

What is our plan at this point? I really like Waldorf's approach to using arts and crafts and music. One of the speakers in the Waldorf session explained that in first grade one of the cool projects is to make your own knitting needles, then learn garter stitch to create rectangles which are then turned into animals. That blew my mind! I want to do that! Since my daughter is already an avid reader we will continue with reading whenever she wants, and she also enjoys worksheets/workbooks so I have printed out several worksheets (that were free!) to laminate and use with dry erase markers. I saw this post when it came out and I saved it, knowing it would want to use it one day, and we will be working on it this week with Spanish months/days (which we'll rotate through each day) and planning our activities. We have already put a list together of things to do. I am looking for ideas for Spanish curriculum as well as some Pagan curriculum ideas (yep, I'm one of those ;)). I want something that will really focus on the meaning of each season and the cycle of the year and very.. earthy/natural (which is why Waldorf appeals to me). We'll be doing baking probably every other day which will help reinforce the fractions she was already learning in kindergarten. We are working on our garden which will be our science element for now. She has learned about some of our former presidents with money so I will continue with that somehow, too. I have my work cut out for me!