Leaping From The Box

Finishing up with our Homeschool Mixer Questions,

13. What difficulties and challenges do you have with homeschooling?

I can think of two main challenges from our homeschooling years. The first major challenge was finding local like-minded homeschoolers. It seemed like every homeschooler that we knew within a reasonable driving distance either homeschooled for religious reasons (which we did not) and/or they followed a strict school-at-home schedule with curriculum, lesson plans, etc. Each circumstance led to uncomfortable visits, awkward conversations, and the feeling that you had to keep silent so that you didn’t offend someone or appear to be passing judgment upon how they homeschooled.
The second challenge was the learning styles in our family. I am a very visual, text-based learner. I also like to learn things for myself, do them myself. I most definitely am not an auditory learner, unless something is put to music. My children tended to be auditory, visual and hands-on. Sometimes their needs to learn things for themselves without assistance butted heads with their need to be shown how to do something, an issue I frequently have. So dealing with the issues presented with our sometimes very different learning styles and sometimes too similar learning styles was a continual challenge all through out homeschooling years. In fact, I was so aware of this issue that I wrote several articles about learning styles, which can be found on the LeapingFromTheBox.com website.

14. What makes homeschooling enjoyable?

The gift of time that it gives to the whole family – time to pursue interests, time to have a life other than school, time to give to others.

15. How do you get involved in the community?

My husband and I are not really joiners, so community involvement was not an area that we concentrated on. Sometimes I think that was a mistake, but that is just who we are, or rather, aren’t. Community involvement was in the areas of our activities; youth sports, square dancing group, martial arts lessons. When those groups held community activities, then we joined in.

16. When do you have opportunities to interact with public or privately schooled children?

Through many activities, such as sports, art lessons, interests such as astronomy and chess. We really were not isolated, contrary to what the popular societal belief is about homeschoolers.

17. Would you like more of these opportunities?

If we had lived in a less rural area, there would have been more such opportunities. But honestly, I am not sure we would have sought them out. We really had enough activities as it was, for the most part, and I don’t know what we would have gained by making a point of seeking out activities that involved public or privately schooled children.

18. How can they be created?

The marketplace, supply and demand, will eventually create them, if they are desired by homeschoolers. Already there are many more opportunities for activities in the public sector for homeschoolers than there were twelve years ago when we first began homeschooling. That is due to the increase of homeschoolers and their demand for more activities outside of the church and outside of the public school venue. I also believe as public schools go through more and more rounds of cutbacks due to the economy, that more activities will be funded by the parents in the community, hence more interaction of homeschooled and public schooled children.

19. What is your least favorite homeschool stereotype?

My least favorite is the notion that we all homeschool for religious reasons, which is a stereotype even within the homeschool community. I receive advertising packets geared towards homeschoolers that is 100% religious in its slant. I have received phone calls from political parties urging me to vote for specific politicians who expound a particular belief, assuming that because I am a homeschooler, I must be pro-life or pro-whatever.

Continuing with our Homeschool Mixer Questions,

6. What does your daily schedule look like?

Our schedules always varied, depending upon the season and the activities that the children were involved in. And honestly, it is difficult to remember exact schedules from ten or twelve years ago! Most of the time the children slept late, arising anywhere from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. (yes, I did say slept late!). A lot depended upon what activities they were scheduled to go to and when they were younger, early teens, they got up earlier than 11. But morning activities were always a challenge for us, especially if it meant getting up and eating food before driving anywhere!

Any academics that we did together were done in the afternoon. Usually we were reading aloud (me reading, children listening) from some work of literature; two or three afternoons a week I would read aloud for an hour or more. I also read aloud history. History is my love and not a subject that my children would usually read on their own (unless they found a particular time or place they were extremely interested in), so I would read whatever history book I thought they might enjoy. My children loved being read aloud to and I hated reading aloud (still do), but I spent many hours doing so, even until they were well into their teens.

7. Are your kids always polite and ready to learn?

Huh?! You’ve got to be kidding! First, with our method of homeschooling, unschooling, they learned what they were interested in, for the most part. So if they were interested, I suppose they were ready to learn. As for polite, well, mostly. I suppose some very strict families would have considered them occasionally rude or inconsiderate or likely even disrespectful, but I had different standards and so I felt they were just normal children. Well, maybe not normal, as that was always considered a bad word in our house!

8. Do the kids (or you!) get frustrated?

Of course! We all got frustrated at times. That’s just a part of living together, being a family, not really a by-product of homeschooling.

9. How has this affected your parenting?

I thought these were homeschooling questions?! I never found a magic pill to dispel frustration. It was just something we had to work through. Communication, time, patience, all factor into dealing with frustration, but I have no pat answers for this one.

10. How much free time do they have?

Most of their day was their free time, to do with as they wished, dictated by our outside activities schedule. They had chores to do, helping around the house with kitchen duties and laundry and such. And we would try to plan reading together time several days a week, along with some board game / card game playing time. But all things considered, most of their days were their time.

11. What do they do during their free time?

Learn. Live. Explore. Grow.

12. What hobbies do they have?

Hobby is an interesting word and not one I have really used since we began homeschooling / unschooling. A hobby to me is something you do to take you away from your every day world, let you forget the stress of work or life and just enjoy some small area of your life. As unschoolers, we tend to gravitate naturally to those areas that would be considered a “hobby” and consider that a part of our life. Interests my children have had that they have made a part of their life, but might be considered hobbies, are many. Some they have held on to for years, continuing to do them as adults, even working to turn them into a career option. Some they have let lie fallow while pursuing other interests. Here are just a few over the last twelve years of homeschooling:

Martial Arts (Karate, Jujitsu)
Web Design
Game Programming
Writing / Blogging / FanFic
Basketball (and Soccer and Softball)
Reading
RPG’s (Role Playing Games)
X-Box (and PlayStation and Wii)
King Arthur Lore
Celtic History / Lore / Music / Culture

Tomorrow I will finish answering the Homeschool Mixer Questions. The last questions are:

13. What difficulties and challenges do you have with homeschooling?
14. What makes homeschooling enjoyable?
15. How do you get involved in the community?
16. When do you have opportunities to interact with public or privately schooled children?
17. Would you like more of these opportunities?
18. How can they be created?
19. What is your least favorite homeschool stereotype?

Through blogging I have “met” many interesting homeschoolers from across the country and around the world. Sandra is one such blogger and her On Living By Learning blog is one of my daily reads. I love her byline, “Learn, Grow, Explore, Change the World.”

On Sandra’s June 22nd post, A Homeschool Mixer Introduction, she plays along with Alesandra’s Homeschool Blog Awards homeschool mixer, answering 19 homeschooling questions. These are questions that all homeschoolers have been asked more than once in their homeschooling journey. My children are all grown, so I will be answering these from a slightly different perspective, looking back on twelve years of homeschooling. And since my answers will likely be on the long side, I will answer a few each day until we’re done. So stay tuned, keep watch, you know the drill!

1. Why do you homeschool?

   We began homeschooling in reaction to the education being offered at our local public school. Each of our children needed to homeschool for a different reason: Kat because of the psychological stressors occurring in her fifth-grade classroom and the lowering expectations of the girls in regards to academics, David because he needed more challenge than his second-grade classroom had to offer, especially in the science area, and Charles because his kindergarten class had too much violence occurring and we were concerned that he would gain the label of ADHD when he advanced to the more demanding level of attention that his upcoming first grade level would require.

   Those were the reasons we began homeschooling. They were not the reasons we continued homeschooling after the first year. Somewhere during that first year we began to realize how much the public school had taken over our lifestyle. Homeschooling afforded us the freedom to study what we wanted, when we wanted, where we wanted, and how we wanted. We were in control of our daily schedule and that was a wonderful feeling of freedom!

2. What technique or curriculum do you use?

   The first few months we did school-at-home with an organized schedule and lesson plans. After a few months, I was experiencing serious burn-out, so we took a break over the Christmas holidays and I spent more time learning about homeschooling methods. While I was doing that, my children just kept on learning! My children were actively unschooling at the same time I was learning about unschooling. So for the last 11.5 years of our homeschooling journey, we were unschoolers. (I will always consider myself to be an unschooler, even though I am no longer legally homeschooling anyone.) We did use some curriculum, especially in the high school years, but always to meet a need or interest that one of our children had, such a college preparation or learning a language.

3. Do your kids work above or below grade level (or both!)?

   We did not worry about grade levels, so I never really kept track. In some subjects I am sure they were above, in other subjects, below. It didn’t really matter to us.

4. What is your educational level?

   I graduated from Finger Lakes Community College with an Associates of Science degree in Secretarial Science.

5. Do you feel that your education level has an effect on your teaching (both limits and abilities?)
   No, not really. There are some very intelligent people homeschooling that never had the opportunity to go beyond high school for more education. That does not mean that their education ceased at high school. And a secretarial science degree really doesn’t bring much to the table as far as homeschooling your children. I think what helps more than your level of education is a willingness to know your limits, to know where you need to seek outside assistance, such as co-ops or online classes or community college classes. The most important thing, though, is the mindset that you are never too old to learn anything. Homeschooling will be a lot easier if you believe in that and model that mindset.

Watch tomorrow for the answers to these questions:

6. What does your daily schedule look like?
7. Are your kids always polite and ready to learn?
8. Do the kids (or you!) get frustrated?
9. How has this affected your parenting?
10. How much free time do they have?
11. What do they do during their free time?
12. What hobbies do they have?