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Homeschooling for free?
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Question:
If anyone knows of a school online or correspondence courses that are free,
please write. There is very little money, and our town does not really have
anything for this! We do have a high school online here, but my daughter is too
young for that.
Answer:
- I'd search google. I don't remember the site, or even what I was
searching for (though I suspect it had something to do with phonetics or
helping dyslexic children very early) and I came upon a free site with
downloadable lessons. I think I've seen more than one. If I can find
them, so can you.
- Do you have a library? Check there for other homeschoolers. Otherwise, if
homeschooling simply means correspondence courses to you, I urge you to
consider sending your child to the nearest public school.
- That is the old home school stigma. Newer homeschooling is more along the
lines of a parent owned private school...
- I'm a strong supporter of homeschooling and I know that socialization
and independent thought aren't really issues, not the way the other
posters wants them to be. It should also be noted that religion is
no longer the #1 motivator among homeschooling families. Things
have changed a lot.
And yes, homeschooling CAN be better. Homeschooling SHOULD be
better all things considered.
But not all homeschooling is better - and nothing in the original
poster's post gave me much confidence about the situation there.
Of course, I'm being judgemental via a website without all the facts.
If the local school is worse than a series of correspondence courses,
then perhaps the correspondence courses are the way to go.
- The last couple of parents who have discussed how they were "homeschooling"
their kids with me have described something that was not all that different
than a smaller version of regular old school.
I'm starting to realize that in some cases "homeschool" is just a small,
private, unregulated school.
- In many cases that's exactly what it is. I've seen a lot of drill and
practice (in and of itself not a bad thing) and a lot of worksheets
and canned curricula. Some people are happy with that and that's
okay by me because I believe parents should be allowed to make
these decisions. Tho when I homeschooled, I did it precisly to
get away from that kind of instructional method....
- To each their own, but I don't see the point of homeschooling when a "canned
curriculum" is being used. Many families homeschool through the school
district here (which is one of three options) and that means the district
decides what textbooks are to be used, and all the rules involved make it
almost pointless to homeschool.
I agree though, parents should be allowed to make that decision.
- One point of homeschooling, even with a canned curriculum, is that the child
can move along at his/her own pace. Also, according to my first cousin who
homeschooled 3 children, you avoid a lot of time-wasting stuff that goes on
in a regular school. (I'm not going to say public school - the kind of
thing she was talking about surely happens in private schools too.) If you think
about the amount of "overhead" time a teacher has to spend with 20-25
children, it's not hard to see that you can get through a day's work a heck of a lot
quicker with just a handful of children. Plus, the logistics of doing
supplementary activities are so much easier. A canned curriculum shouldn't, for
example, rule out pertinent field trips. But it's a heck of a lot easier to load your
own two kids in the car and go to the science museum than to arrange to take 20 kids.
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