Watching Them Grow

I meant to get this posted last night, but life got in the way!

Profiling Home Educators Monday, March 31

Describe yourself, your family or one of your children. What is it like to be home educated in your family? What is “normal” for you?

I think I’d like to tell you today about my oldest daughter. She began public school as a model student, generally at the head of her class and very well loved by her teachers. We had always encouraged her to be polite, to express herself, to use her creative energies. She was also very affectionate in comparison with her peers, and spontaneous.

By the end of four years in public school she was struggling in math. In language arts she was backsliding. She was learning nothing from her French lessons, and dreaded the thought of having to speak French to someone in the street. Probably worst of all was that although she loved literature and enjoyed reading books, she still hadn’t really progressed beyond the stage of reading picture books at the end of third grade.

After almost a year of homeschooling she’s learned history & geography that mean something to her. She connects the events of the past with her ancestors and she’s learning about places they lived, places nearby, finding her own place in the world. She reads all the time, 400-page novels as well as the occasional Robert Munsch offering. Her spelling has improved some; she’s even participated in the CanWest Spelling Bee.

We don’t so much sit down and “do” school. We’ve taught our girls that they are always learning. So yes, we do sit at the table to do math or penmanship. But we also learn when we’re cleaning the house or doing the groceries or playing in the park. This week she’s beginning an online course that will teach her to use Paint Shop Pro. In the process she’ll also learn a little bit about making a web page. She’s also doing some of her language studies using an interactive course online. We’ve asked her to work on French, but she’s decided she wants to do Spanish, Japanese and Chinese as well. I was a little concerned that she was taking on too much, but last week at the grocery store she asked to use the bathroom in French. She was very proud of herself too!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks! Would you like to read about other homeschooling families? Visit Principled Discovery – and feel free to share your experiences too!