The choice to home school is SO important. It is a personal choice.
If you are a parent, you know that no two kids are alike. Therefore, do not think that every child you have has to be home schooled. Some would do better in public school. Some need to have other children around them to help foster their growth- other kids to compete with. An outside influence to foster what you want them to do at home. Some kids will thrive sitting by themselves and doing the work themselves given the environment. Some kids need help but want to be home schooled.
You may want to home school for MANY reasons. I know I have many reasons. The reasons for me stem from everything to having a sub par education system as it is right now, having experiences with my children in preschool, lack of basic skills for real life being taught, personal growth within my children and personal experiences.
For example- one experience with a preschool is such: My son was able to read by 4 and 1/2 to 5 years at a 1-2 grade level. He was always used in preschool to help the other kids instead of being able to grow at his own level. So when kids needed help to read their name and then could not help that particular child at the moment they had my son help them. So he was more helping the teachers than learning. I support helping him lead a classroom along side learning himself. But just being a helpful body did not bode well with me. He had a teacher that was originally from China and I loved that he had that diversity in his teachers. I was glad and asked if she could teach him a few words or give me a work sheet so I can practice with him and he can show his Mandarin off and get help with the proper pronunciation. She was happy to do that and got caught and was told that she had to teach every child, from the smartest to the most challenged the same. Somehow this really got to me. What happened to the days that they could challenge the smart students on the side?
For the lack of basic skills taught- some schools do not just take out dance or sports. They take out teaching children about money, or how to cook. The class was called family and consumer education. It was and is important. When I was in high school it was an elective and not required. It should be required. Why? Because a lot of things today that we learn are from childhood. Learning to balance a check book, how to cook a meal, how to take care of your own health, when to really go to a doctor, what happens when someone makes a family, the whole nine yards. Those are invaluable! We can say, yes, parents should play a huge role in teaching these things, but when it has been taken out of the school for so long and they were not taught it, there is only reasonable thought to have some taught in school. With homeschooling, you can teach math and cooking at the same time. Or money and the same time. Or the value of a dollar and history at the same time.
These are two examples of why I have chosen to home school or do charter school online.
What reason have you chosen to home school? What do you want to learn more about?
