I look forward to hearing your ideas! Please do comment below!

Happy Homeschooling!

Karen

Am I qualified to homeschool my child?

Excellent question! Score a point for asking good questions.

Actually the ability to ask good questions and research the answers is vital, but we will get to that in a moment.

So, you are considering homeschooling.

Not everyone is going to be qualified. Not every child is a perfect fit either, come to that!

Answer these quick questions and discover if you are qualified to homeschool!

A. Reading

1. I never read.

2. I read regularly.

3. I even read the shampoo labels in the bathroom if there is nothing else to read!

B. Time with my child

1. I can’t wait for school to start again to have some peace.

2. My child is my BFF.

3. I enjoy spending time with my child and also with my spouse and other friends.

C. My spouse

1. hates the idea of homeschooling.

2. needs to know more about it first.

3. really believes in homeschooling and is excited to start.

D. Socialization

1. I have no friends and live under a rock.

2. I am fairly sociable and have many friends.

3. I am a social skills maven – everybody loves me, even when they disagree with me.

E. Internet

1. The internet is the source of all evil.

2. The internet is a useful tool and we have access.

3. Google is a verb in our house.

F. My education

1. My education doesn’t really matter to me. What has that got to do with it?

2. I have a 3 PhD’s in special education.

3. I love to learn! I am always learning!

G. About my child

1. My child is just like me.

2. My child has a very distinct personality and I am interested in it.

3. I know my child’s best learning style, EQ, IQ, personality type, passions, hobbies and talents!

H. People around me

1. My friends and family all despise the idea of homeschooling and plan to sabotage any attempt at it.

2. My peeps will wait and see.

3. I have a mentor who is happy to guide and support me.

I. My health

1. I am always ill, depressed or have issues with anger, alcohol and drugs.

2. I am stressed out but relatively healthy.

3. I am the picture of health and blossoming energy. Can you say “Bright eyed and bushy-tailed!”?

J. My time

1. I have three jobs just to make ends meet and I am never at home.

2. I have 24/7/365 to focus on my child.

3. I have several hours each day to devote specifically to facilitating my child’s learning.

Scoring:

10: Homeschooling is not a good fit for you at the moment. Bake some cookies for your child’s teacher right now!

20: Homeschooling is an option for you and your family. Beware of “helicopter parenting”, preconceived ideas and be sure to make space and time for yourself and your growth a priority.

30: What are you waiting for? Leap in! The water is fine!

This is a simplified, but very revealing, look at what it takes to facilitate your child’s learning. The very bottom line is : Are you passionate about homeschooling your child? If you are, all the other obstacles can be overcome or avoided.

Looking into each of the above areas more deeply will give you clues about where to focus your energy to get better results.

Your next step is finding out what it takes to make it work. I have created an action guide to take you through the steps to homeschool success. I would be happy to share the first three chapters with you for free (in the hopes that you will be fascinated and enthralled and buy the guide, of course

Click here to get your first three chapters for free!

My coach, Christianna Carter from www.simpleorganizingsolutions.com, sent me a link to a wonderful article of lessons learned from Dr Suess. (http://sourcesofinsight.com/lessons-learned-from-dr-seuss – for the original). I decided it would be fun to go through the lessons with my homeschooling perspective. So here goes:

Be a thinker of great things. Dr. Seuss teaches us, “Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!”

This is the core of my homeschooling philosophy. Think  up things. Ask questions. Research. Evaluate. Ask better questions. Think up bigger things!

The capital of Turkey and the exact way to write in the pluperfect past tense can be looked up. Nothing can replace the ability to think and question. All the data in the world stuffed into little heads will not make them into thinkers.

We as parents also get to think great things. We need to think outside of the societal assumptions around education, we get to really think about our children and we get to examine our philosophies around education and what exactly we believe success really is.

We get to think up great things to edutain and inspire ourselves and our kids. Have you ever considered doing math drills on a climbing wall? How about studying the alphabet with a camera? What ideas did the Lorax story inspire for you?

Our kids get to think great things in great depth and not just skim the ideas for an exam. They have the chance to think up great futures for themselves and make them happen. They get to explore themselves without the threat of school cliques and pressures and bullying.

Many homeschooled kids get to think without the fog of drugs they would have to have to fit into a schoolroom – now that is a great thing! They get to think without the social pressure to become sexual before they have even left their teens. We live in a sleepy little town that is one of the best places to live in Canada and yet my husband, an emergency room doctor,  sees young teens (12 and 14)  every month who are pregnant! This has to interfere with thinking of great things. (Not that thinking of pregnancy is not a great thing, but there is a proper time and a season for all things!)

It is a great luxury and priviledge to be thinking great things for yourself and for your family. The Lorax Story and all of Dr Suess’s other stories are a delightful way to seed new think-ings!

I would love to hear what new thoughts the Lorax story has put into your heads or those of your kids.

What great thinks have you “thunk” today?

In homeschooling as in the rest of the world it is far preferable to fail fast, if you are going to fail.

Try things out. Get feedback. Change and try out a new thing. This is true for homeschooling and it is also true in design.

I was so taken by the idea of Dr Suess like individuality and whimsy that the action guide: Secrets to Homeschool Success had a Suesslike cover. However the feedback I received has made me correct and continue. A new cover design has been created. This one feels more “grown up”. I would love to hear your comments on the change. I will post the old cover and the new one below so you can see both.

So – tell me what you think…..which one do you prefer? Either comment below or email me at Karen@HomeschoolingHowTo.com

So the Homeschooling How To Gem for the day  – There is no failure – only feedback!

The Lorax, The Movie is here. As a Dr Suess fan I am outraged with myself that I haven’t seen it yet!

I am planning to take the kids tomorrow and it will be a homeschooling event Ain’t shcool great!?!

I was discussing ways in which I believe Dr Suess is still teaching and reaching people all around the world and remembered hearing a CBC  interview with David Gilmour on his book The Film Club: A Memoir. He uses movies as the entire highschool curriculum for his son.

The Lorax Story – what a bonus – Dr Suess, an author whom I love, AND a movie – a medium my kids love. I rooted about on the internet and found this wonderful review of the book I mentioned above and thought I would share it. It came from: http://gaither.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/david-gilmour-on-movies-as-homeschool-curriculum/

I suspect that we education facilitators don’t take enough advantage of these wonderful opportunities that arrive in most movies. There is the discussion about morality, character traits, philosophy, story telling and when all that runs dry there is always the discussion of film techniques.

David Gilmour on Movies as Homeschool Curriculum

November 18, 2008 by Milton Gaither

This post reviews David Gilmour’s The Film Club: A Memoir(New York: Twelve, 2008).

Gilmour, a Canadian novelist, movie critic, and media odd-jobber, here offers a memoir describing the experience of allowing his deadbeat 15 year-old son to drop out of school and live at his home rent-free on condition that father and son watch three movies of father’s choosing every week together and that son promise not to use drugs.  For three years David and his son Jesse are ”the film club.”

The book is as much about the father-son relationship, booze, and sex as it is about watching movies and education.  In this review however I will focus only on the “homeschooling” element.  The “film club” David Gilmour concocts is not just a couple of guys watching random movies.  Gilmour Sr. is an incisive film critic who has made a good living for many years reviewing movies in print and on television.  He groups the movies he wants Jesse to see into several thematic units and introduces each one to Jesse with a good bit of historical, technical, and biographical detail such that after a while Jesse becomes a real film studies expert without even trying.  David’s basic pedagogical instinct is to go with the grain of his son’s interests:

What can I get him to do that won’t be a repetition of the whole school debacle?  He doesn’t read; he loathes sports.  What does he like to do?  He likes to watch movies…. What could we do with that?

Here’s one among many examples given in the book of David’s pedagogical approach, this time in preparation for a screening of Hitchock’s Notorious:

I opened things up with a brief introduction to Hitchock, Jesse as always on the left hand side of the couch, a coffee in his hand.  I said that Hitchcock was an English director, a bit of a prick with a mildly unhealthy thing for some of the blond actresses in his films. (I wanted to capture his attention.)  I went on to say that he made a half-dozen masterpieces, adding, unnecessarily, that anyone who didn’t agree with that probably didn’t love movies.  I asked him to look for a couple of things in the film.  The staircase inside the villain’s house in Rio de Janeiro.  How long was it?  How long would it take to go down it?  I didn’t tell him why.

I asked him also to listen to the graceful, sometime ssuggestive dialogue, to remember that this film was made in 1946.  I asked him to watch for a very famous camera shot that starts at the top of a ballroom and slowly descends into a group fo partygoers until it arrives, tight, on the clenched hand of Ingrid Bergman.  What is she holding? (A key to the wine cellar where the evidence of the Nazi mischief is disguised in wine bottles.)

I went on to say that a number of distinguished critics maintain that Cary Grant may well have been the best actor, ever, in films, because he could “embody good and evil simultaneously.”

“You know what ‘simultaneously’ means?” I said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

I showed him an article that Pauline Kael wrote about Grant in The New Yorker.  He may not be able to do much,” Kael wrote, “but what he can do no one else has ever done so well, and because of his civilized nonaggressiveness and his witty acceptance of his own foolishness we see ourselves idealized in him.”

Then I did what I wish all my high school teachers had done more often.  I shut up and put the movie on.

After the viewing, David asks what Jesse noticed about the staircase.  He points out to Jesse that the staircase is longer at the end of the movie when Cary Grant and Bergman are trying to flee the home, explaining that Hichcock built a second set of stairs for that final scene.  “You know why he did that?”

“Why?”

“Because that way it would take longer to get them down them.  Do you know why he wanted that?

“To make it more suspenseful?”

“Can you guess now what Hitchcock is famous for?”

“Suspense?”

I knew enough to stop right there.  I thought, You taught him something today.  Don’t kill it.  I said, “That’s all for now; school’s out.”

After three years of such lessons, Jesse, the dropout whose only ambitions in life seem to revolve around maximizing the number of cigarettes and inebriants he can ingest while getting and keeping a hot girlfriend and succeeding as a rapper, eventually comes ’round:

Then one day–it seemed to come out of the blue–Jesse said, “I want to go back to school.”  He signed up for a three-month crash course, math, science, history, all the horrors that had defeated him years before.  I didn’t think he stood a chance…. His mother, the former high school teacher from the prairies, tutored him in her house in Greektown.  It didn’t all go smoothly, especially the math.  Sometimes he rose from the kitchen table shaking with rage and frustration and stormed around the block like a madman.  But he always came back…

Jesse passed the course and was accepted into college.  David’s next unit was going to be on films with great screenplays, but “we just ran out of time.”  His son had outgrown the film club and was ready to enter the wider adult world.

Gilmour’s well-written memoir delivers many important insights about homeschooling today.  It showcases a homeschooling family that is far outside of the traditional stereotype:  a divorced father, a drop-out son, an irreligious context of profanity, alcoholism, and teen sexual license.  It offers an innovative, perhaps unparallelled curriculum, suggesting that learning can start anywhere and still end everywhere.  Its message is not intentionally political, but its depiction of Jesse’s frustration with compulsory education and his growing curiosity about the world upon escaping from the confines of school is its own sort of morality tale.  That it ends happily only enhances the message that a loving parent, even one so flawed as David Gilmour, can, by understanding a child’s interests and desires, awaken a love for learning.

Secrets of Homeschool Success!

It has arrived!!I am delighted to announce the arrival of the Action Guide. I have finally been convinced to stop perfecting it and allow people to start using it…so here goes.

You can see the whole description in a very detailed letter here: www.homschoolinghowto.com/secrets-of-homeschool-success

If you see any typos in the letter please do let me know – I rushed to put it up before I changed my mind and edited the guide another time!

Here is the table of contents -

What’s in this book for you?
Step 1…………………………………………………………..p7
What is the most important first question?
Step 2…………………………………………………………..p 11
How do I apply that to my child?
Step 3…………………………………………………………..p 22
How does my child rate?
Step 4………………………………………………………….p 25
What exactly do you mean?
Step 5………………………………………………………….p 28
Learning styles?
Step 6………………………………………………………….p 32
Connect the dots!
Step 7………………………………………………………….p 35
Communication styles?
Step 8 …………………………………………………………p 48
Loving styles?
Step 9…………………………………………………………p 54
Take a break!
Step 10……………………………………………………….p 56
What about home-school styles?
Step 11……………………………………………………….p 59
Are we getting it right?
Step 12……………………………………………………..p 63
And the big picture is….
Step 13……………………………………………………..p 65
Have faith in your child!
Step 14……………………………………………………..p 70
Your most vital resource!
It’s not over, ’till…………………………………………. p 73
I have the last word!
Suggested Resources………………………………….p 78

I had a ball writing (and editing) this action guide and I do hope that it will be very useful indeed for other parents. I prayed for such a guide when I was starting out.

Homeschooling How To Tip of the day: Get the Guide

Homeschooling How To Tip: Let your children teach each other. This is one of the very best ways to check exactly what your child understood from the original lesson. There are a number of benefits – let me count the ways

*It highlights their learning and the gaps in comprehension for them.

* It makes them feel important.

* It is an opportunity for your child to genuinely give value to the family.

* It gives them the chance to understand that other people may learn differently – can you say “teach-able moment”?

* They come up with astonishingly creative ways to teach ideas that can inspire our homeschooling styles.

*Besides, this also helps to take care of the eternal question – how do I homeschool two (or more) children of different ages?

* It is a chance for you to sit down and have some tea!

This idea applies to us Moms just as much, there is nothing like having to teach an idea to make you really look at what you do understand about it.

I have frequently said that by the end of their homeschooling experience my children will have seen at least one complete education – MINE! Then they will have the tools to get one for themselves

That is actually food for a whole other conversation, but briefly, here is the Homeschooling How To Tip – your children will pay far more attention to what you do than to what you say!

Have you noticed that? I would love to hear your stories of how your children learn from watching. Please do send them in!

Homeschooling How To is all set for exciting new things in this new year! I look forward to the adventure with you!

Images of the ideal homeschool life include smiling, happy children engrossed in an educational activity, working alongside their siblings with grace and maturity and little conflict. Fighting, after all, may be typical for their public schooled peers, but certainly not acceptable behaviour for children taught at home under the watchful eye of mom. Throw in a crackling fire and some hot chocolate, mom busy baking cookies in the kitchen and the picture is perfect-the message intact-homeschooling life is a superior.

Naturally, this is a lie, and it is best for all new homeschooling moms and dads to know the truth, it may not set you free, but it will help your sanity remain intact even it is only safety pins holding the tattered ends together. Children will spend time focused on learning and there very well may be hot chocolate involved, but the idea that they will do this without a well-placed elbow jab to their older brother or a dirty look to their sister is just wishful thinking.

Children, homeschooled or not, will argue and fight, and it is the parents responsibility to understand this fact, embrace it even. Not to lower expectations, but to strengthen their resolve to persevere through the trials all the while building up an arsenal of battle ready skills.

There Will Always Be Conflict

There are moments, magical ones, when the stars align and the planet is in perfect rotation, and the children get along. Savour these times. Watch from a distance and do not interfere. It won’t last. It cannot last. It is not in the make-up of a child to abstain from conflict.

And that is a good thing.

Children learn important things about themselves when conflict arises. Limits are tested, character is shaped and patience stretched. When a child is in school there is little room for conflict, even less for resolution. Children are expected to conform to the structures and policies around them. The same goes for home life too. Families have their own set of policies children are expected to adhere to, but there is room to experiment and room to challenge with the space and time to accept defeat.

How to Handle Sibling Rife

There are ways to keep the bickering to a minimum. When patience is stretched beyond the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, and it is time for parental refereeing, it is important to remember two things:

It is not personal
It will not last forever

Here are eleven useful tips on dealing with the situation:

*Do not pit them against each other with negative comments meant to inspire.

*Build up each of their individual strengths and make them aware of how their differences complement rather than compete.

*Forge friendships by supplying times to get along using mutual interests and hobbies-computer games, sports etc.

*Reward them together so they can share the benefits

*Respect their individual need for space and privacy.

*Ensure alone time, quiet time when they need it.

*Expect arguments and give them space to work it out before getting involved.

*Remove the source of the problem and force quiet time.

*Have clear consequences

*Encourage them to work it out on their own-let them know if a parent has to get involved they will not enjoy the results.

*Reward loyalty.

Your homeschooled children will argue. They will challenge each other, provoke each other, tease and harass. The benefits are that they will also have a higher level of patience for younger siblings, a greater repertoire of problem solving skills, an appreciation for differences, and a pure enjoyment of one another.

From [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Karen_Pasqualucci]Karen Pasqualucci and Joy Kita

Karen Pasqualucci is a passionate (and opinionated) homeschooling mom! She has been homeschooling since 2001 and shares her discoveries and thoughts at her blog: http://www.homeschoolinghowto.com where she would love to hear your questions, comments and feedback! Come on over and get the latest news on homeschooling!

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Homeschooling-How-To---11-Tips-for-Dealing-With-the-Fighting!&id=6741577] Homeschooling How To – 11 Tips for Dealing With the Fighting!

The Great ‘S’ Debate

Socialization; a word that has become dirty to many a homeschooling family, and is akin to a curse word for all its implied meaning. The use of this word causes the most experienced home educating parent to cringe, or at the very least procures a heartfelt eye roll. No matter how long one has been homeschooling it is a question that is expected and dreaded in equal measures. Dreaded by teaching parents not because of a feeling of inadequacy in their ability to answer or because of a lack of strength in their answer, but because it is so very overused and abused. The sentiments behind the question may vary in condescending tones and sincerity, but it is always asked.

There have been enough reports filled with irrefutable statistics on the academic success of homeschooling that many critics have been silenced. Of course, as with any controversial subject, the critics never remain without argument for long. The idea that homeschooled children cannot possibly be getting the required amount of socialization-as if there is an industry standard-is not a new one. It has caused many a grandparent sincere grief, and given many experts in the field (the socialization one) a new platform in which to express their concern.

So the question remains; are homeschooled children receiving enough socialization? But is it the right question? Might a better one be, “are homeschooled children receiving the right kind of socialization?” And further to that thought can we not direct the same attention to public schooled children? Are our children, homeschooled or not, receiving good socialization? There is a difference, and most homeschooled parents are keenly aware of what that difference is.

In order to answer the first question with the proper attention it deserves it would be wise to dig a little deeper into the word itself. With all the opinions on how children should be socialized, and the assumption that a classroom full of same aged peers is the correct way to do it, knowing the meaning is only prudent.

Dictionary.com supplies this definition:

Socialization: a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.

Parents work hard to ensure their children learn how to behave. While each family has their own set of values, there is a shared goal among us that our children understand how to live beyond our guidance and shelter. We want them to succeed outside of our shadow of influence.

Homeschooled children are given the time and space to develop a personal identity in a safe environment where they can explore and test who they are within their boundaries. They are able to interact with a cross section of people and begin to put into practice life-long communication skills.

Socialization is not rejected in the homeschooling family, but neither is it revered as the most important aspect to the bigger picture. There are play dates, music lessons, sports, neighbourhood children, church, and youth groups that all aid the process and extra time with parents, grandparents and siblings to refine it.

Are homeschooled children getting enough socialization? Ultimately, the question must be asked each family on an individual basis. Just as no two families are the same, there are no exact matches when it comes to homeschooling. This is the nature of schooling at home, the essence of why it works and the foundation of the complex wonders teaching your own children creates. This debate will never end. When you go against the grain of societal norms there is always increased friction. It is also how character is shaped, resolves strengthened, and courage forged.

Please send the Homeschooling How To Blog your comments, thoughts and questions!

How fast can you learn something when you are interested in it?

Quite!

In this entertaining Ted talk this marvelous man leaves computers in remote villages with no instructions on how to use them. Then he goes away for a while. When he comes back it is  to find astounding results.

Children have a natural innate passion for learning that will flourish if we give it a chance.  As parents and especially as homeschoolers, we need to trust in their instinct to learn, create an environment that will foster that and celebrate their wins! Celebration is important and FUN!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

Now that you have seen the results - what do you think of the system? Were you as delighted and amazed as I was by the childrens’ curiosity? When I watched their faces I felt like dancing! They are quite able to delve deeply into subjects that would never even make it to the public system curriculums.

The “teaching each other” is an integral part of the learning which is interesting to note. This is truly wonderful from a homeschooling perspective. Many people ask how we can teach children of such varying ages at the same time - you can have them teach each other! This will build the confidence of the teaching child and solidify its learning, it will facilitate the learning childs discoveries, build team spirit and best of all - it is not you teaching!!

This goes back to my central point about being the “Facilitator of your child’s education” - not necessarily the teacher! That is a foundational  Homeschool How To Tip.

Please do let me know what you thought of the talk. What was your AHA! moment in this talk? How did it make you feel about your homeschooling adventure? Do you have a “Homeschooling How To Question” rising from this talk? Comment below or email me at Karen@HomeschoolingHowTo.com

Once I started doing the research the answer to “Why Homeschool?” changed and blossomed until I cannot even imagine an alternative.

So let me count the ways…

1. No stuffing square pegs into round holes! We can tailor each child’s education to their unique talents and interests. We can build their strengths into mastery instead of wasting fruitless hours building their weaknesses into mediocrities.

2. No trying to play pool with a wet noodle! We can tailor the education to suit each child’s learning styles and personality so that learning is easy and inviting instead of an endless exhausting uphill battle.

3. We get to make memories together! We spend quantity and quality time together. Quality time is always a function of how much quantity of time you put into a relationship. You cannot order quality time up or schedule it into a day timer. We can go on a field trip to the ski hill any day of the week or spend an entire week studying the antics of the hummingbirds in our back yard.

4. I get to like my children! We get to influence our child’s personality and manners and character. We get to understand them better and they get to be people we want to spend time with. You will behave a lot like the people you hang around the most. Socializing with adults on a regular basis means that our children learn how to behave like them as well and we get to avoid the “Lord of the Flies” situations we see in the school system so often. Mostly, my children even like each other. Mostly, anyway

5. I am the boss! We can start the day when we wake up naturally. We can study in our pj’s. We can study in the garden or up a tree or under a table. We get to write in crayon or pen or ketchup. We get to go to the washroom without announcing it to the entire room and getting permission. We get to go on holiday when it suits us – imagine Disney with short wait lines! My kids can do co-ops anytime of the day. Did I mention the pj’s?

6. The future is coming! We get to prepare for the future that is actually coming – the digital, electronic information based age where people skills are everything. As they explore this new world I am there to facilitate their learning and support them as they ask ever better questions.

Those are my top six reasons for homeschooling. When people ask “Why homeschool?”, my answer is always one or more of these, depending on how long they are willing to listen!