I thought it was funny anyway.
Top Ten Reasons Why Public School Is Better Than Homeschooling
Hope you enjoy…it brought back memories of going to public school! I wish homeschooling was prevalent back when I was a youngster. All these homeschooled kids of today, are getting a break from the unnecessary pains of public education.
I love having homeschool discussions with people who think like I do. I agree that something better must be done with our children. We need to rethink the school system to benefit all children. We have so much information and we are trying to cram it down our children’s throats. It is too much. Whatever happened to childhood imagination and playing? We are pushing our children to learn the old fashioned way, but we have a new agenda. We want our children to be able to cope in a whole new world, a different environment than we grew up in. We seriously need some great minds to come up with a better solution.
I think Friday’s should be special. Whether you are at work, school or a homemaker at home Friday is a happy day. I love taking it easy on Friday. Pizza for dinner and maybe watching a movie. I always let my kids stay up late on Friday night as a special treat. I urge them to get ahead during the week so that Friday’s can be spent on some fun things. I love Friday. When I was a kid it was my favorite day of the week!
Even though I stayed up late on Friday, I still would wake up early to watch cartoons on TV. We always had to go to bed early Saturday night though so we could get up early on Sunday to go to church. My mother was a beautician, so Sunday morning ritual was to take showers and get our hair curled, so that we looked nice at church.
If you are homeschooling your children, you should make it fun. This is an opportunity to do the things your family enjoys. You can turn any hobby into curriculum. If your child likes to draw or paint, then go to an art museum. Go to an art studio and look at paintings and watch the artists paint. Let your child watch the public television shows on painting and drawing. Get the whole family into it. We decided to paint some flowers in a vase on a table. All of our paintings turned out unique even though the colors we used are the same, and they are all paintings of a black vase with flowers. We each signed the pictures and I have them hanging on my wall. I love them. It shows how we can all see things differently, yet the same.
Try something new with your children. Get your children excited about learning. You don’t have to have a lot of money. Just be creative. My daughter loves flowers. We love to know the names of flowers. If we see a new one, we take a picture, go online and we find out the name of it. We do this all the time with anything we don’t know. Have your child keep a log of questions that you can look up later online. Always bring your camera with you when you go outside, even if you are just going to the grocery store.
Being ready to defend your right to home school is important. I have had many people treat me with disrespect because they don’t believe in homeschooling. I tend to be a very nice person and believe that we can agree to disagree, which I normally do. Don’t be afraid to tell people your beliefs, they certainly tell you yours. Research the statistics on children who are home schooled so you can stand your ground. Hopefully it will be a one-on-one encounter, for you, and not a group “discussion” on why my children shouldn’t be homeschooled by well meaning family (as if it were any of their business). Either way, have your “speech” ready because you will encounter the, “Oh is school out today?”from the lady behind the counter at the bank or the grocery store. I suppose everyone thinks that home schooled children should sit inside their home and not be seen until all the other children are out of school.
To help prepare you for your defense I have found some great blogs defending home schooling:
Being a homeschooling parent means you need to be creative. Your main goal is to pique your child’s interest in learning. You want him or her to be a “learner” forever. Anything can be turned into home school curriculum. Take all of your children’s interests and turn it into something your child can learn. If your child likes to be outside and loves to learn about the outside world have them bring a pad of paper for jotting down notes, and drawing pictures. Be sure you give them time to do this. Don’t worry about accuracy or grammar at this point. You may want to have them take pictures as well. Document all of your outdoor activities so that your child may make some type of report. The report could be a poster, a web blog, a written report with artwork, a photo album with descriptions or many other things. The many different ways of presenting what your child has learned is only limited to your imagination.
Remember it is not what you as the parent would want to learn or make, it is what your child wants to learn or make. If your child is interested in something that you have no knowledge of, then seek professional help. If your child wants to be a computer programmer and has the aptitude to do this at his age group, don’t give up. The time you invest now, will be worth it later.
One year I was in charge of the park day for our Home Based Education Autumn Festival.I went totally pumpkin. A few weeks before I put pumpkin seeds in baggies with paper towels and water to make them sprout I also did some beans and corn too. I did one each day for the whole two weeks before, so that they could see how much it grew each day.
I bought some Indian corn and pretty squash and a pumpkin and made a display. We also brought pumpkins for everyone to carve so they could see what the inside of the pumpkin looked like. I brought those orange handled safety carvers (handed to parents only) wipes and plenty of paper towels.
One of our favorite homeschooling projects was on corn. We had so much fun doing this. The kids were pretty small and they still remember it to this day. First we went to the grocery store and we took our time and went down every single aisle in the store looking for any type of corn products we could find. We found corn on the cob, popcorn, cornstarch, corn oil, puffed corn cereal, corn meal, masa, corn torillas, corn bread mix and more. We got to take all these home and open them up and see what they looked like. The fun part was tasting them. Some of the corn products had to be prepared. We made some of the recipes on the containers, such as tamales with the masa; cornmeal mush and hushpuppies with the cornmeal; we also used popcorn, corn oil and corn syrup to make popcorn balls.
We all learn in different ways. And we can all be teachers. The more and varied teachers we have in our lifetime, the more and varied things we will learn and understand. Homeschooled children have the opportunity to meet new and different people every day. When you visit the park, go on your field trips and talk to the people you see every day this is all new stimuli and can help the student to grow in social skills, language skills, speaking skills and in becoming a better person all around.
Homeschooled children are free to go out into the world and see what is really there instead of just seeing it in a book or on a computer. You can read about looking for dinosaur bones, or you can go look for yourself and see how it is really done. My hope is that all homeschooled children are given opportunities to have hands on experiences out in the real world.
If you think about it, homeschooling is not a new thing. Only recently in the history of the human race have children been herded into buildings to sit and use their brains all day, while forsaking the use of the human body. Our bodies are made to move, and yes, our brains are made to think, ponder and learn. However, I believe we are doing a disservice to many children by not letting them learn everyday with not only their minds, but their bodies.
I sincerely believe that the way many children are forced to learn today is not right. Many children are in trouble. Many children have all this energy and they don’t have a good outlet. Most children will thrive in the right environment for them. Sure, some kids love to sit on their behinds all day and read books, and yes, those children need to find outdoor interests and other interests where they can physically do something. But, it is not fair to force all children into a school building to learn.