Since I rarely use this blog I will probably end up deleting it.

Not a whole lot for me to talk about with homeschooling yet.  Though perhaps I should use it to chronicle the stuff that Justin is learning, and that I am learning, and the things that we do together.

Need to consider that.

Writing on my resources for homeschooling blog here and was amazed at how many math resources there are available on line for helping teach math.

Made me ask myself,

• do I really need all this help or can i just make my own stuff up?
• is there advantage to doing stuff on pen and paper rather than on-line?   Does it make a difference in how children learn?
• Will using stuff on-line keep me from getting in a rut and force me to move forward all the time?  Perhaps quicker than I should?
• How do I determine what is good and what is not?   Will my thinking be faulty?
• Is there more than one way to best teach math or can an eclectic or varied approach work?

Anyways, I'm sure I'll think of more questions but these will do for now.

Got a thing in the email the other day talking about What is a Unit Study.  Thought I'd write that up a bit here, maybe post a link or two if I can find them.

What is a Unit Study?

This comes from Home school in the woods:

Unit Studies approach a theme topic from several angles, encouraging activity and love of learning as well as discipline and responsibility. Units work best when the main topic is studied in the areas of Bible, History, Science, Health, Physical Education and the Arts, but Language and Math can often be applied as well.

Language and Math are subjects that must be taught precept upon precept (e.g. you must learn to add before you can learn to multiply), but most other subjects can be approached in various ways, either touched on vaguely or explored in depth. In our family, we use textbooks for both Language and Math at the levels that the children are progressing at. However, in our Unit Studies, we encourage lots of reading on the topic, incorporate real-life experiences - yes, even real-world math problems - and try to provide a multitude of pertinent educational encounters at multi-age levels. Here is a further illustration of how unit studies work:

On that same page they give an example of how one can do up a unit study.

Basically you take a topic and then find all the different ways you can to study it.
How can you study say... The colonization of Canada from the different points of view
: Christian influence, Culture - how did people live, work, eat, What type of things did they use to do what they did, transportation, education etc... fill the gambit.

While one does a unit study one can also encourage good penmanship, practice reading, and such like.

Amanda Bennett has a blog on Unit Studies.

Part of doing unit studies that one should not forget as a parent is to ask your children what they would like to learn about.  use their interests to foster learning.  :)

Want to plan your own unit study. Peg has put together a helps page.

Learn how to do a unit study at About.com.  :)  In fact, this page at about.com lists several online resources one can use for doing unit studies and learning what all is involved with them.  Not all the links work, but a place to get started looking anyways.  ;)

I like this page on doing frugal unit studies.  What can I say...I like to do things as inexpensively as possible. :)\

at HomeEducators.com I found this quote

Unit Studies...
"Unit Studies", "Project Studies" or "Integrated Learning" - whatever it's called, this method takes advantage of the child's natural curiousity and works with the natural learning processes to produce real education that's also fun! This approach integrates several subjects and skill areas while focusing on a central theme. Combining a variety of books, resources and learning tools, it fosters interest, creativity, thinking and reasoning skills, research skills, in-depth learning and motivation for learning. The whole family can participate. Each child can work around the same theme but work on different activities according to their individual skill level. Even mom and dad can get into the act.

Anyways, that's good for now.  I can always come back to this and add more. :)

So last night was our local community, support your hospital, rummage sale.

I LOVE this sale.  Everything is cheap.  :)

I found a couple of booklets for my boyo on Pre-K stuff. 
Yes, I know at age 2 he's a bit too little for this, but they were all like new.  Not one page done.  For 25 cents, who am I to complain about that.

I do so enjoy getting stuff inexpensively. :)

So here I was the other day, thinking about homeschooling stuff.  Justin is almost 2 years old now.  Parents we meet in the park are talking about their children going to pre-school and kindergarten and when they think their child will be ready for such things.

I was thinking about that especially since one grandparent made the comment, but he's so smart now, we should put him in (talking about a 3.5 year old) pre-school, we don't want him to miss out on anything.

My immediate thought was...how sad for that child.  That he's smart enough that the parents are eager to put him in school so that his creativity, curiousity etc can channeled by the school board.  That they don't think they can give their child things that will interest him.   That this child, who still needs regular naps, will be sent to an all day program ....

I don't know.  It just didn't sit right with me.

It would feel better I suppose to me if he were a bigger child, and an older child.  But 3.5 years, to be sent off all day to school, because he's a smart lad who needs to be stimulated by the school environment.  I don't know... just doesn't seem right, he's so young yet.

Anyways, that's not where my thoughts were supposed to go on this.

Made me think of my boyo and raising him, and wanting homeschooling to be somewhat natural and easy flowing at least for the first bit.  Schooling that stems out of the things that we do.

Like learning the difference between push and pull by what we do with his favourite Thomas the Train toys.   Showing the difference between the north and south ends of magnets.   How rocks sink and feathers float!    It's not that hard to just take life and use it to teach (at least at this age).  :)  

It just makes me wonder.... what do parents think is so hard about stimulating and working with their children?  Why do they think the school can do it better?  ESPECIALLY with these little ones?

Just the other day I was talking with my sister and she mentioned how busy she thought I would be with our boyo when he grew up a bit.  She knows that we are planning to home-school him, and she said "you'll be busy driving him around, cause he'll need his socialization".

My first thought was
1. Don't all parents drive their children around to activities of one sort or the other?
2. I'm not worried about socialization.

I look back at my school days.  I loved learning.  I hated the playground.  The socialization aspects of things... ick!  I did like when they let the "big kids" play with the "little kids" I had a blast organizing the little kids and playing games with them.   Gave me something to do and people to help.  Fun that was.  Didn't last long because "big kids can't play with little kids don'tcha know?"

Why would I want to send my child to school to have to deal with socialization?

What if he ends up having to deal with bullying and name-calling and not having good friends at school?  Why should he have to deal with all that "ick" in order to have "socialization"?  I've been there, done that, don't need my boyo to go through that.

Besides...I think he'll learn a whole lot more, more quickly, at home. 

He won't have to deal with schoolmates liking or not liking him. 
He won't have to deal with bullying. 
He won't have to deal with having to decide...do I stick up for this child being bullied or do I run away so I don't have to deal with it or get hit for sticking up for him?
He won't have to deal with teachers pushing their own agendas (just his parents doing that!)

So, how do I answer the questions of socialization?
Should I just say...it's not a concern for me?
I'd rather he learn how to function as a Christian in society, than that he spend his days with same age students learning how to social with them?
That yes, I will enter him in sports...but not because I want him to socialize, but because I want him to learn to use his body and to work co-operatively and to learn from someone other than me in something.  If he makes new friends in the process... cool, if not, that's okay too.  :) 

I'm not too worried I guess about the whole socialization.  I figure he'll make friends in time.  :)

But what do you think?

So I've been wondering, just how to people really get started in homeschooling.

There are so many conflicting ideas about there about what to do, how to do it and so forth.

I look at my hubbies life, and know I will need to continue to work around it.   Monday is his day off.  we run errands, go to movie, relax, just do NON work related activities, every monday but one each month.  Do we school tuesday to fridays?  Mornings only?  Spread out over the day?  

How do I fit in things that i think are really important like community service and church and scouts and so forth?  Are they all part of schooling?

What about soccer and music and so forth???

I know the boy is not even two yet, but some of these I want to start to sort through.

What about choosing curriculums?  Finding out what works without spending a fortune?

How do I find a local home school support group?

I've looked for homeschool forums but I"m obviously doing something wrong as my searches come up blank (as in relatively useless) time and again.

Any thoughts out there?

For those wondering where my real "home" online is.  Go here.

I'm not sure if I will end up using this blog for anything or not.  :)   I may, or may not.    We'll see what God has in store for this blog.