disneymom3
<font color=green> I think I could adjust!! <br><f
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2002
- Messages
- 9,509
Andrea--first off, you have some awesome answers already and I totally agree with what both BriarRose and jacyns have said. I wanted to address the issue of finances. Our first year of homeschooling, my DH was laid off at the end of September. It would have been a lot easier and some cheaper to put DD in school, send the boys to daycare and work fulltime, but what we chose to do instead was to work opposite jobs so that they could all stay home, DH could look for something in his field and I could help out by bringing in some income. (DH also worked odd--and I do mean ODD--jobs.) Anyway, that obviously created some unforeseen financial issues. What I found is that one can homeschool by almost exclusively using the internet! Paper and printer ink are not to expensive and they go a really long way. You can get everything from online games to handwriting practice sheets to math workbook pages to history projects right on the internet and they are all free. It takes work and time, but it really can be cheap. That is basically what we did and did not buy ANY curriculum for that year. Even now, I keep it pretty inexpensive--Singapore math is not more than $30 for the whole year, DD in 4th gr uses a McGraw Hill Reading comprehension workbook that I got at Barnes and Noble with my teacher discount for like $12, if that. She has a logic book that was about $6. We use Story of the World for History and the reading book and activity guide together cost me about $35 from Amazon. There are supplies for that but many things you will already have around your house or can get pretty cheap at Walmart or a craft store. We work on writing through the various activities we do that are written and we use the library like crazy. In fact, we are learning Spanish and Latin through Rosetta Stone which we can log in and use for FREE on the library website. Now, this is not even the library website where we live, but you can register your card here in any county and that gives you access to all of their stuff.
How old are your kids? I am guessing pretty little. You say your little boy is active--so is mine and that is one thing I love about homeschooling! He doesn't HAVE to sit still and one thing I have learned--and I admit it has been a hard lesson!!!--is that they don't have to sit at a table to learn, even for phonics and math. We play Trouble (the game) on the living room floor and after we push the little pop up thing to roll the dice, we do things like add or subtract a certain number to figure out how many spaces we can move. With DD I would use the same number, so every time you roll, you add two and go that many spaces. DS thinks it is much more fun to choose a different number each time the other person takes their turn, so say, I roll a two, then he says, "Add three" or "take away 1" and then I move either 1 or 5 spaces etc. He thinks it is particularly funny to do take away more than the number I have rolled and then I have to go backwards! (And he is learning negative numbers without realizing it.) We have another game that I got from someone where we pick two cards from a pile and the cards all have either a vowel/consonant blend or a single consonant on them. YOu see if you can make a word with the cards you got and if so, you get to keep them and if not you put them back. We do writing practice in shaving cream or oatmeal. And for this one I also do learning computer software like Jumpstart or Reader Rabbit. The Leapster has also been a HUGE help as he is very game oriented and will do those without arguing or fussing and yet he learns in leaps and bounds. I used to feel guilty about those but I now figure he gets more outside time than ANY public school kid so it's not like I have to worry about him being a couch potato.
All that said, I have two things for you. #1 Homeschooling is not for everyone. I know some moms who I am pretty sure would truly lose their minds doing this and I know some folks who just wouldn't DO it. (In fact I know one who doesn't do it and I worry about her child!) #2 If you try it and decide it is not working, the public schools will ALWAYS take them back. For one thing, they have to and for another thing, they want the money that each child brings.
Feel free to ask questions and don't feel like you HAVE to do this because we answered your questions or that any of us will look down on you if you decide it is not for you. Obviously we are all pretty passionate about this, but we also know that we are blessed to have been able to make this choice and respect that others may not make the same one.
In the meantime, later this a.m. I am going to start a thread about low or no cost resources because I would love to develop some new things for our "box" over the summer.
How old are your kids? I am guessing pretty little. You say your little boy is active--so is mine and that is one thing I love about homeschooling! He doesn't HAVE to sit still and one thing I have learned--and I admit it has been a hard lesson!!!--is that they don't have to sit at a table to learn, even for phonics and math. We play Trouble (the game) on the living room floor and after we push the little pop up thing to roll the dice, we do things like add or subtract a certain number to figure out how many spaces we can move. With DD I would use the same number, so every time you roll, you add two and go that many spaces. DS thinks it is much more fun to choose a different number each time the other person takes their turn, so say, I roll a two, then he says, "Add three" or "take away 1" and then I move either 1 or 5 spaces etc. He thinks it is particularly funny to do take away more than the number I have rolled and then I have to go backwards! (And he is learning negative numbers without realizing it.) We have another game that I got from someone where we pick two cards from a pile and the cards all have either a vowel/consonant blend or a single consonant on them. YOu see if you can make a word with the cards you got and if so, you get to keep them and if not you put them back. We do writing practice in shaving cream or oatmeal. And for this one I also do learning computer software like Jumpstart or Reader Rabbit. The Leapster has also been a HUGE help as he is very game oriented and will do those without arguing or fussing and yet he learns in leaps and bounds. I used to feel guilty about those but I now figure he gets more outside time than ANY public school kid so it's not like I have to worry about him being a couch potato.
All that said, I have two things for you. #1 Homeschooling is not for everyone. I know some moms who I am pretty sure would truly lose their minds doing this and I know some folks who just wouldn't DO it. (In fact I know one who doesn't do it and I worry about her child!) #2 If you try it and decide it is not working, the public schools will ALWAYS take them back. For one thing, they have to and for another thing, they want the money that each child brings.
Feel free to ask questions and don't feel like you HAVE to do this because we answered your questions or that any of us will look down on you if you decide it is not for you. Obviously we are all pretty passionate about this, but we also know that we are blessed to have been able to make this choice and respect that others may not make the same one.
In the meantime, later this a.m. I am going to start a thread about low or no cost resources because I would love to develop some new things for our "box" over the summer.
Finally, after last year being so terrible in school for the older one, I said, all jokes aside, we will try it for 1 year (I like my alone time, and thought they would make me insane 
). You can try it, as others have said. If it doesn't work, try again 
because we all have days like that!
It's always awesome when you can finally see the plans you had being close to completed! 
Happy Mother's Day 
Group hug for all of us who are mothers(ie. teachers, taxi cab drivers, physicans, coaches, secrataries, travel agents, house keepers, chefs...and so much more) 
