Homeschooling Today

Right now my aunt, uncle, and cousin are visiting. They're actually staying with my mom, but we've been able to spend time with them. I enjoy talking with them since my cousins were homeschooled (I enjoy talking with them for other reasons as well). It's interesting how things have changed since they homeschooled back in the Dark Ages versus what I'm doing now with my girls. Knowing them, they were probably more of the unschooling/delight directed type of homeschoolers. While I would love to do that, it's not what we're doing and I'm not sure it would succeed well here. We're more of the "literature based and throw in a few interest based classes" types. But that's the joy of homeschooling, figuring out what works best for your family.

One of the great things of homeschooling now is computers and the access they give us to other things. My girls are taking a few online classes, obviously not an option before computers were found in the home. The classes they're taking are actually very different; two of the language classes are live and they can interact with the teacher and the other kids, the other language class has three live classes and the rest are recorded for the students to watch (no live interaction on those days, but there is a forum where you can ask questions later), and the other online class is a live class, but in lecture format, with an opportunity to ask questions at the end. There are other ways to deliver online classes but this is what my girls are doing right now.

The choices my aunt had back in the mid-80s were probably pretty minimal, if she was going with some sort of curriculum. She may have used what the schools use. Now, there's so many choices that sometimes it's hard to pick the right thing. I also think that there's some areas that are still lacking in homeschool materials or maybe there just hard to find.

I'm glad to have the ability to homeschool since I do think it's the best thing for our girls. They are learning, loving to learn, a trait which seems to be hard to come by in many kids that go to public school, and mostly enjoying school.