Homeschoolers united!

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
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Ani
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby Ani » Mon Nov 19, 2018 6:56 pm

Whodathunkitz wrote:And as I've looked into it, I've gone from NO! to hmmm... moving to probably.


Homeschooling at age 6 is absolutely marvelous. It's a hard job and harder as the children get older, but those first few years K-3rd grade in the US (ages 5-9) are the easiest and most fun. I really believe anyone with even a slight interest at this age should give it a try.

Hours aren't the most important thing for a 6 year old. Learning to sit for at least an hour a day can have good value, but it's totally fine to follow your child's lead. A child who is already on our above grade level for the critical subjects (math, reading, writing) can spend more time on interests than a child who struggles a bit more and needs more time to work on foundations.

I do think a math curriculum is essential, but everything else is easy to do organically at this age, especially if your child is already reading and writing a bit.

For how the kids act during homeschooling... They are just themselves. Every kid is different.
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby IronMike » Tue Nov 20, 2018 7:16 pm

We've had kids who were sitters and those who had ants in their pants, esp. at those ages (5-8 or 9-ish). For all of them, no sort of official schedule ever worked. It was mostly what mom decided they needed to work on. If they were getting frustrated in one subject, she'd move on to another.

Through all the elementary/middle school years, our homeschooling was done at about 5 hours per day.

Good luck! Make sure you're good with the law. The HSLDA here in the States keeps an eye (and supports) on homeschooling laws outside the U.S. They've got a page for the UK here.
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby EmGeeFab » Wed Jul 17, 2019 4:01 am

Hi all, I'm a homeschooler with five kids. My oldest (14) is going to high school this year, but the other four are at home, in grades 7, 5, 2, and not-yet-academic.

At various times I've taught my kids German by speaking it, but since I'm fluent-not-native, and don't get much input, that can get exhausting at times. The result is that they understand too much to find any German course interesting and too little to actually speak. But we've spent this summer in a non-English-speaking country and now they are really excited to learn German. I've even caught them speaking it in secret! Imagine my surprise when my 10-year-old told my 3-year-old to "come" in Hebrew and she answered, "Ich komme nach!"

My oldest has been self-teaching Spanish since October, and it looks like he might place into 3rd year Spanish at the accelerated/gifted high school he plans to attend this coming year. I'm not sure if that says something about him or about how poorly languages are taught in the USA. He was the most capable in German, but was never able to use it because the German speakers he met always spoke English better than he spoke German, so he was really passionate about learning a language that he could use easily in our home town.

I personally have been learning Hebrew this last year, so if nothing else, I'm setting a good example. :lol: But I finally found a good language learning routine with my 12- and 10-year-olds this spring. The goal for fall is to establish good language learning routines with the 7- and 3-year-olds and to get enough input in German that we can use it during at least part of the day.

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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby Elsa Maria » Wed Jul 17, 2019 1:44 pm

EmGeeFab, it sounds like you have been able to offer your kids some great opportunities through homeschooling.

It feels so weird to not be lining up my homeschool plans for next year. But dorm shopping is rather fun, lol. And I'm putting all that planning experience into putting my own study plans together - it is just second nature at this point!

I'm super happy with the way our homeschooling journey wrapped up. I think my young adult child is well prepared for moving away to college, both academically and socially. They did great in some tough dual enrollment classes (*), and they also did very well on their placement tests.

* Dual enrollment = taking college classes while in high school
Last edited by Elsa Maria on Tue Jul 20, 2021 7:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby David1917 » Wed Oct 30, 2019 1:32 pm

Double Post:

I recently posted this vid in the Prof Arguelles Youtube thread, however it is also of interest here, since it is an interview with his son Ardaschir regarding homeschooling. Ron Paul, creator of the curriculum the Arguelles family used, conducts the interview.

Enjoy

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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby IronMike » Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:09 pm

Bumping this thread and doing a little parental bragging, so turn away if you are annoyed by this!

Kid #1 (going by age, not list of favorites...haha) is now 4 or so years into his Coast Guard career. He graduated high school through homeschooling. The only "normal" schooling he did was half of 9th and all of 10th and 11th, but in Moscow at the international school (thus not really "normal" as far as US public schools go).

Kid #2 just started his Air Force career in December; I was honored to commission him at my SIL's house back in May 2020 (he was ROTC in college, so they get commissioned upon graduation, but then don't enter active duty till later). He's currently training to be a pilot. He was homeschooled his whole life except for half of 7th, 8th-9th in Moscow, then 12th grade in Bishkek in an international school. Also not normal.

Kid #3 is a bit over two years into her Army career as a combat medic. She was homeschooled except for half of 4th, 5th-6th, 9th-10th in Bishkek. She didn't want to go back to the school in Moscow so she and my wife had a blast HSing in Moscow with all those museums and international book clubs and events and history etc. She graduated HS from the states though as we were one of the 60 families who got PNG'd out of Russia due to politics back in 2018.

Kid #4 is a senior in high school in our near-Boston town. She's the kid of ours with the fewest homeschool years and the most years of in-a-building schooling, half of 1st, 2nd-3rd in Moscow, 6th-7th in Bishkek, 8th-9th in Moscow, then when we got to the states she really wanted to go to a brick-and-mortar school, so she asked me for advice on how to approach mom on this. I suggested that mom responds to well thought out arguments. Our daughter did research for two days then approached mom, argued for herself attending the local high school, then the next day, my wife came to me: "Hey, Lucy proposed to go to the high school and I looked into it. It's a pretty good school so I told her okay." ;) She'll graduate this coming June.

My wife misses HSing badly, but she's a writer, so now she has more time for that, which makes her happy. ;)
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby Whodathunkitz » Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:12 am

We've been interested in home educating for a few years & we've been doing it for a year now.

Looking forward to a time when we can all travel & language learning can just be a part of day to day life. Philosophy is world schooling / unschooling as kiddo learns by themselves. Very adept at PC now (wasn't before), especially self-researching topics and we're always around chiming in, helping out. Little bit of required work, mostly self-directed.

Child isn't much interested in languages, but I explain word origins, related words in other languages and do some learning of his Mum's language. Good memory, so retains a lot.
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby IronMike » Tue Jul 20, 2021 10:27 pm

I just got pinged by Elsa back to this thread, thus I must update the parent brag. Kid #4 is going to George Mason! She wants to teach elementary school and GMU was one of the 4 or 5 she applied to. It was one of only two in VA who recognized that we are actually a VA family despite living in MA. Thus, daddy is happy: in-state tuition!

How's everyone else's summer (northern hemisphere) going? Ready for the next (homeschool) year?

We are also looking at our shelves, at all the wonderful HS books we have, and wondering: Does the MA Homeschool Group have a curriculum sale? ;)
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby Walinator » Tue Jul 20, 2021 10:49 pm

IronMike wrote:I just got pinged by Elsa back to this thread, thus I must update the parent brag. Kid #4 is going to George Mason! She wants to teach elementary school and GMU was one of the 4 or 5 she applied to. It was one of only two in VA who recognized that we are actually a VA family despite living in MA. Thus, daddy is happy: in-state tuition!


Congrats! I happen to go to GMU as well. The school is honestly great and the they should enjoy being there. :D
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IronMike
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Re: Homeschoolers united!

Postby IronMike » Tue Jul 20, 2021 11:51 pm

Walinator wrote:
IronMike wrote:I just got pinged by Elsa back to this thread, thus I must update the parent brag. Kid #4 is going to George Mason! She wants to teach elementary school and GMU was one of the 4 or 5 she applied to. It was one of only two in VA who recognized that we are actually a VA family despite living in MA. Thus, daddy is happy: in-state tuition!


Congrats! I happen to go to GMU as well. The school is honestly great and the they should enjoy being there. :D

Awesome!

Yeah, when I was in the Air Force and going to NIU, I took advantage of the Consortium of Washington DC Universities and took two linguistics classes at GMU toward my masters. Loved the campus! Plus I got to meet one of my favorite thinkers while there!
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