A language learners’ forum

As a "intent to homeschool" person (though I don't even have kids yet) I'll be following this thread with great interest.

zatris wrote:As a "intent to homeschool" person (though I don't even have kids yet) I'll be following this thread with great interest.

You're at least the second future homeschooler we have here.

You know, it is interesting. When I was a young adult I came across a book about homeschooling. I very badly wanted to be a teacher (both from having a great English teacher in high school and, embarassingly, from the movie Teacher) and would read anything about it. This book was different, and I decided at the young age of 21 that if I ever had kids, I'd HS.

Fast forward two years and I'm married. A couple years later I mention something about HSing and my wife is intrigued. She hated school and always felt she learned more reading/studying on her own. She immediately got some books and read up on HSing (not a lot out there in early '90s, frankly). She decided at that point that she'd HS our kids.

Took a while (5 years), but when we finally had our first kid, she was excited (for many reasons, of course). It was somewhere between 4 and 5 years old that she tried to teach the boy to read. It went horribly. Like watching two very hard-headed people debating on opposite sides of an issue. She was distraught and was so afraid maybe she wasn't a good "candidate" to HS. I told her to give it a year. After all, everything we'd read said the parents "would know when the right time was to start HSing [their] kid." Sure enough, she waited a year, and boom! It was like watching two best friends learning together. It was awesome.

So, daughter #1 (16-years old) and I just signed up for our first Esperanto gathering, MER-6. The Moskva Esperanto-Renkontiĝo will happen in the beginning of September, shortly after we arrive. My daughter will still be fairly new to E-o, and this'll be the first time I'll get to speak to other E-o speakers (not through a phone) ever. So we're gonna practice prior to going. This'll be a great addition to her "Esperanto-1" that I've listed on her AY2016-2017 homeschool plan.

The organizers asked for recommendations on sessions, and I recommended short classes, which they said they'll have. That should make my daughter feel a bit less anxious about going.

If that goes well, we might go to the 10th Mezeuropa E-o Kongreso in Tbilisi in late March of next year.

I'm also interested in homeschooling. I'm not sure if we will have kids, but if we do, I want to homeschool them. The plan is that when we move I will have a different career than I have now that will allow me more time for potential homeschooling. I think I would have been better served by homeschooling than regular school, but my parents would have been really terrible at it. So I suppose it would have been more like selfschooling. I got good grades in school, so why do I still feel like I missed a bunch of important stuff? If the internet and Coursera and edX had all been things when I was growing up, I probably would have fared better and been less bored.

gatto di ghiaccio wrote:I'm also interested in homeschooling. I'm not sure if we will have kids, but if we do, I want to homeschool them. The plan is that when we move I will have a different career than I have now that will allow me more time for potential homeschooling. I think I would have been better served by homeschooling than regular school, but my parents would have been really terrible at it. So I suppose it would have been more like selfschooling. I got good grades in school, so why do I still feel like I missed a bunch of important stuff? If the internet and Coursera and edX had all been things when I was growing up, I probably would have fared better and been less bored.

My wife, when she learned what homeschooling was, got so upset that she didn't get to be homeschooled when she was young!

My new homeschooling year started two days ago. Bum ba bum!

Typically, I spend the last two weeks of June making a detailed list of what we "need" for the new year and then I stay awake past midnight on the last day of June so I can shop shop shop for all our new books. It's like Christmas. And then I spend the first two weeks of July scheduling it all in.

But this year I am so torn over my children's languages I haven't actually bought anything yet, let alone made a plan I think I can stick to. Whatever it ends up being, it will have to rely heavily on audio books and work that a 5 year old and a 8 year old can each do independently. If you have never had elementary level homeschooled kids you might think there are plenty of options but my grade-level-ahead (in math) 8 year old won't even do his review problems without me sitting right next to him. This year is going to be a huge challenge.

Is anyone else planning for the year?

Most definitely!

This upcoming year we'll have an 11th grader homeschooled and an 8th grader in school. My wife and daughter are really looking forward to the HS year. They are planning on doing U.S. history and in particular spending some time studying "Americans in Paris." My daughter wants to learn about B. Franklin and T. Jefferson as well as Hemingway, Stowe and Z. Their main text will be D. McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, but they'll also read biographies and fiction from the Americans. They are already planning a trip to Paris to see what these famous Americans saw.

On the language front, I'll be teaching her Esperanto and she'll be continuing her Russian studies with a tutor whom she and her mother will employ.

In science, they're going to work through the book The Evolution of Everything and in math it'll be Algebra II. Also on tap is a semester of Economics (using most probably the book Naked Economics) and a semester of U.S. government to coincide with the presidential election later this year.

My wife is already preparing the list of books we need to get for her. We are moving this summer to Moscow, so we have to mail most of the texts ahead as homeschooling will begin about a week after we arrive.

IronMike wrote:Most definitely!

This upcoming year we'll have an 11th grader homeschooled and an 8th grader in school. My wife and daughter are really looking forward to the HS year. They are planning on doing U.S. history and in particular spending some time studying "Americans in Paris." My daughter wants to learn about B. Franklin and T. Jefferson as well as Hemingway, Stowe and Z. Their main text will be D. McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, but they'll also read biographies and fiction from the Americans. They are already planning a trip to Paris to see what these famous Americans saw.

On the language front, I'll be teaching her Esperanto and she'll be continuing her Russian studies with a tutor whom she and her mother will employ.

In science, they're going to work through the book The Evolution of Everything and in math it'll be Algebra II. Also on tap is a semester of Economics (using most probably the book Naked Economics) and a semester of U.S. government to coincide with the presidential election later this year.

My wife is already preparing the list of books we need to get for her. We are moving this summer to Moscow, so we have to mail most of the texts ahead as homeschooling will begin about a week after we arrive.

Holy smokes. I'd be looking forward to my homeschool year too if I got to plan like that. Such cool opportunities you have given your kids. Good luck on the move. I am sure you have it down to a science by now but still it is never easy..

Got a few questions, stemming from curiosity:

How do you deal with the social side of things? At school you have to learn to deal with others your own age, younger children, older ones plus various teachers/visitors/school employees. Not saying everyone learns to deal with them well...but how do you "make up" for this "lack" of interaction?

Don't sometimes parent and child get fed up of each other? I mean that is a lot of time to spend together. Normally a child being at school gives the parent a "break" and the parent being at work gives the child a break.

These are the main pitfalls I see which is why I wonder how you who HS deal with them, in so so many respects HS seems like such a good idea.

Rhian wrote:Got a few questions, stemming from curiosity:

How do you deal with the social side of things? At school you have to learn to deal with others your own age, younger children, older ones plus various teachers/visitors/school employees. Not saying everyone learns to deal with them well...but how do you "make up" for this "lack" of interaction?

Don't sometimes parent and child get fed up of each other? I mean that is a lot of time to spend together. Normally a child being at school gives the parent a "break" and the parent being at work gives the child a break.

These are the main pitfalls I see which is why I wonder how you who HS deal with them, in so so many respects HS seems like such a good idea.

The way it works with my mother and sister:

1) My sister makes up the lack of social interaction with joining local clubs and participating in activities. Gymnastics, painting, sewing, whatever. A lot of kids her age are there and she has a few friends from there.

2) No - my sister is homeschooled online like a "cyber school". It's like a normal school day and no one bothers her. The only time they interact is during Phys Ed hour when my mother has to do some sort of activity then sign a piece of paper that it was completed.