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Homeschooling

I am what someone might call a homeschool dabbler.  Back when my oldest was a preschooler I read a few books by homeschoolers and I thought about doing it, but I just couldn't see how I could do it if I had more than one or two children.  Since then, I have homeschooled just a little bit--English for my 8th grader one year, afternoons for my 3rd grader one year, etc.  My biggest stint was a few years ago when I pulled my daughter out of second grade where things did not seem to be working well and homeschooled her full-time for the rest of the year.  It was actually good for me to finally do this thing I had been thinking about for so long.  I realized that it was just as time-consuming as I was afraid it would be.  And I also realized that I didn't really enjoy it very much.  It was hard to take time to teach my daughter for a couple of hours.  Every. Single. Day.

I think my daughter benefitted from that year at home.  The area she was struggling--math--definitely improved.  But I really like keeping my household running smoothly and getting all my errands and other jobs taken care of in a timely manner; homeschooling just didn't fit into my life as I knew it.  I was already pretty busy as it was. Perhaps if there was no other good alternative, I would get used to that life and I would start enjoying it more because I would have no other choice.  My other problem was that my daughter loves to talk and socialize and I had a really hard time meeting all her social needs.  I can only listen to so much talking before I need a break! Her siblings were at school all day as were neighborhood friends and I didn't find a homeschool group to join (not that I really looked).  I'm sure it would have helped to have a sibling also being home-schooled but that wasn't possible.  And I should mention that this was the year after my youngest's kidney transplant so we were visiting the doctor a fair amount, a time-consuming acitivity.

So why I am blogging about this?  I have decided to homeschool my 7th grader in English this year (one period or two seems to be a better match for me) and I am trying to find a good curriculum that won't require a lot of time on my part or be too expensive, but still be very thorough.  So I went to the library to try to find some books that would help me figure out how to do this.

I read/skimmed two books:  Homeschooling for the Rest of Us by Sonya Haskins and The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore.  Sad to say, these were not at all helpful.  I already know the very basics of homeschooling and meeting the legal requirements in my state.  These books relied heavily on anecdotal stories and didn't really talk about selecting a curriculum at all.  I am not interested in the "unschooling" movement and both of these books seemed a little biased toward that.  Both books talked about counting activities as teaching that I already do at home and that feels like a cop-out to me.  I'm trying to improve the school aspect of my children's lives, not the life skills part.

One of the reasons I want to homeschool is because I don't think school classes are using my children's time well and aren't asking enough of them.  I want my children to be really good writers and analytical readers and junior high English isn't cutting it.  So I'm going to keep looking and trying to find a curriculum that works for us.  More on that later...

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