I hope you didn't take what I was saying wrong... I do believe that the children need a great education. If I didn't I would just send them off to PS. I spend everyday at home with the kids to make sure that they get what they need. There are times I wonder if what we do is overkill. Sometimes a visit to an elderly person or to help a sick friend is really important things to teach them also. Some days the dishes are still there from this morning when it is time to start supper, and the house needs dusted. These are also great skills a child needs to be able to accomplish. Sometimes I find I put more effort in school and wish we spent more time on other Important life skills. Some days they would get more out of doing other things besides the three R's. I guess everything required in raising a child needs balance. Sometimes it is hard to balance everything. Sorry if I came across wrong.
Becky, again I understand what you are saying, I just think it is a hard line to walk, at least it is in my own situation and perhaps others who are members here as well. I don't know your situation but it may be that you are blessed with a husband having a job with regular hours where he is home every night and a sister to help your mother, but unfortunately not everyone has this situation. I like schedules, but my schedules must be adapted on a day-to-day basis, it seems. For instance, my husband travels and is away sometimes from Monday to Friday. We have to drive to the airport and back whenever he flies out, which is two hours in the morning of what ever day he has to go, which is not always Monday, and more than two hours on Friday evenings, if that is when he returns. We have only one car so when he has to drive to stay somewhere overnight, we have to drive to where he can rent a car, that is a bit more of an hour in the morning and another when he returns. That means two days a week, at least, are centered around his schedule. One other day a week is piano, grocery shopping, and errands, so if he is in town I have to drive him to the office and pick him up later that day. Also, the summer before last, I spent many weeks helping with my husband's parents because they have no one else, my husband is their only surviving sibling and homeschooling was just not possible with all the medical stuff going on then; that break was not in my plans, nor was the one right after it to visit my own mother as her health was deteriorating and then two month's later was her funeral, and I expect these things, which are not always emergencies but just needs, will not only happen again, but it will be more common in the future. It would be ideal if my daughter could start the same time every day (not have to wake up as early as 4:30 AM sometimes or not start lesson until nearly 11:00 AM sometimes dependent on flight times) and work about the same amount of hours. It would be ideal if I would not get a call in the middle of the morning so that I have to go out to overnight some $10.00 part to my husband because for some silly reason he has the only one in the country and he did not know he was going to need it at the site. It would be ideal if the only time I could talk to my husband was not in the middle of the day before he is going to bed in some country half way around the world. It would be ideal if no one at all called me in until after our homeschool hours to tell me that they would like me to pray with them because they are going through a difficult time, or their mother is in the hospital, or whatever. It would probably be ideal if one of my dearest friends was not a piano teacher, who has lessons all afternoon and evening so she calls to talk to me during the only time she has free which is in the mornings. However, even with all this my daughter is still getting a good education and she has a wonderful heart for people. I feel it would be a shame if she learned from me that other people's needs can only fit in between certain hours of the day according to what is convenient for us.
I do feel like things want to interfere with our schooling. In order to combat it, I simply treat homeschooling as I would a job. Would I drop everything to do 'x', 'y', or 'z' right now if I were still a professional teacher who had to go to work for a paycheck for my teaching? If I would, then I do; if I would set it aside to wait until I was done with work, then I set it aside. Our schooling gets completely done here by around 2 in the afternoon. That leaves me plenty of time to get chores and errands run. Plus, since we school all year round, we generally have Fridays off with our homeschool group; that day also works well for some errand running. I'll set the kids a task to work on independently while I run a load of laundry, but that's only because they'd be doing whatever it is independently anyway. It's kind of silly for me to sit and stare at them while they're doing something they're supposed to do without my help. Of course, what can work in one family isn't what would work in all. If you have a critically ill family member, for example, then obviously shutting off the phones and saying, "Hey, I know you need to go to the hospital, but we're in school. Wait until 2 and then we'll take you" isn't going to happen. However, if someone's just wanting to talk and hang out, then that IS something that can be put off to a later time in the day. I think much of a balance in homeschooling is struck by looking at what you're giving priority to and deciding if they really deserve that level of priority from you or if they can be put off until later in the afternoon.
well I think we all have to remember it happens in ps too, not just hs. they have days off, they have movies alot of movies so teachers can do things. Yes, they do I know for a fact. So, it happens no matter where your child school. I think its fine nothing wrong with it. Oh the movies are not all educational either.
They don't get so many movies, Kris- the teachers can't get over but so much. Plus, parents wouldn't be cool with some slack teacher! All I'm saying is that we should hold ourselves to the same standard we'd hold a ps teacher. PS teachers do not miss a day of work to clean or do errands, and neither should we. It's all in where your priorities are, and mine are all about school comes first. That's just me.
Life happens and sometimes you need a day off or a day when you cover very little. Homeschooling provides that flexibility. However, if you take a day off or have a day where you don't do much that time should be made up later in most cases. We aren't even halfway through our school year this year (192 days where we live) because we took six weeks off of school for a move. Things like errands, phone calls, doctor appointments, etc should ideally be done before or after homeschooling times instead of during homeschooling times. If not, at least homeschooling time can be adjusted. I don't think it should be dropped because of those things in most cases. I screen phone calls during homeschooling. Dh usually does all the errands going to and from work. Doctor's appointments are usually done on days off.
I see the difference more clearly and I am completely on the opposite side of this coin: I tend to always expect far more of myself than anyone else. I would not expect any classroom teacher to meet the same standards I have on myself for teaching my own child....I mean, a classroom teacher has manage at least twenty other children in most cases, right? I definitely would not expect a classroom teacher to tailor make a curriculum for my child as I have done. As to interruptions during lessons, as I recall my classroom experiences, there were plenty of interruptions from within the class from the students. Teachers would leave the classroom at times for unknown reasons. I had a few teachers that were hardly in their classes much of the time. People are just...people. I think interruptions provide opportunity for a child to learn self-discipline so that she returns to do lessons afterward as she should. That is part of the lessons I want my daughter to learn, because that is life. For me, it is more like providing lessons and recognizing the opportunities from which my daughter can learn have a high priority in my home and in my heart, but school does not.
What makes it harder is to live in a state with regulations and you are trying to be honest and count it all the way they say to. Life is just hard at times.
I am going to throw gasoline on the fire...because, basically I am bored. I think that one of the best things about homeschooling is that you can do what is best for yourself and your children. SO there isn't any right or wrong way to do it. I don't believe that the government knows better or cares more for my children than I, so I do not feel bad about interpreting the "rules" to fit my goals. In other words, however much time we spend on whatever I can assure you that I spend the required amount of days/hours on whatever required subjects there are. However I have to word the official 'report'. I think that children learn a whole lot more from real life than they do from workbook pages. I will always try to do something rather than stick to a schedule. people are more important than schedules. Even God tells us not to plan. only to say God willing. So God willing I will educate my children and they will learn...even if it doesn't look like what you do. If you have to go through extra effort explaining homeschooling because someone has misunderstood what I do...well, I would apologize except I am not sorry. Quite frankly it is none of thier business.
This is true. I learned that the hard way when I got written up last May. I was answering Lorna here.
In my state, the law is written with this one word: EQUIVALENT to 180 days with each day consisting of at least 4.5 hours of instruction. Now some homeschooling parents ignore the word "equivalent" and take the rest literally that we have to homeschool 4.5 hours each day for 180 days, however that is NOT how the law reads even though when we send in our monthly attendance records, :roll: all we have to do is check the days we have homeschooled, not giving the actual hours for each day. Being that I studied law for a time and had a homeschooling friend whose father was a judge, I am kind of a stickler about how the law is interpreted, often wrongly or how people act under "color of law," as if they have authority but the law does not support that authority. So, the way I see it, the law reads and should be interpreted literally that we are to homeschool the EQUIVALENT to 180 days with each day consisting of at least 4.5 hours of instruction, which would be 810 hours each school year. I homeschool year around, so I dutifully mark the days I homeschool, whether she did lessons for two hours or six, as required by law, until my days add up to 180 and then I have fulfilled my legal requirements to the state. Now, this is ridiculous because requirements on the attendance records do not match up with the time "equivalents" expected for each day, but that is the way it is with how the law is written. In the end, I homeschool far more than 810 hours a year, so the reporting, for me, is just a formality that does not accurately reflect my homeschool and cannot because of how the laws do not harmonize with each other.
To me it's not sensible to keep track of the hours. At our evaluation, I even have to list what time of the day we do each subject, and how long each subject takes. However, we don't do the subjects in the same order each day, and sometimes a subject will go faster one day than the next. And they don't want to hear that times are approximate, lol.
I do get the part that there are things that we don't write down in hours that really do count for school.
Lorna, how do you record it if you get through stuff faster, though? I tell Jeannie's evaluator just that sometimes things go faster and I didn't need to spend, say 40 minutes on something. For us, Spelling is extremely fast this year since we use Spelling Power. Normally math takes forever, so I guess it all evens out!:lol:
I don't know about that the neighbor lady was just over last night again saying she had to sign a form that her dd could watch a Disney movie in history class again. She need to grade papers. Also, my other neighbor lady is a teacher and she is taking Monday off to spring clean...
