I am gathering as much info as I can about homeschooling. My son is currently in 1st grade public school and while he does very well with all subjects, he does not enjoy going to school. He is very active and silly and I think he gets bored a lot. I wondered if there is anyone who has made the switch with their son and achieved a love of learning for him? It is my hope that homeschooling would lead to this. Or in general, what positive or negative things happened from your switch? Thanks :love:
We pulled sd out of ps mid 9th grade and dd we only let go to k at the ps. Homeschooling cannot guarantee a love for learning but I can say that homeschooling allows for you to tailor you schooling to your child. Dd has been exposed to more things than her ps counterparts. We are able to choose courses based on her interests (this year we are doing an equine science class). Sd who we pulled mid 9th wished that we had hs'ed her all the way through. She said she learned more in her years at home than she did in the ps. Does she enjoy school work any more than she did before, no but then she is not wired that way.
We started homeschooling our dt's in 5th grade. Do they have a "love" of learning? Not so much, about as much as they love brussel sprouts! However, they enjoy learning based on their interests and their learning styles. What they do learn tends to stick. We have no regrets and honestly, no negatives that I can think of. Learning opportunities at home are abundant and you can go as far outside the box as you want!
To make homeschooling a more positive experience, get him involved in some of the homeschooling social programs, like the co-ops. We have a PE group that meets at our town's rec center weekly and it's free! Also, we have a co-op that offers classes once per week in the elective areas like art and music, and they offer some core subjects too. We do our "fun" classes here. Find a homeschool group that does field trips together and find friends for him that homeschool too. He's so young, you can do a lot of your schooling at the library, letting him pick out books to read that he's interested in. You can have him draw a picture and write a couple of small sentences to summarize the book and keep his summaries in a binder. Look at Pinterest for fun "reading log" ideas - I've seen some cool ones. Math is important too, and I really like Math U See for that age because you buy a set of manipulative blocks, which makes doing math more fun than just completing worksheets. The blog Confessions of a Homeschooler has some really great and fun unit studies you can purchase at a great price. Keep it light and fun - it'll get way too serious come middle school!!
Hi We pulled our son in the first few months of first grade. As you said too much little boy energy and he was miserable everyday. I saw his spark for learning dying faster then I saw him learning new materials. I was scared, nervous, and had no idea what I was doing lol. It was the BEST thing I could have ever done for him. He is now going to be 11 and has no desire to return to school. Honestly I couldn't put him back even if I wanted to. He reads at an advanced level, is light years ahead in math. Putting him back would be torture to him. I saw several changes immediately. The first most important one was a smile returning to his face. He was happy to sit with Mom and learn. Learning only took an hour or two that first year. We are moving onto grade six and it takes a lot longer now. There have been struggles, mostly with writing and focusing on the work. I found he has matured in a wonderfully different way then he would have if he was forced to be in an institution daily. Each child is different. If you truly feel your son is unhappy listen to your gut. We are only children for such a brief window of our lives and children should be happy.
Try it and see how it works. Your son might like it so much that you home school all the way through graduation. Then again, he might hate it and want to go back to public school the very next year. Or in fifth grade. Or in Eighth grade. You never know. But the cool part...is that you have the option. Try it and see. What's the harm? My daughter, who is 17 now, recently told me that there is nothing in life that she enjoys as much as learning, that it is her absolute passion and that she expects to follow her education through to grad school. (She was homeschooled K-7 and chose to go to public school 8-12) It's going to be different for each kid. But yeah, I think her home school experience really DID enhance her love of learning.
