Intro to Homeschooling
by Alice Horrocks

Summary:
This is the written version of a talk given to to a group of new and prospective homeschoolers. by Alice Horrocks

Intro to Homeschooling


When you begin homeschooling, the difficult thing is to start thinking in a totally different way. We are all products of the school system, whether here, on PEI, or elsewhere. We know how ‘school’ is done, and assume that is the only way for children to be educated. Even if we choose to do it at home, school is the prototype for education. But that is not really true. Schools are run the way they are, because of logistics. There are large numbers of differing students put together in classrooms – requiring classroom management; there are buildings and hired teachers; there are grades to pass; there are parents and school boards to whom the school must answer (or not).
When we begin homeschooling, it is hard to develop a whole new mindset, and consider only what is best for our children and family.

I just listened to a talk about beginning homeschooling. The speaker started out by saying that “HSing is an easy natural extension of motherhood”. When you homeschool, you are just trying to continue what you started when you brought that little baby home. You cared for him or her, you taught the child to speak, to get dressed, to play games. No one knows or cares for your child as much as you, parents, do.   And so, it is worth the investment of time and effort to figure out what is best for your child, also in terms of his or her education.


Learning Styles

There are a lot of things that teachers in a classroom setting cannot do, or cannot do as well as you can, dealing with just a few children. The first thing that is worth looking into is the learning style of each of your children. If you don’t know much about learning styles, a good place to start is with the public library. There is a very helpful book available:

"The Way they Learn" by Cynthia Tobias

   This book will help you figure out how each of your children learns. (You may even learn something about yourself.)
People learn in different ways, and need different conditions in order to learn well. For example, just consider: Do you learn best by hearing something, by seeing it, or by doing – using your hands and actually touching. People may be visual, aural, tactile or kinetic learners.  Do you work better with music on, or do you easily get distracted by extraneous noises? Do you work better alone or in the company of others? There are a lot of other things that affect how we learn. This applies to each of our children, and has an effect on how we ought to homeschool; perhaps different with different children.
As well, each family will tend to have its own style and something that works great for one family will not make sense to another.

   For example, I like the idea of making lapbooks – recording information about the material studied in little notes, drawing some pictures, and pasting all these cute little folded booklets into a file folder, all very artistic. Unfortunately, both my children and I find this a horrible waste of time. We’ve read the material, learned what there is to know, why spend all that time with these fiddly things.

   For some other family this may be the most wonderful way to absorb the information and be a useful learning tool, not to mention that you have a great product to show everyone (like in-laws) how much the kids have been learning. You can pull it out at the end of the year to review.  Lots of good reasons to do lapbooks, but they’re not for us.
There are several underlying styles of homeschooling. You will need to decide how you are going to approach this whole business of teaching your children – or rather – facilitating their learning. When it comes down to it, you will be doing very little teaching, but you will be doing a lot of arranging for their learning.


Homeschooling Styles


School at home/textbook/school in a box

   When people begin homeschooling, they often try to reproduce school at home. It is admittedly, a daunting task. Moreover, we are all products of the education system and our experience of school is the only way we know of educating. There are various places you can get a curriculum in one box, so to speak. For example, the Dept of Ed will supply you with a complete set of books for the desired grade level.

Advantages: You don’t have to make any decisions; they have all been made for you.

Disadvantages: These are not usually the best resources, and certainly may not be particularly good for your child. The school curricula are usually made with a classroom and teacher in mind. There are excellent homeschool curricula available in all subject areas, usually intended for students to work more independently, or as a small (family) group.
Most homeschoolers will do some research and decide their family will be better off with the parents making the decisions. They end up following one of a number of different styles.



Unschooling

    Some homeschoolers swing to the other extreme of the pendulum and become unschoolers. There are various definitions and degrees of unschoolers. One unschooling mother said she gave her children ‘no unsolicited instruction’. Unschooling need not mean that the children are undisciplined, but that they do not ‘do school’. For unschooling to be successful (to me, that means to end up with an educated child) it is still up to the parents to provide the child with an environment that makes learning possible and desirable.

Advantages: The children provide the direction of the learning. So there is no whining – ‘Why do I have to learn this?’

Disadvantages: I think for unschooling to be successful requires a lot of work on the part of the parent – not only to provide the child with opportunities and resources, but also to bring about that motivation which leads the child to want to learn, without using coercion.



Charlotte Mason

    Charlotte Mason was an English educator about 100 years ago who taught both teachers and homeschooling parents. She had wonderful insights into how children learn. Although I do not follow her method rigidly, I feel every homeschooler should look into her methods. CM’s motto was ’Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.’ She despised books written down to children (which she called ‘twaddle),  ‘dry as dust’ textbooks, and fill-in-the-blank worksheets and instead encouraged using ‘living books’ and narration to help students fix the information in their memory.  She insisted that one must develop self discipline and that good habits (eg the habit of paying attention) would make life much easier for children and adults alike. She encouraged children to develop a connection or relationship with the subject matter, through nature studies or historical biographies and the like.

Advantages: The CM method encourages a love of learning and the instilling of good habits. There are many aspects to CM that you could adopt even within other styles.

Disadvantages: It is not always easy to implement all of CM – you could spend years studying and attempting to make a part of your home school.



Classical Education

   If there is one word which characterizes a Classical education it is rigorous. To give a few quotes from A Well-Trained Mind:
It is language intensive, not image-focused. It demands that students use and understand words, not video images.
It is history intensive, providing students with a comprehensive view of human endeavour from the beginning until now.
It trains the mind to analyze and draw conclusions.
It demands self-discipline. It produces literate, curious, intelligent students who have a wide range of interests and the ability to follow up on them.



  Classical education is based on the trivium – a three part process of training the mind.
A young child is in the grammar stage when he loves to absorb and memorize information. By 5th grade he begins to think more analytically and enters the so-called logic stage. The final phase of classical education is the rhetoric  stage, when a student learns to take what he knows and express it in clear, forceful language.

Advantages: Clearly a student who is classically taught will be strong in the humanities, and will have learned to work hard.

Disadvantages: Classical education is not so strong in the maths and sciences. Unless one is very organized as a parent, and the child is a strong student, this may be a recipe for burnout. Beware of doing too much.



Unit Studies
   In the Unit Studies approach,basic school subjects are studied in the light of a particular topic, theme, or historical time period instead of studying eight or more isolated subjects.  Children are able to grasp the wholeness of truth as they see how these subjects relate to one another.

Advantages:  The whole family can work together on a theme, children of different ages at different depths.

Disadvantages: It takes a lot of creativity and planning on the part of the teacher/parent to prepare the Unit study and gather the resources. If you are a creative person, this may be just the approach for you.



Eclectic:
   ‘Eclectic’ is the name given to the homeschooling style where the parent pulls together a number of different resources and curricula and makes their own style to fit their family in the various subject areas. Most homeschoolers would probably characterize their style as eclectic, even if they lean towards one of the about styles. You may like to read up on all of the above, and then just make your homeschooling  work for you.



Homeschool Support

HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association):
    Homeschooling is legal in every province and becoming more accepted every year. This is in part due to the efforts and intercession of HSLDA. This is a national organization which works pro-actively on behalf of homeschoolers. For example, when the School Act on PEI and the regulations governing homeschooling were changed a few years ago, HSLDA advised us on how to speak to the authorities, As well, they sent information to the ministry to inform them on what would be most beneficial to all parties.
Sometimes, though thankfully it is rare, homeschoolers in Canada are harassed by social workers or school boards because of their decision to homeschool. In such a case, HSLDA provides free legal advice and representation to members.  Although it is very unlikely that a PEI homeschooler should need HSLDA’s legal advice, it is good to support them as ‘insurance’ and in order to support homeschoolers across the country.

PEICHE (PEI Christian Home Educators):
   PEICHE is a provincial organization which provides a voice and encouragement to all PEI homeschoolers.  PEICHE has been very low-key lately, partly because things have been running smoothly, and partly through procrastination. PEICHE’s mission includes ensuring that certain events and activities are in place, eg seminars, science fairs, etc.  As well, we get involved when there are situations that affect all homeschoolers, such as with the change in the Regulations.  PEICHE has no authority, but is intended to facilitate and advance the interests and efforts of individual families.


There are a number of support groups which meet to discuss and help members with their day-to-day homeschooling:

    MOTH Support Group: "MOTH" stands for "Managers of their Homes" written by Steve and Teri Maxwell.  It is a book which helps homeschooling mothers set up schedules to stay on top of things. This group started several years ago to initially discuss scheduling, but has evolved to be a general support group.

    Charlotte Mason (CM) Support Group:  In this group we gather to discuss different aspects of the Charlotte Mason method, and encourage one another to implement some of her ideas. We discuss various parenting concerns as well.
Both these groups meet bimonthly in Charlottetown.

   Titus 2 Mothers:  This is a support groups for homeschooling mothers which meets in the Summerside area. The name comes from the Bible book of Titus, where, in chapter 2 there is a discussion of family relationships, in particular older women are exhorted to mentor younger women, and encourage them “to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home to be kind,” etc.

    Website:
www.peihomeschool.com is a website which provides connection and communication between PEI homeschoolers. Through it we can send out notices about events or other items of interest. There is a Calendar to list what is going on. Membership is open to all PEI homeschoolers. Non-members can access only limited parts of the site, so there is really a lot more there than what you may have been able to see if you’ve already been there.  Visit the site for further details, or contact moderator if you have any questions.

Homeschooling Resources:
   Various curriculum suppliers are listed on the homeschool website; many more can be found by doing an internet search.

PEI Department of Education: 
    The Department will lend regular school curriculum supplies to homeschoolers (for a deposit of $50) Most homeschoolers make little use of this, since curriculum especially designed for homeschooling is generally easily available and better suited to our purposes.

Homeschool and More:
   This Curriculum supplier is located in NB, and has a website which you can peruse. You will also want a catalogue. It will be difficult to narrow down and make choices from all the material available, so talk to others. The spring HENB conference is a good place to see what HSandMore as well as other suppliers have to offer.


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