Homeschooling....

This is what I love about forums! This topic has ignited something in me and DH and I were talking about it yesterday. Early days for us but I can see it being a real positive experience for our family. DH has issues over the socialisation but we an work on that.

Thanks for starting the topic Flake

I've got a few friends that have homeschooled their now teens. The primary school years seem to have worked well with the ability to follow an interest, go on loads of interesting trips, join homeschool groups and families for things like sports, specialised classes or group discount rates to places like the zoo. You need to be able to afford to have one income coming in for a long time, and you don't seem to get a lot of money to go towards resources and things. The pluses are that the kids can cram a whole weeks school work into a few hours a day or 1-2 days per week then, in the absense of school assemblies, PE, singing etc, have plenty of free time to follow other interests. The family unit also seems to be much stronger and closer for most of them.

Now they are all high school age they seem to be leaving school with no real direction or qualifications though. I'm not sure whether that is because they have slightly unconventional parents, so are slightly unconventional teenagers, or whether they aren't getting the career development/preparation for work and tertiary studies that they would be getting at high school.

I'm not sure the reason for it, but there is a noticeable difference in work ethic and drive between the homeschoolers and the schoolers within the bigger group of friends. I'm only talking about 3-4 homeschooling families though so its unfair to assume this is the status quo. What you actually do with them when you are home, and the values you instill probably make a much bigger difference.