Home schooling fascinates me. My current kids are too old to home school, but it's something my brother is encouraging his wife to do. But she's not a "teacher." Are most homeschooling parents teachers? If not, have you taken classes or how are you qualified to home school? Does each state have guidelines that you follow? Do you have to be a college graduate? How does this work?
DD18 just asked me if our schools check on home schooled kids....:dunce: Do they? How is this regulated? How do you know if your kids are on track?
I have noticed more & more classes are being offered through our community colleges & park districts for home schoolers. Do you guys do these classes at all?
I'm just intrigued.
hsmomof6 basically said it all.
Indiana is not too restrictive either, but I think Indiana is more along the lines of making no rules at all, where Illinois actually has laws saying there arent restrictions...did that make sense?
In Indiana the only rule is that you have 180 days of instruction (you pick the days and you record them however you want). You can be asked by the superintendent of schools for your are to show your "proof" of 180 days of instruction.
My degree is not in teaching, but I do have multiple advanced degrees. But if I didnt that would not mean I could not teach. With homeschooling, you are not managing a classroom, you are simply teaching your children. The best way it was explained to me when I was first asking was that you start off in the elementary years by being your child's teacher, but due to the lack of testing and focus on passing a test, you actually help them learn to just love learning...around middle school age, they start to do some work on their own without so much teaching from you, but rather tutoring as needed...by high school in many subjects the student is a co-learner with you. When my son was taking Algebra II this past year I DID NOT TEACH EACH LESSON AT ALL. He had a textbook that had great instructions in it. He was assigned a lesson and he used the textbook 85% of the time to get an understanding of the lesson. About 10% of the time I had to actually teach it because it just wasnt clicking (and this often meant I had to go "re-learn" the work myself) and the other 5% we had to seek outside help. Since there is a sense of learning just for the sake of learning, it is ok for the parent to not know all the answers even as the teacher, because you are encouraging the student to learn how to find the answers. With the internet, it is now so easy to homeschool because there is so much info out there. Next year when he went into Calculus, he woudl be taking the classes at Prarrie State becuase it would be way to much for me.
We did do a standardized test (the Iowa Test) through Bob Jones at the beginning of this year. Dont know if I will routinely test my girls or not, but definitely not early on.
What attracked me to homeschooling was the fact that I can actually have the opportunity to have my children really learn to just simply love learning. I also do a lot of our work based on a Christian Worldview, but that is a perk because of our Christian faith. If I wasnt a Christian, I still would love the idea of being able to tailor learning to make my child have a desire to learn rather than past a test.
