A New Take On the "Socialization" Question

Several weeks ago at a girls' night some friends of mine were asking me questions about homeschool.  I'm always happy to answer any questions. 

Of course, the socialization issue came up.  I've read several blogs that have eloquently stated rebuttals and explanations as to why socialization is not something to worry about.  I'm not as eloquent as them.  So for the moment, forgive me for the gross oversimplification: Socialization is a myth and a non-issue.  Just trust me for now.

But then one friend said something that really threw me for a loop.  She said that her father holds an important position at our local LDS Family Services counseling center.  And he claimed that ALL of the young missionaries who came to get counseling because they could not function in their companionships were homeschooled. 

What??  How is that possible??  Homeschoolers don't know how to get along with and live with strangers from all walks of life?  Homeschoolers are bad missionaries? 

My friend was asking how one would combat that.  I had no good answer for her and for the evening, it seemed like I would be doing my children a disservice if I didn't send them to public high school (at least) so they could learn to associate with all types of people. 

I've always said that my kids learn just as much about bullies, teasing, and having to deal with people they may not like at the moment by being at home than they would by going to school.  And I can't see how sitting in 6 different classrooms for 6 hours of the day would help teach them "real life" people skills.  But maybe I was wrong??

Working under the assumption that this statistic my friend's father claimed is true, I was eager to learn more.  I contemplated and prayed about it and discussed it with Hubby.  Hubby is in favor of our children having the option of going to public high school (a bridge we will cross when we come to it).  But even so, he was able to help me think things through and alleviate some of my fears.

But even more helpful was a conversation I had with a new friend I met, Sarah.  Sarah was homeschooled from 5th grade through graduation, homeschooled her teenage sibling through high school, and is currently homeschooling several of her own young children.  She was able to give me some great insight. (And for the record, she didn't seem one bit socially awkward to me.)

Basically, Sarah observed that homeschooled kids who were "brainiac," socially awkward, and had a hard time making friends had parents who were also introverted, socially awkward, and would rather stay at home and have their child be their only friend (and it would be natural for this kind of parent to be interested in homeschooling.)  There's probably a "Nature vs. Nurture" discussion that could be had there.  She also observed that these kids usually had zero or one sibling. 

That makes total sense to me!  So I'm going to assume that this was the case with the majority of missionaries that my friend's dad counseled.

So to any readers who are considering homeschooling and have several kids, don't worry!  They'll probably be fine. 

To any readers who are considering homeschooling their only child, maybe just make an extra effort to make sure your kid is involved with church groups, enrichment classes, sports teams, scouts, community activities, etc. 

It's nice to have more of an answer to this dilemma I briefly experienced.  But either way, the bottom line is that Hubby and I prayed about our decision to homeschool.  And we have had confirmation time and again that this is the right choice for our children right now.  If that means in the future that they will have an extra challenge when they serve a mission or go live in college dorms, then they will have to deal with it and learn and grow when they come to it.  I trust that our lives are in God's hands and that He has a plan for my family. 

Two Amazing Websites for Reading Books Online

I introduced our summer reading challenges to the kids tonight.  It went over really well!  They all seemed super excited about their bags and wanted to fill them as full as they could with books to read.

While I did let my nieces and nephews borrow several books from my own collection, they will need some more new stories soon.  And they don't have a public library close by that they can go to once or twice a week, like we do.  In fact, their local branch is even closed in the summer!  So I found these two great sites for them.  My kids and I explored them today and fell in love!

Both of these are totally 100% FREE!

1. We Give Books  http://www.wegivebooks.org/

From their site: "We are dedicated to delivering award-winning books so you can read and share beautiful stories with the children in your life. By giving you great books for young readers, our goal is to create memories that will last a lifetime. Books are the heart of We Give Books — books for reading and books for giving!"

You do have to sign up with your email address, but you don't have to download anything.  They have a huge database of children's books that is searchable by title, author, age, and genre.  You just click on the book and then you can click to turn the pages and read the story to yourself (there's no audio.)


2. Storyline Online  http://www.storylineonline.net/

From their site: "The Screen Actor's Guild Foundation is proud to bring you Storyline Online, an on-line streaming video program featuring SAG members reading children's books aloud!"

The videos cut between the actor holding the book reading, and looking at pictures from the book (some of which have been animated).  I like to put on the closed captioning so my girls can read along.  They have activity ideas available for each story, too.  There are 25 stories available.  I hope they make more!

Summer Reading

My brother and sister-in-law send their kids to public school.  So whenever any one of our kids does something quirky, we like to tease, "Oh, it's because you homeschool/ It's because you send them to public school."  Good times. 

 

Well, this summer I decided to fully embrace the image I have in my head of the weird-homeschooling-aunt-who-makes-the-kids-learn-during-summer-break.  So I set to work making book bags for my three kiddos plus my four nieces/nephews.

 

I made two different sizes.  The bigger ones are for the little kids and they can fit the largest picture books.  The smaller ones, for the kids who can read, are a good size for several leveled readers or chapter books.  The idea is that they can look through my personal library, pick out several books to start with, and store them in their bags.

Also inside the bags, the kids will find:

* Book Journal-found in the dollar section at Target.  At the end of the summer, I'll give them a candy for each book that they write about.
* Book log/activity sheet from our local public library.  Once the kids fill these up, I'll take them to the library so they can pick out a free book to keep.
* Book log from Barnes and Noble.  The kids will each get a free book for completing this, too.
* Zippered pencil case and pencil.  These were provided by our public library when we signed up for the summer reading program.
* That rectangle piece of cardboard at the top right of the picture came inside the pencil cases.  We're going to do some fun bookmark craft with it!

The Lincoln Memorial...Really??

I got this picture in a United States themed poster pack.  It's the Lincoln Memorial.  But would you have known that if it didn't say so at the bottom of the picture? 

 

 

If you were going to teach grade-school kids about the Lincoln Memorial, don't you think you would show them a picture like this?  You know, one that is looking at the front where you can see the iconic statue of Lincoln inside?

 

But no, this is a photo of the back of the memorial...with trees obscuring half of it.  There's a better picture of it on the penny!  The absolute ridiculousness of it almost makes me laugh.  Almost.  I just...I can't...WHY??

Hubby thinks it's hilarious and actually really likes it because he thinks Lincoln is overrated (he's probably going to kill me for that oversimplification.)  He even put it up on his man-cave wall. 

You're Beautiful

I LOVE this song! Just now we were watching the above video for What Makes You Beautiful  by One Direction. The chorus repeats "You don't know you're beautiful.". So when it came to the chorus, Secundus chuckled and told me, "I know that I'm beautiful!"

Then she told me that this song is silly because everyone should know that they're beautiful.

I hope she never forgets that!

I support your right to choose the best educational path for your child...

Blogging homeschool moms post all the time about the stupid/ignorant/silly/annoying questions they receive from non-homeschoolers (my favorite is here.)  A related frequent topic is "how to handle criticism and deal with lack of support." 

I am amazed and pleased to say, however, that I have never encountered anywhere near the amount of disapproval that I expected to. 

Whenever it comes up in conversation, people will usually respond with something like, "Oh, cool.  My cousin/friend does that, too."  And anytime one of my friends asks me about it, I feel that their questions are sincere and come from a place of genuine, respectful curiosity. 

Homeschooling is definitely becoming more "mainstream" and accepted.  Even people of older generations have expressed encouragement to me, including my Grandma!

Bottom line is, I am so thankful that I have the freedom and opportunity to educate my children in the way I feel is best for them.  And I am even more thankful for the support that I receive from those around me. 

I hope I am likewise showing all my friends the same support for the education decisions they have made for their own children!

Reading Tent Town 2

This post won't make any sense unless you first go here to read about the first time we did Tent Town.  Ok, go. 

 

 Did you read it?  Alright, moving on...

 

This time we had the same amount of kids, but less moms and one more tent.  That was a little hard because there weren't any extra moms around to wrangle the littlest kids.  So my son (3 years old) and the other 2 year old boys mostly wandered instead of sitting down to listen to stories.  Oh well.  I'm just happy that Tertius at least listened to the food story and the story that I read. 

 

 

Speaking of the "food story," this time instead of Stone Soup, Cindy read The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) by Philemon Sturges.  After the story, the kids moved to my patio where they made their own English muffin pizza.  (Last time the food tent was just way too crowded with all the tables we needed to accommodate all the kids.  So instead of using a bigger tent, we just removed the tables.)  The toppings we had available were pepperoni, Italian sausage, olives, and mozzarella and cheddar cheese. 

 

Tip: Pre-label a square of tin foil with permanent marker so the kids can make their pizzas on there and then easily move them to a cookie sheet. 

 

 

While the kids visited the other story tents, the pizza was popped in the oven for a few minutes and the mess was cleared away.

 

The stories that were read this time were: King Bidgood, The Hiccupotamus, Caps for Sale, A Girl and Her Gator, The Gruffalo, a book about trains, and a book about fire trucks. 

When everyone was done listening to stories, they came back to the patio to find their cooked pizzas on a plate with the ingredients for a fruit dessert pizza. 

 

 

Tip: To make things easy, buy sugar cookies from the bakery.  To make things less messy, scoop a glob of Cool Whip Frosting (so yummy!) for each child with a large craft stick before they sit down to decorate.



Everyone was sent home with these cute books I made out of Hershey's Nuggets.

A big thanks to Cindy for helping me and making these fun events possible!  Her and I (Ok, mostly her) were coming up with other fun ideas for Reading Tent Town so here they are:

*Do it monthly and maybe rotate between homes.  If we were to do this, I don't think we would do a food story each time.
*Do it in the evening.  Roast hotdogs and marshmallows over a fire pit.  Have the kids come in their pajamas.  With older kids, it could even be a backyard sleep-over afterwards.
*Instead of making lunch, do a craft.  You could even have an easy craft (and/or coloring page) available based on each story read.  The kids have to choose at the end which was their favorite story and then do the corresponding craft. 

I'm sure we'll be doing another one of these soon!



Another Trip to the Textbook Warehouse

Go here to read about when I talked about the textbook warehouse.

Today I went to the textbook warehouse again.  This time they had changed the location and there were only 8 shelves as opposed to a whole wall that was practically full floor to ceiling. 

I was very disappointed at the lack of selection.  But somehow I still managed to make it out of there with about 50 books (reference, novels, picture books, phonics readers.)

I love shopping for free books!

You've got to be brave to homeschool...

This morning Primus had a wonderful revelation.  Quite out of nowhere she suddenly exclaimed, "Mom!  Merida is homeschooled!  She had to learn all those things from her mom at home."

An obituary for a toy...

A great toy has finally bit the dust. 

 

 

This old workhorse faithfully served two generations. 

 

It has been used as a vacuum, witch's broom, horse, guitar, cello, oar, and even sledgehammer.  (It was probably the sledgehammer play that finally did her in.) 

 

Even though you were often confiscated, you will be missed.

"Mommy, Daddy love you!"

We've been in our house now for almost a year.  But I still haven't put pictures on the wall yet.  The only thing that's up is a collage of wedding photos above our fireplace. 

 

This afternoon totally out of nowhere, Tertius stared laughing and said, "Mommy, Daddy love you!"

 

I asked him how he knew that Daddy loved me.  He pointed to this picture

 

and said, "Daddy cuddling you!"  Then he laughed some more. 

I am so glad I got our wedding pictures hung up.  I think it's really important for children to know that their parents love each other.  I love that seeing this picture brought so much joy to my little boy!

Over in the Meadow

Remember this song?  For our Mommy-and-Me music class, we found this really cool version. 

Recently we spent a lot of time in the car one day and my girls had this song on their mind so they sang it a lot.  Good thing there are so many verses so it didn't get too annoying!

But the best part was when they started making up their own verses.  For each of the verses they figured out that they had to choose a habitat, describe something about the habitat, pick an animal that lives there, and choose an action for the animal to do.  It was nice that we had just finished studying habitats, so they had lots of material fresh on their minds.

Each verse also includes a number so admittedly, their verses didn't rhyme correctly, but I was super impressed at their creativity!

Here's a couple examples of what they came up with:

Over in the jungle
where the vines grow long,
Lived an old mother monkey
and her little monkeys 12.
Swing said the mother.
We swing said the 12.

Over in the dessert
where the sun is so hot,
Lived an old mother camel
and her little camels 15.
Walk said the mother.
We walk said the 15.

Evaporation Experiment: Ruined

Today we talked about evaporation and water turning from a liquid to a gas.  So we filled a glass with water, put it out in the sun, and planned to check on it in a couple of days to see what happened. 

The problem is, it rained this afternoon.  It didn't rain a whole lot, but still, it kind of defeated the purpose. 

It's a good thing we've done this same basic experiment before, so they already have seen this concept in action.  I guess now it's time to talk about the water cycle since the rain phase so rudely interrupted!

Being the Weird Aunt

Our nine year old niece spent a night with us over Spring Break.  I told her about when her father was in high school and that he did shot put and discus with the track and field team. 

When Primus heard this, she excitedly told us that they did discus in the "Ancient Greek games"  (aka Olympics.) 

Prompted by that comment, we found out that our niece had never heard of Ancient Greece, Athens, Zeus, or anything else related. 

She might as well have stuck a dagger in the heart of Hubby (or as I like to call him, Mr. History)!

I think I might just have to be the weird Aunt and host a history camp or something this summer.  :)  I'm already planning on giving the older kids a reading assignment during their vacation. 

Adding More Structure to Our School

Just thinking out loud here...

I tend to be a pretty "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of person.  That means the kids often don't know what the plan for the day for school is until the very moment I finally decide it.  They will often ask me if they can do "such-and-such" after our current task.  They hear a lot of "maybe" in response.  I sometimes think I need to introduce a little more structure and predictability to our day.

I think I'm going to start having Primus do a page of handwriting practice on Monday/Wednesday and a journal prompt on Tuesday/Thursday.  Maybe Fridays we will do art projects.  And I should put on some classical music (or Piano Guys) for times when I want them to be doing quiet independent work.