Fun Homeschooling Toddler Activities: Before you buy curriculum...

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Before you buy curriculum...

...check out what your family can use for free at the library. My county's library system, for example, has the complete set of Hooked on Phonics, along with 528 other phonics resources. They have almost all of the Signing Time DVD's (which would be $25 each otherwise - we've used 15 of them for FREE). They have all kinds of science experiment books. I found a great one for toddlers ages 2-5. They even have math textbooks! If you want sometime in particular, even if your local library doesn't have it, the wider county library system, where your card will work, probably will have it or something comparable. Also, almost all libraries have special play and reading times that are age specific from babies on through adults, and that is great for social development. The library at the last place where we lived (we've moved) even had special bi-monthly music time followed by a craft time for all aged children. I didn't like the baby time at the new place where we moved, but a local library only 10 minutes away had a fabulous one, and we went there every Thursday all year. If you want more socializing time for yourself and your child(ren), you can even make the rounds, going to different libraries on different days of the week -lots of families do this. Seriously, if you haven't tapped into this resource, don't spend another cent until you've seen what you can get from your tax dollars at the library.

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Reasons to Homeschool

These reasons are not particular to toddlers. I am more writing this to remind myself later. I am adding to it as I go.

1. It is a well-established fact that physical activity is really important for the human brain to learn well, but, especially now with physical education programs being phased out more and more, our schools are set up in such a way that kids are expected to learn sitting still for 6-8 hours per day. Then they are sent home with a mountain of homework, which, if justice is done to it, requires even more sitting still. Homeschooling allows for more freedom in the schedule and flexibility in the form of education to allow for much more movement and exercise.

2. Sleep deprivation. This especially hits teenagers. Research has documented that teenagers get their best sleep by going to bed and waking up later than children and adults. But middle schools and high schools start around 7:30 am, making it impossible for teenagers to get the sleep that will enable their brains to function and thus learn well. Homeschooling allows for each individual child to sleep at the times most appropriate for that child at his/her particular stage of development.

3. Learning Styles. Different people learn differently, but a class with 20-25 kids in it simply cannot accommodate the learning styles of each child. This leads to some kids deciding "I can't do math," and then blocking it out, when really the issue is the way in which math is being taught. In the homeschooling model, the mother, who knows her children best, can work with the children's particular learning styles in mind.

4. Different people have different gifts. There are many ways to be "smart," as Gardner's Multiple Intelligences famously documented. Yet, the traditional education system is set up such that all children are judged on the basis of certain intelligences. Thus, many kids end up being labeled "stupid," because the ways in which they are created to be smart are not graded in school. This is ridiculous, because it is not the way the post-school world works - after school, what really matters is your gift. Even worse, because children's individual gifts are not adequately explored and developed, kids in college are still trying to figure out what to do with their lives, and many persons in my generation seems to have spent their twenties STILL trying to answer that question. Homeschooling allows for focused attention to, identification of, and development of individual gifts.

5. Children learn what they live. School is an environment that disappears when you graduate. So even children who adapt very well to the school environment have a rude shock awaiting them when it is over, because the real world just is not organized like the educational system. For example:

5.a. Socialization. Once an adult, life becomes multi-generational. You are thrown into an age group ("adult") with people who wear clothing, talk, act, and believe things from another time altogether, like your parents. I remember the look on a teenager's face when she asked, "What Sunday School class will I be in now?" when she was graduating. When she realized the "adult" classes were the answer, she was bewildered and didn't come. She was completely unprepared from her life to that point to be in a class with people 20-30 years apart from one another in age. Spending the overwhelming majority of your time for most of you life only around people exactly your own age, plus or minus 3 does not exactly prepare an individual for learning to call other persons, who make up the majority of the rest of the world, "my friends."

5.b. Kids in school often learn to find their work to be boring and unrewarding. It is a hoop to jump through. It should not be a surprise that this is producing adults who find their work to be boring and unrewarding, a hoop to jump through for money.

Fun Homeschooling Toddler Activities

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Before you buy curriculum...

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Reasons to Homeschool

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