What is it like to be home schooled???

Question

What is it like to be home schooled???

Answer 1

its ok.......i'm being homeschooled for a year and i like it for the most part b/c for one i get finished early and two i can do alot more things since i'm more flexible in my schedule.

one of the down sides of it for is though is that i don't get to see many people and i'm a people person

Answer 2

Its   depends on where you live and what your parents are like....

I have a nice site for u where u get information about HomeSchooling.

http://www.OnlineStudyInfo.com

Best Regards

I Hop U like My Answer

Dr.Alisha

Answer 3

Its fun. Theres like this tutor orginization that i go to once a week, my friends all go there too so i see them once a week!

Answer 4

Like viewfromtheinside said, experiences will vary greatly from homeschooler to homeschooler.  

Here's our schedule.  We stick to it some days and others we don't, depending on what else is going on. It's that flexibility that I enjoy.

Get up at 7:00, feed the dogs, have breakfast

Do various household chores/gardening until 10:00, then have lunch.

"School" from 10:30 until 2:00.  I put school in quotation marks because we don't call it school in my house.  The mentioning of that word sends my kids running for the hills.  

Their "schooling" consists of whatever they want to do that day.  We are essentially unschoolers.  My requirements are that every day, they must read, they must write, and they must do some math.  Aside from that, they are free to choose what it is they will do, ranging from computer programs, educational television, researching a subject on the net, working on a project (science or art, for example) or whatever else they decide.  My requirement is that it be educational in some fashion

At 2:00, they wash up and head to a local youth/teen center, where they hang out with friends until 6:00.

On Wednesdays, this entire schedule is discarded.  It's a free day.  We hang out around the house, playing video games or surfing the net, or head out on a field trip or to a restaurant.

Overall, I think my kids enjoy it.  My eldest (15) went to public school through the second grade, but my youngest (8) has always been homeschooled.  I think what they enjoy the most is the freedom to explore their own interests.  Personally, I enjoy not having to run around my house like a mad-woman getting people to school on time, or dealing with tired kids after school who've brought home 3 hours of homework.  We are all much more relaxed, and happy, since we've been homeschooling.

Answer 5

Homeschooling varies with each and every family.

In my family I am the oldest (18) and also the only one that is homeschooled.  I have two younger siblings, 14 and 9.  At 6:15am I take the 9 year old to the bus stop and wait for him to get onto the bus.  The 14 year old goes to the bus stop between 7 and 7:20am.  Both my parents work.  So this means that I have the house to myself until 2pm when my mom gets home from work.

I do about 1-2 hours of "school work".  I use a correspondencore school/independent study course.  I like it because I do one subject at a time instead of doing 6 or 7 subjects at once.  

I do a lot of theory for both violin/alto sax.  I also do basic theory.  I listen to cds (all different types).  I practice playing violin/alto sax for 3 hours each day.  

I'll usually through in an hour of video games and some Mavis Becone Typing.

Answer 6

Well, that is going to be different from one family to another, but for my kids it is a rich and loving environment where they can progress according to their abilities without worries about being compared to others.  They can work 2 years "ahead" in one subject and 2 years "behind" in another if that is where their abilities place them.   While we have certain required subjects and topics of study, if they are more interested in one topic we can stop on that until we have thoroughly explored it.  For instance, if we are studying Earth Science and we get to the chapter on volcanoes, if my kids are more interested in this we can stay on the topic of volcanoes for several weeks, bringing home extra books from the library, making models, doing experiments about them, making lap-books, until the kids have either learned pretty much all they can, or until they start to lose interest, then we can move on to the next chapter in our main text.  If the next chapter doesn't spark much interest, then we just do the work in the main text and move on, but if it does spark an interest we can stop on the next topic for a while too.

My kids interact with other kids through our church, through a homeschool co-op, and through neighborhood friends.  They are always treated as individuals rather than numbers that fill seats.  They have a teacher who is truly interested in their well being, emotionally, academically, socially, and spiritually.  They don't have their educational system re-hauled every time someone comes up with a new educationally method.  Instead they have a system that changes in response their actual needs, not just because someone thought it would be good to try something new.

I could go on, but I won't.

Answer 7

Its AWESOME!!! But it really depends on where you live and what your parents are like...

Answer 8

The expeiences of public schoolers from school to school is probably more uniform than the experiences of homeschoolers from one family to another. You will even find huge variations form one school year to another with the same student. What I will do is describe some of the experiences that we have had and as others post you will see yet another facet.

Currently, this is what homeschooling is like in our family for my 8th grader.

6:30am - My son is typically up and on the computer about the time the sun comes up by his own choice. He has his own computer mod forum and he spends the first hour or so of the morning replying to posts, making improvements, and sharing with the others his current project status.

7:30am - Working on his current Blender project. He is learning to use this 3-D computer graphics and animation program. He wants to have a career in computer graphics design.

8:30am - On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, he signs in to his Literary Composition class. He has several online classes that I teach. I am on one side of the room teaching and he is on the other side, but the instruction occurs in an online classroom on the internet where several other homeschoolers from Canada and all across the US join us. We have full duplex audio, a whiteboard, text chat, and application sharing. This semester in Literary analysis, the students have done analysis on a wide variety of narrative genres: two novels, a screenplay, a  narrative poem, a comic, and we will have an optional analysis of a video game storyline. Mondays and Fridays the kids do not sign in to the online classroom. Instead they are to use that time to be reading and writing related to the analysis paper.

9:30am to 11:30am - He uses these hours between classes to work on his algebra homework and any extra time he needs for his two writing classes. Sometimes he will continue working on his Blender projects. This is also the time he makes sure he gets a good brunch before his last three classes of the day.

11:30 am - He signs in to the composition class on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The composition class is focusing exclusively on narrative genres this semester and dovetails the genres with the literary analysis class. The kids have created narratives of the following types this semester: short story or begining of a novel, autobiographical incidents, writing to a timed prompt (only 40 minutes to create a story based on a given prompt), poetic narrative, a group created radio script which we will be performing/recording soon, a comic strip, and then their final portfolio. Some of the highlights have been when we had a real comic artist in for an interview. He was great! He uses Monday and Fridays for writing.

12:30pm - Time for algebra. This is the one online class he has every weekday. It is the smallest of the classes. It is just my 8th grader and another one of the homeschool boys. I give a presentation on the new topic then ask the kids if they had any problems from the homewrok that gave them trouble. We work through any of them they didn't get right.

1:30pm Chemistry is next. It is the class with the largest number of students. Typically we have 8 to 10 homeschoolers in. Typically each module requires about two to four days of presentation then the remaining days of the two weeks per module are set aside for interactive practice. The kids try the problems on the slides and any that give them trouble can be requested for me to walk through how to solve it. We have done webcan labs and always have lab walk throughs where the lab gear can be picked up and manipulated on-screen fo rthe kids to be sure they understand the procedure and why they need to do what they need to do before trying the labs at home with their own lab gear. Mondays and Fridays are set aside for the students to do their at home labs, study, and take the module exam.

2:30pm until about 4pm - Typically several of the kids stay or log in after chemistry class is done. The classroom is open for the students to visit/chat or the kids can ask for extra help with coursework. When a student needs help, I can create a break out room with its own separate audio and chat system so we can concentrate on the subject matter apart from the chat in the main room. Text chat is recorded and I can see all text messages, even the directed chat. This helps parents relax in knowledge that the environment is monitored. The kids that drop in typically chat about video games, music, internet and computer topics, and computer graphic design (mostly 3-D). They can post images of what they are working on directlly to the whiteboard and point and draw on the screen to illustrate what they are talking about. Last week, one of the gals who has been perfecting an invention for the last six years used slides and the audio system to explain to the others how she made it. It was very interesting.

The rest of the day is completely free for him. He typically gets all his homework, when he has it, done in the mornings.