I received some emails today from a local homeschool yahoo group that were just too good not to share with you all!
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#1
Since you may be having conversations about homeschooling with relatives this weekend, you might be interested and share the following article and research findings below. (Thank you to Dale for sending this website!)
Wishing you a warm, fun and gratitude-filled time with family,
Jasmin
Social Development
http://www.k12academics.com/alternative-education/homeschooling/homeschooling-methods/social-development
A common concern voiced about homeschooled children is they lack the social interaction with peers that a school environment provides. Many homeschooling families address these concerns by joining numerous organizations, including independent study programs and specialized enrichment groups for PE, Art, Music, and Debate. Most are also active in community groups. Homeschooled children generally socialize with other children the same way that school children do: outside of school, via personal visits and through sports teams, clubs and religious groups.
Some homeschooling proponents have argued that homeschooling actually enhances the student's social development. Arguing that the school years are the only time in a person's life that he or she will be artificially segregated into chronologically-determined groups, these advocates assert that homeschoolers have a more normal interaction with persons across the age spectrum. This, in turn, results in more influence on the child from adults, and less from other children, leading to more mature youngsters.
In 2003, the National Home Education Research Institute conducted a survey of over 7,300 adults who had been homeschooled (over 5,000 for more than seven years). Here are some of the study's findings:
"Homeschool graduates are active and involved in their communities. Seventy-one percent participate in an ongoing community service activity (e.g., coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association), compared with 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages."
"Homeschoolers are more involved in civic affairs and vote in much higher percentages than their peers. For example, 76% of homeschool graduates surveyed between the ages of 18–24 voted within the last five years, compared with only 29% of the relevant U.S. population. The numbers of homeschool graduates who vote are even greater in the older age brackets, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared with a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace."
"Of those adults who were homeschooled, 58.9% report that they are 'very happy' with life (compared with 27.6% for the general U.S. population). Moreover, 73.2% of homeschooled adults find life 'exciting', compared with 47.3% of the general population."
ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center of the U.S. government, has published multiple articles on homeschooling. Here's an excerpt from one which examined several studies on homeschool socialization:
"According to the findings, children who were schooled at home 'gained the necessary skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed to function in society...at a rate similar to that of conventionally schooled children.'
"The researcher found no difference in the self concept of children in the two groups. Stough maintains that 'insofar as self concept is a reflector of socialization, it would appear that few home-schooled children are socially deprived, and that there may be sufficient evidence to indicate that some home-schooled children have a higher self concept than conventionally schooled children.'"
Email #2, from Nancy:
And read more here:
Education.com article on the research: http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Socialization/
And this article from Homeschool Review has appeared on these lists before:
http://homeschoolreview.blogspot.com/2011/03/socialization-versus-socializing.html
Here is HSLDA's brochure in pdf form on homeschooling and socialization/citizenship, etc., with charts to show the research results, with homeschoolers having much higher scores.
http://www.hslda.org/research/ray2003/HomeschoolingGrowsUp.pdf
My favorite part of the studies is that everyone talks about the 'real world' vs. homeschooling but I can't think of anything more real than children and teens who hang out together with their parents, their friends' parents and friends siblings, and actually talk and have fun as opposed to children who have endured the artificial segregation at most schools. I found that my children's friends in traditional schools felt uncomfortable speaking to us parents or their siblings.
And something you might also want to do is to write a daily log of your activities (whether it is academic, cooking from scratch, making a giant tube contraption for the pet rat, or searching online for greek word roots) and then compile that log into a few paragraphs for each "subject area" at the end of the month (for your consultant teacher and/or your own records) and then review it at the end of your year and write a one-page summary for that time period. I know it amazed me to see what we accomplished when it didn't seem like we were doing enough "school" stuff. Then if you like, mail it (with love and intent to share) to the grandparents - like I did - (especially if they are doubtful about homeschooling merits) and hopefully they will share it with the doubting aunts and uncles also. They might just be amazed at how many books your child has read, the interesting volunteer experiences they had, how many group activities they did, and the unique things they studied, and tell you that they had no idea that homeschooling was like this.
- Nancy
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Addicted to Distraction
Came up on an interesting little article today:
http://www.homeschoolmarketplace.com/e-zines/ejournalaug1611.html
Makes me feel a little better about our family not having iAnything. : )
lisa c.
http://www.homeschoolmarketplace.com/e-zines/ejournalaug1611.html
Makes me feel a little better about our family not having iAnything. : )
lisa c.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Sentinel article about Ocean Grove
Last one for tonight:
Here is an article that might be useful for some of you thinking about homeschooling in this area (and which I forwarded to all the grandparents to show them that we are part of a "real" school ; )
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localstories/ci_17604808
Here is an article that might be useful for some of you thinking about homeschooling in this area (and which I forwarded to all the grandparents to show them that we are part of a "real" school ; )
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localstories/ci_17604808
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
homeschool and technology
Just an article bit that was forwarded on to me today:
---------------------------------------------
Hi all,
The NY Times Magazine has several nice articles and especially one by Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired, his article about home schooling his 8th grader has a list of tips about dealing with Technology.
Here’s the article.
Achieving Techno-Literacy
By KEVIN KELLY
Published: September 16, 2010
This past year my wife and I home-schooled our eighth-grade son. One school day, he and I decided we would make fire the old way — out of nothing but plant materials and our own hustle. Our son watched a seemingly endless series of instructional survival videos onYouTube as part of his research. He chose the bow method based on our physics class about friction. He then constructed a bow from a branch in the woods, carved a stick for the spindle and added a fiber string. It was mighty tough going. We spent hours refining the apparatus. He was surprised by the enormous amount of bodily energy required to focus onto a very small spot, and how a minuscule, nearly invisible bit of fuel, once sparked, can quickly amplify into a flame and then a fire. Chemistry, physics, history and gym all in one lesson. And, man, when you are 13 years old and Prometheus, it’s exhilarating!
One day our student would dissect and diagram the inside organs of flowers; the next he’d write short stories or poems and then revise them; and the next day we’d solve logic problems with algebra, then he’d work on plans for a chicken coop and maybe we’d do a field trip to a car factory. He also went through eighth-grade textbooks in history, grammar, geometry and the like. This type of home-schooling is really nothing special. Our son was merely one of more than a million students home-schooled in the United States last year. Our reasons for home-schooling were not uncommon, either. We wanted to create an ideal learning environment. For the previous seven years, our son was enrolled in challenging schools. His grades were excellent, but the amount of homework was grinding him down. The intense high school he was planning to attend promised even more work. He asked if he could be home-schooled for his last year before high school, and by a quirk of life, this was a year our schedules would permit our role as home-school teachers.
Now that the year is done, I am struck that the fancy technology supposedly crucial to an up-to-the-minute education was not a major factor in its success. Of course, technology in the broadest sense was everywhere in our classroom. There was an inexpensive microscope on the kitchen table and an old digital camera to record experiments. There was a PC always on for research. Our son was also a big user of online tutorials. Of particular note is Kahn Academy, which offers nearly 1,600 short high-quality tutorials on algebra, chemistry, history, economics and other subjects — all created by one guy, and all free. The Internet was also essential for my wife and me as we researched the best textbooks, the best projects, the best approaches.
But the computer was only one tool of many. Technology helped us learn, but it was not the medium of learning. It was summoned when needed. Technology is strange that way. Education, at least in the K-12 range, is more about child rearing than knowledge acquisition. And since child rearing is primarily about forming character, instilling values and cultivating habits, it may be the last area to be directly augmented by technology.
Even so, as technology floods the rest of our lives, one of the chief habits a student needs to acquire is technological literacy — and we made sure it was part of our curriculum. By technological literacy, I mean the latest in a series of proficiencies children should accumulate in school. Students begin with mastering the alphabet and numbers, then transition into critical thinking, logic and absorption of the scientific method. Technological literacy is something different: proficiency with the larger system of our invented world. It is close to an intuitive sense of how you add up, or parse, the manufactured realm. We don’t need expertise with every invention; that is not only impossible, it’s not very useful. Rather, we need to be literate in the complexities of technology in general, as if it were a second nature.
Technology will change faster than we can teach it. My son studied the popular programming language C++ in his home-school year; that knowledge could be economically useless soon. The accelerating pace of technology means his eventual adult career does not exist yet. Of course it won’t be taught in school. But technological smartness can be. Here is the kind of literacy that we tried to impart:
• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.
• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.
• Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.
• Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign.
• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.
• Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume?
• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?
• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.
• Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.
I don’t think my son mastered all those principles in one year, but he got a start. For the most part, learning at home is more demanding than learning in a classroom because it requires more self-direction. On one particularly long day, with books piled up and papers spread out, my son was slumped in his chair.
“Is everything O.K.?” I asked.
“It’s hard,” he said. “I not only have to be the student, I also have to be the teacher.”
“Yes! So what have you learned about being a teacher?”
“You have to teach the student — that’s me — not only to learn stuff but to learn how to learn.”
“And have you?”
“I think I am doing better as the student than the teacher. I’m learning how to learn, but I can’t wait till next year when I have some real good teachers — better than me.”
He had learned the most critical thing: how to keep learning. A month ago he entered high school eager to be taught — not facts, or even skills, but a lifelong process that would keep pace with technology’s rapid, ceaseless teaching.
If we listen to technology, and learn to be proficient in its ways, then we’ll be able to harness this most powerful force in the world. If not, we’ll be stuck at the bottom of the class.
---------------------------------------------
Hi all,
The NY Times Magazine has several nice articles and especially one by Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired, his article about home schooling his 8th grader has a list of tips about dealing with Technology.
Here’s the article.
Achieving Techno-Literacy
By KEVIN KELLY
Published: September 16, 2010
This past year my wife and I home-schooled our eighth-grade son. One school day, he and I decided we would make fire the old way — out of nothing but plant materials and our own hustle. Our son watched a seemingly endless series of instructional survival videos onYouTube as part of his research. He chose the bow method based on our physics class about friction. He then constructed a bow from a branch in the woods, carved a stick for the spindle and added a fiber string. It was mighty tough going. We spent hours refining the apparatus. He was surprised by the enormous amount of bodily energy required to focus onto a very small spot, and how a minuscule, nearly invisible bit of fuel, once sparked, can quickly amplify into a flame and then a fire. Chemistry, physics, history and gym all in one lesson. And, man, when you are 13 years old and Prometheus, it’s exhilarating!
One day our student would dissect and diagram the inside organs of flowers; the next he’d write short stories or poems and then revise them; and the next day we’d solve logic problems with algebra, then he’d work on plans for a chicken coop and maybe we’d do a field trip to a car factory. He also went through eighth-grade textbooks in history, grammar, geometry and the like. This type of home-schooling is really nothing special. Our son was merely one of more than a million students home-schooled in the United States last year. Our reasons for home-schooling were not uncommon, either. We wanted to create an ideal learning environment. For the previous seven years, our son was enrolled in challenging schools. His grades were excellent, but the amount of homework was grinding him down. The intense high school he was planning to attend promised even more work. He asked if he could be home-schooled for his last year before high school, and by a quirk of life, this was a year our schedules would permit our role as home-school teachers.
Now that the year is done, I am struck that the fancy technology supposedly crucial to an up-to-the-minute education was not a major factor in its success. Of course, technology in the broadest sense was everywhere in our classroom. There was an inexpensive microscope on the kitchen table and an old digital camera to record experiments. There was a PC always on for research. Our son was also a big user of online tutorials. Of particular note is Kahn Academy, which offers nearly 1,600 short high-quality tutorials on algebra, chemistry, history, economics and other subjects — all created by one guy, and all free. The Internet was also essential for my wife and me as we researched the best textbooks, the best projects, the best approaches.
But the computer was only one tool of many. Technology helped us learn, but it was not the medium of learning. It was summoned when needed. Technology is strange that way. Education, at least in the K-12 range, is more about child rearing than knowledge acquisition. And since child rearing is primarily about forming character, instilling values and cultivating habits, it may be the last area to be directly augmented by technology.
Even so, as technology floods the rest of our lives, one of the chief habits a student needs to acquire is technological literacy — and we made sure it was part of our curriculum. By technological literacy, I mean the latest in a series of proficiencies children should accumulate in school. Students begin with mastering the alphabet and numbers, then transition into critical thinking, logic and absorption of the scientific method. Technological literacy is something different: proficiency with the larger system of our invented world. It is close to an intuitive sense of how you add up, or parse, the manufactured realm. We don’t need expertise with every invention; that is not only impossible, it’s not very useful. Rather, we need to be literate in the complexities of technology in general, as if it were a second nature.
Technology will change faster than we can teach it. My son studied the popular programming language C++ in his home-school year; that knowledge could be economically useless soon. The accelerating pace of technology means his eventual adult career does not exist yet. Of course it won’t be taught in school. But technological smartness can be. Here is the kind of literacy that we tried to impart:
• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.
• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.
• Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.
• Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign.
• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.
• Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume?
• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?
• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.
• Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.
I don’t think my son mastered all those principles in one year, but he got a start. For the most part, learning at home is more demanding than learning in a classroom because it requires more self-direction. On one particularly long day, with books piled up and papers spread out, my son was slumped in his chair.
“Is everything O.K.?” I asked.
“It’s hard,” he said. “I not only have to be the student, I also have to be the teacher.”
“Yes! So what have you learned about being a teacher?”
“You have to teach the student — that’s me — not only to learn stuff but to learn how to learn.”
“And have you?”
“I think I am doing better as the student than the teacher. I’m learning how to learn, but I can’t wait till next year when I have some real good teachers — better than me.”
He had learned the most critical thing: how to keep learning. A month ago he entered high school eager to be taught — not facts, or even skills, but a lifelong process that would keep pace with technology’s rapid, ceaseless teaching.
If we listen to technology, and learn to be proficient in its ways, then we’ll be able to harness this most powerful force in the world. If not, we’ll be stuck at the bottom of the class.
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