Okay, my kids are two and four, it's not exactly "school," but we do lots of learning! And here's how we do it (PS Scroll to the end for a somewhat shocking revelation:)
I fall somewhere between classical education and unschooling. What a combo, right? Basically, I love learning, I think it's important for my kids to learn (which they also love to do) and I think it's important to tune in to their interests. What this doesn't mean is skipping important things they're not as interested in though. For a four year old, this obviously isn't a big deal. But I do still try and get him to sit down with me and do a little reading and writing a few times a week, even though it's not his favorite. I do my best to make it fun and usually we enjoy five or ten minutes of drawing and reading together. No biggie, no pressure, but just trying to dip our toes in the important areas.
Mostly though, homeschooling for us looks like LOTS of reading, everything from picture books to chapter books on subjects from electricity to history, black holes to tree houses.
And when I'm feeling energetic we do science experiments (we even took notes on the one above!) and art projects. In fact, nearly everything we do falls under the umbrella of homeschooling. Trip to the zoo? Educational! Baking with mom? Totally educational! I love that about homeschooling:)
But an interesting thing occured recently. I've been planning to supplement the homeschooling with plenty of classes. I want to sign Sam up for karate, swim lessons and some sort of musical something. And our children's theater offers some great classes that I thought we'd try. And then for some reason, even though I haven't even considered the idea of preschool in the past, I just had the thought that maybe Sam would really love it... So, I checked out a Montessori school and a Challenger school, and thought they were both great. It occured to me that preschool might be a great supplement to homeschooling. I'm not prepared to let him go every day, and I don't think he needs to. But I think he'll really love it a few mornings a week. We did a trial visit and he even got up during show and tell and talked about a leaf he had brought with him:) So, we're thinking about it, and it kind of surprised me. We're not closed to the idea of homeschool, by any means, just opening up to the idea of other types of learning. Have you ever found yourself drastically changing your ideas mid-stream?
PS Do you homeschool? What do you do with your kids for their education? I'm so curious about how other people do it!
