So, the Homeschooling is..

My children begged me to homeschool them for years. When my oldest daughters were in school, we lived in Tennessee and the rules for homeschooling seemed so complicated and unattainable and consequently, my oldest daughters never got their wishes of schooling at home fulfilled. Then, we moved to South Carolina, and the thought of homeschooling was a dead subject for a while. My second oldest daughter seemed unperturbed by finishing her highschooling here and graduated with no problems and lots of friends.  My youngest daughter started kindergarten and loved her teachers. My next oldest daughter was not so O.K. with things, but she managed through her middle school years and had some really great teachers. We all suffered through getting up painfully early through the school year and then reverted to night owl status during the summer. Oh what torture it all was, really! My oldest but not yet grown daughter was not enjoying her public highschool experience. She burned under the inequality shown to girls that happened to have skirts a bit above the knees while boys ran around unpunished and bare chested during gym. I'm not one to tolerate such things myself, but what could we really do? My highschooler was increasingly stressed and depressed. She told a tale of a student actually peeing in the stairwell at school, among other things. I was really getting desperate to change things for her in as many positive ways as possible. The idea of homeschooling was revived, and after careful research, we embraced the concept. We LOVE it! There are tons of curriculums and teaching philosophies out there, and that can be so confusing. There are three options for homeschooling in South Carolina, and this is wonderful. Option 3 is by far the easiest I think. This is the option that suits us. The South Carolina Homeschool Accountability Association is informative and affordable. I suggest this one for any parents that are thinking about homeschooling here. Since I am a bit crippled and just can't be popping out and about for field trips on a regular basis, my children do a lot of virtual investigations of other places that interest them. At first, I bought into an online curriculum, but soon realised that my children wanted more, and actually preferred to have physical text books and work books. My highschooler uses college text books that I bought on Amazon, and my middle schooler uses grade level text books and workbooks that also came from Amazon. We also have an extensive collection of college texts accumulated from my years in school, as well as some truly ancient texts handed down by my elders. We don't strictly stay in just the books. Often, we do online research on topics within Science, Social Studies, History and Literature. We frequently supplement our math text learning with lessons on You Tube when my explanations seem fuzzy. To me, Common Core math is like driving all around one's neighborhood before exiting just to go to the corner store, so NO, we don't do any of that! No partial division happens here, but investigations of delicious imaginary numbers happen as a dash of side learning. We have made and baked bread that included a lesson in microbiology by viewing the activated yeast under my microscope. I confess that my youngest daughter is not as enthused about slide preparation techniques as I am. We worked on an online collaborative matter experiment presentation. We do a lot of discussions about things within our study topics. Homeschooling is learning unbound and unrestricted. I create my own tests and quizes. Sometimes I do completely oral tests, other times a test is a one page report. I discovered that I enjoy being the nutty professor. My highschooler takes A.P. practice tests online when she feels ready. Remember though, that all tests by their very nature are subjective. I count the other expressions my children offer of what they have learned as far more valuble. The written tests are more of a grounding exercise and a means of preparing them for the tests they will encounter in college. We get up late, and we stay up late because we like it that way and no one is ever late for class! My children do complain that now they have no way of getting around their learning or skipping school. No way it can happen when you have 24 hours to work with! There is no muddling through daily assignments to get them turned in so that the teacher can log enough grades, whether the subject is understood or not. There is no arbitrary exam every Friday that can either be passed or failed. There is no leaving something behind when it isn't fully grasped because the schedule requires that we move on to fill some beaurocratic requirement. If someone gets bogged down, we stay until the concept is sorted out and understood. This also means that when something is grasped quickly, there is no need to stay on the concept for days. Who couldn't love this?