I feel like we should create a post to compile tips for Pedes that have had to deal with their kids be freed from indoctrination camps/schools.
So I'll start. Please fellow homeschool parents, jump in.
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Do NOT try and recreate public school. PS is designed to teach en mass, typically a one size fits all approach. Why do that when you can customize each child's learning to their personal strengths, deficits, and desires. A kid who excels at reading should be pushed to read more challenging stuff. A kid struggling at math should have more time and resources dedicated to that.
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Get a guide. Seriously, unless you are a teacher, we often dont know what to teach and when. Guides are helpful in setting benchmarks and giving ideas on how to approach it. You are not beholden to them, so you can and should alter it to fit your kid. We started with a book called "The Well Trained Mind" by Susan Bauer.
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Teach more than just academics. Everything is educational. Teach them about your faith, running a household, maintenance of vehicles, rhetoric, home repair, anything that we hear others complain that schools don't do.
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Seize the little moments. Use everyday things to teach an academic lesson. Cooking uses math and also teaches task management. Dinner time discussions become etiquette and rhetoric lessons.
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The internet has loads of resources for homeschool. Sift through them to find worthwhile ones. Some are trash or leftist influenced so be mindful of it.
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Get them involved in a sport outside of the home. Its easy to focus on the mental and neglect the physical, dont.
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Keep them connected to peers outside the home somehow. Kill the excuse that homeschool kids arent socialized (read: corrupted or groomed) unless they are in PS. By keeping them in positive peer settings, you get all of the benefits and none of the downsides. Ex: Church youth groups, Trail Life or American Heritage Girls, sports leagues, hobby groups, homeschool groups.
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Do not feel like you need to spend 8 hours a day on lessons. A couple of quality hours of lessons at home beatsa full day of PS. The rest of the day can be filled with little natural learning moments.
That's what I have to start with. What else does everyone else got?
I would like to chime in on this. If your child can't read well, give them the lessons, yes, but still teach them the value of a good story and other lessons by reading more difficult things to them. Use different voices, get animated, make it fun and interesting. Pause to ask them questions about what you read to make sure they understand and, more importantly, that they know how to read a text properly. Too much of the public education system is focused on eisegesis—imposing one's own views on a text—instead of exegesis—studying a text's language to determine what it has to say.
On that note, don't be afraid to read your kids stuff that's older than Dickens. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight makes for a great long-running bedtime story. Longfellow's translation of Dante's Divina Comedia is a wonderful example of poetry in translation and a colorful view of Heaven and Hell and a great intro to theology. Shakespeare can be super entertaining if his works are watched instead of read, or, better yet, read while watched.
And, of course, read them the Bible. It's the foundation of our ethical system and one of the major bases for Western civilization (and, more importantly, the word of God Himself). Along with that, give them a healthy dose of Homer. The Iliad and the Odyssey are excellent texts for kids to read with a guide to help them.
And please don't neglect language. Teach them languages they won't learn in school: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French. All the languages of western academia. I can't stress this enough. If they can read multiple languages, they can learn anything.
Tl;dr: Give your kids actual classics, not just the 19th century pseudo-classics and 20th century smut peddled by public schools. Teach them languages and give them a hearty academic education.
Just wondering how many Christian pedes have noticed the direct result of the first on the second. That's why they focus on eisegesis, how can you accidentally break the programming if you've been trained to apply the programming to everything? Even the Word.
It's how we have new age 'charlatanity.'
I think the eisegesis is a direct result of our culture's solipsistic mentality where people always ask "what does this mean to me?" instead of "what does this mean whether or not I ever existed?". The implication of this mindset is that something can't possibly exist unless it's directly related to someone's personal experience. It's really self-focused and celebrated as a virtue in today's society.
Definitely watch Shakespeare plays! I've long been convinced that public schools deliberately tried to make kids dislike him. They grab a tragedy and make everyone read it aloud in class, half of them can barely pronounce it, have a sour attitude. Find a good resource with background info so you can understand references and jokes, then watch the play, as it was meant to be! The comedies are great fun, and later they can look for common phrases we use today that were created by Shakespeare, or collect Shakespearian insults.
Also second the recommendation to introduce them to older literature, as well as myths/fables/etc. They'll find, as they read some older literature, that the author assumes a certain level of knowledge and will use references to common Western canon. Just the other day, a book I was reading described someone as having a Laodicean attitude. I knew what it meant, because I grew up reading the Bible/church, but somehow it's always pleasing to see and understand those kind of references.
My only regret is that I have but only one upvote to offer.
Agreed about languages. Being exposed to foreign languages at an early age really helped me expand my thinking and memory skills.