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've been planning to homeschool my two-year-old with my wife so I've been working on a curriculum for a few years. I basically started with the following resources:
CDC Milestones https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html
These are used as a sanity check to see if you children have developmental issues. In general, you should expect a child to reach the milestones somewhat before the target age, but they give you a good sense of what your child should be doing by what age, and a good list of things you can work on with your child.
Fairfax County Program of Studies https://www.fcps.edu/academics/elementary-school-k-6
Fairfax County is one of our country's premier failing public school districts. If you navigate to each of the grade links you can find another link which will give you a list of objectives for each grade level. For instance, here's the page for sixth grade: https://insys.fcps.edu/PublicPOS/#/reportPanel/6/0
So when you have time you can see the standards by which the students are being measured. I've ripped out a lot of the more asinine standards, added lots of my own, and made notes about how I'll cover the objective when the time comes.
MIT Highlights for High School https://ocw-origin.odl.mit.edu/high-school/
I generally feel that a conscientious and hardworking middle-schooler can do what we consider first-year college work. I've basically started with these courses and added and removed what I thought was appropriate. There's some libby stuff in here for sure but also excellent resources.
Also, FWIW, The Art of Problem Solving is probably the best math education resource on the internet.
https://artofproblemsolving.com/
I use orgmode to organize my thoughts and JIRA and GSuite to do coordination. I've also written a bunch of pedagogical tools I've used for myself and which I plan to use with my child/children (mostly flashcard or trainer apps, that sort of thing).
I've skimmed "The Well Trained Mind" and I thought the author had exactly my mindset and some excellent recommendations but I need to give it a more thorough read this year and see what I can bring in.
I can talk about this plan all day but I feel like this post is already way too long. If any pedes want to make a more permanent page for homeschooling resources I'm all for it; we might get some use out of it before "eternal september" hits or the shills take over. And if anyone else wants to talk shop feel free to DM me.