Julie Soul 0:00
Welcome back to the creative homeschool, let's talk about the big elephant in the room. And that is changing from a public school mindset. Now, even if your kids didn't go to public school or haven't been there like mine haven't, you might have been. And it's sometimes hard to take away that mindset from how we went to school, how are used to school being, and change that into something completely different. It is hard going against the grain breaking the mold, so I wanted to talk about a few of them in particular, and ways that we have to break away from that public school mindset. And it is something completely different. The first is how many hours you homeschool. So typically kids are in school for anywhere from five to seven hours a day. And when you tell someone that you only homeschool for about an hour, it's really alarming to them, because they automatically think that you are purposefully depriving your children of an education. And what we really need to think of homeschooling as is kind of tutoring. I mean, really, what we're doing is this one on one tutoring. Now I know some of you have more than one that you're homeschooling. But it's still like a private lesson. And if you've ever signed your kids up for lessons, my kids take tennis and they take tennis with a group of kids and they hit a certain number of balls when they're taking a class with those kids. But when they're taking private lessons on occasion, they're hitting at least five times the amount of balls that they normally do. So they're getting better, that much faster. And homeschooling is a lot like that it's a little bit more like tutoring. Now how much school is enough school? Well, typically homeschool kids are doing 30 minutes to three hours of school a day, depending on the age of students. But we're talking table work here, we're talking about the time that you're doing math, you're doing handwriting, and table work is only a small part of the homeschool experience. homeschool involves being outside going on field trips, going on hikes sitting out here like I am out on my deck, doing art. And so when we're talking about our table work, or table work is minimal. A lot of that is also because in schools, they have a lot of kids. So they have Joey who is you know, messing around with the scissors and they have to be told to stop. We have Suzy who needs to be told to stand in line. There's bathroom times there's break times there's needing to transition from different room to different room. And school teachers need to keep kids organized. There's different routines there than they do at home that can you know, be a pro in a con sometimes, but the amount of school hours the actual amount of school hours. Also, when you think about public school, you'll think about them being in school for a certain amount of time. However, take away all of that time that I just mentioned that lineup time that lunch time recess time spent correcting students handling behavior issues, take away all of those assemblies, all of those days that they are having testing. Once you take away all of those days, you'll be surprised at how much actual instructional time there is at school. But it doesn't seem like that because they're there for so much longer. So that's one thing that we need to think about. Another is that certain subjects are done every day. So often in school if you're doing subjects every single day. And it's hard to get out of that. You know what happens if you guess don't do math on a single day, what will happen? Well, the truth is, kids are learning things in different ways. For example, let's look at science with bugs. They could be drawing or painting them. They could be doing hands on nature studies going to the nature center. They can be playing outside and just watching a roly poly go along. So subjects aren't done every single day, even though we think that they have to be you know, and we might not be sitting down and doing them in a certain way. They're still happening location. school does not need to be done inside at a desk, or sometimes we do school outside. This is usually a fairly peaceful place here for my kids to do school. But sometimes we do it at a restaurant or at the beach. And that's table work and not sometimes we're going to a museum where we're reading science or getting hands on stuff. So location is also something that we need to get over about where does learning needs to happen. learning can happen everywhere.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
In school, we learned that subjects are often taught through worksheets, but things like math, you get hands on through those field trips. So restaurant shopping, creating a kid newspaper, if you haven't heard that episode, learning how to handle money as an entrepreneur, for writing, instead of just writing a paragraph about Abraham Lincoln, they can be writing letters to friends typing messages to their grandparents, creating science for things that they're passionate about. So writing happens in different ways other than worksheets, also, they don't need to be doing a book report, for example, to show you that they've read it, they can be telling you they can be excitedly wanting to get the next one. And as a homeschooler, you get to be a part of that. Another thing that you hear in homeschooling is how are they going to learn to get a job and put up with stuff? Well, not all jobs are at a desk for six to eight hours. And we can teach kids that you can be more creative about when and how they work. We can teach independence, entrepreneurship, you know, it's the opposite of a sit down environment. We're also teaching them how to be changemakers. So we don't actually have to put up with that stuff, either. How many times have you heard of someone who's been in a job that they hate for years and years and years? Sometimes, that's because in public school, that's what we're taught to do. We're taught to kind of put up with it. And as homeschoolers, we can teach them how to really, really evaluate Now sometimes it's worth putting up with stuff. And sometimes it's not. So y'all know when we probably have something that we could have left should have left maybe a little bit sooner than we did. So all the homeschooling kids will have that ability, that confidence, to be able to really evaluate the situation they're in to see if they want to put up with it or not. Now let's talk about the last one, and that's socializing. Oh my goodness. I don't know if you're anything like me. But the amount of times I was told school is not for socializing. You can socialize with your friends after school. I was told this over and over and over. So why is this brought up over and over and over for homeschoolers? Why not allowed to socialize in school other than your quick recess? homeschoolers get to socialize it parks homeschool classes, talking to other adults, you're not stuck with kids the same age with people the same age? How many people do you know right now that are your age? Coops meetups, video classes? Socializing happens even more for homeschoolers than it does for public school kids. But it's up to us to make sure that we're giving them the opportunity to do those things. That is something that falls on homeschoolers. It's kind of just happens at school. It is something that we have to work on as homeschoolers getting them out there. Okay, everyone, I want you to remember that homeschooling is a journey. It's an experience. It is different than public school. And the next time someone tells you, oh, no, you're not going to be anything like those other kids. I want you to smile and say, good. Absolutely. Good care everyone. Till next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
