Hi All, I hope every is having a great Christmas or great holiday season in general if you do not celebrate Christmas. I just had a bitter text exchange with my anti-home schooling brother. In addition to saying my wife and I are not qualified to teach our own children, he bombarded me with the "home schooled children do not receive proper socialization" canard. The exchange took a really nasty turn when he said my wife and I should "join a cult" because our kids will be "social retards." At that point, I told my brother to get lost but with harsher phrasing. Not a very pleasant exchange given the season, but that's how it went. My mother, father, sister, brother, in-laws, extended family, wife's immediate family and wife's extended family are all vehemently opposed to home schooling. In one way or another, they have all been trying to shame my wife and I into not home schooling by suggesting we are not doing what is in the best interests of our kids. So what is the best way to deal with this? Any suggestions from you home schooling vets? I'm leaning toward warning every **** one of them not to bring up this subject in the future ever again. None of them have any interest in educating themselves on the arguments in favor of homeschooling but instead just repeat the standard anti-home schooling bromides every time we discuss the subject.

Thanks again everybody for taking your valuable time to help a newcomer. I'm grateful for every response and will carefully consider all suggestions made. Your suggestions have also given me added confident that homeschooling is the way to go. My extended family is aghast over this decision, especially my parents, but that's a topic for another day. Thanks again.

GretaLynne wrote: I got very drawn into the child-led approach, and away from Classical Thanks very much for the input. I appreciate it. I am pretty sure my wife and I won't go with a complete child-led approach, though if many people are finding this approach effective I think that's great for them. Right now, although I am obviously just getting up to speed and all of my ideas are very tentative at this point, I can see my wife and I using the "middle ground" suggestion Rosie_0801 made in the first comment of this thread. If we feel it is important for our kids to read writer X, well then, I really don't see us giving them a choice in this matter but letting them pick what specific work they read by writer X is a wonderful idea.

Thank you so much for this information everyone. Your responses have cleared up a huge misconception in my mind about the importance flexibility versus strict rigidity. I am now realizing that flexibility, gearing the learning experience to the benefit of my kids and experimenting with different approaches is actually one of the biggest benefits of home schooling and that these things do not mean sacrificing rigor but the exact opposite -- they make the learning experience more effective not less. I was really about to miss the boat on this very basic idea, which is why I'm glad I registered here (I have just barely started TWTM). Hedgehog wrote: May I ask why [tests and assessments are] so important to you? The main reason is that my wife and I are not professional teachers, so I am worried that without regular assessments we won't have a way to know if what we are doing is "right" or effective. Does that make sense? I am concerned about this factor not so much now because our kids are young but for the future. I will try to respond to some of these great comments in more detail later. For now, I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks. Side Note: I apologize for the unnecessarily clinical tone of my original post. I fired it off about 1:30 in the morning my time and was too tired to go back and edit.

Hello. This is my first post. Just getting my feet wet here. My son is 4, and my daughter is 3, and for about the last six months, my wife has been teaching them at home using materials appropriate for their age groups. Within the next year or two, I want to move on to a much more rigorous and structured educational program, and I am currently in the planning stages. Basically, I feel very overwhelmed at this point and do not know where to begin, hence my arrival in this community where there appear to be many people with substantial knowledge of the process. I am amazed at the number of approaches, options, curriculum sets and choices when it comes to homeschooling. That said, here are my general ideas regarding approach and goals: 1) I want to use an approach consistent with the Well Trained Minds concept of classical education. 2) I do not want to use any approach where my kids dictate what they learn. According to my wife, there are such approaches based on the theory that learning and education should be geared, tailored and modified to the child's interests. I reject this. I want my kids working through a structured, inflexible curriculum that requires them to master the concepts I feel they need to know whether they want to learn them or not. 3) My preference is to use the most rigorous and challenging curriculum out there, assuming there is a consensus on which curriculum that is. 4) I am very concerned about tests and assessments. At this point, I don't know if the assessments usually come with the curriculum, or if it is best to write your own. I want to be able to check at all times to make sure my son and daughter are at or ahead of where they should be relative to other kids in their age group. 5) Religious content does not bother me, nor does secular content. Rigor and effectiveness are all I care about. 6) I am open to feedback and opinions on all of these points and feedback on whether I am on the right track in general. I can handle negative or constructive criticism if you feel I am way off track here and in fact would appreciate it. 7) If any of you are willing to take a moment to provides sites, links or other information that will help me get started and begin to get a handle on the various approaches that will fit my style, I will be very grateful. I am currently working my way through all the content on the well trained mind Web site. Thanks very much for reading this and best regards,

Test six

Fifth test

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Give Julian Assuage the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Hi. This is a test of my first post.