What's your favorite part of homeschooling?

[TXMary2]

Besides the obvious benefits to the children and the joy we get from seeing them learn......what is your favorite thing? For me it is browsing/researching curriculum, reading about techniques and how others do things and making lesson plans. What say you?

[Jennifer in MI]

Honestly? The freedom. The freedom to teach what I want. The freedom to travel with my family when I want (this one is HUGE for us!). The freedom to take a day off when someone isn't feeling well. I could go on and on.

[Parrothead]

I am not a slave to the PS schedule. If we want to have a late night playing Wii or giggling in the bed we can without worrying about getting up at the crack of dawn to catch a school bus. If we want to run to Boston for the weekend we can take Friday or Monday off.

[scubamama]

Summer break! 'Cuz this mom surely needs it!

[Momma2Many66]

Shopping for curriculum !!

 

I am a true curriculum junkie, I could shop forever !!

[cornelia9805]

The list is really long, but I love to be able to change things up when one of my kids just isn't getting it. There is so much flexibility on what and how to teach.

 

A silly one is that I don't have to sit through the traffic trying to pick up/drop off my DD at public school. For living in a small town, sitting through 20 minutes of traffic was a tad ridiculous.:lol:

[H0MEFree]

I love love love love books... the living kind. It's a hard habit to break and I'm not trying! LOL

[Sasharowan]

It's a tossup between freedom to go when we want, researching curriculum, and having an excuse to buy all the books I want. :)

[TXMary2]

Oh yes, I am a book junkie too. How could I forget having a valid excuse to stock up on books!?!? LOL

[Kathleen in VA]

There are so many things I could say (the freedom, the books, choosing and using the best curriculum for my child), but my absolute all-time favorite thing about homeschooling is getting to be with my children so much. I can't imagine what it would be like to be apart from them the better portion of every day, week, month, year. I feel very blessed to have the luxury of watching them all grow and learn and take wing.

[Dawn in OH]

There are so many really.

 

We don't have to get up early, run around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get everyone ready.

 

I don't have to drag the toddler and the baby out to the bus stop or loaded into the car to drop the other kids off.

 

We can stay up late doing something fun, going someplace, etc., without having to worry about being too tired the next morning.

 

We can take a day off for fun or illness when we want/need to.

 

My kids almost never get sick. That's a big plus. An illness running through the entire family could ruin weeks of plans and cause extra work.

 

I love the books. I love being a part of their learning. I love watching them suddenly understand something. I love planning field trips, projects, etc.

 

I think my list of dislikes would be much shorter really.

[2cents]

The freedom, planning and buying curriculum, learning new things along with the children, getting the SAT test results at the end of the year. :D

[Plucky]

My favorite is how close we are as a family. We have great relationships with each other and there is time to work on any issues that crop up. I am able to touch base with them and spend one-on-one time with them. It's easier to meet their needs.

[NanceXToo]

Being able to use the world as our "classroom" to whatever extent we want to! We go on a LOT of outings and "field trips" and the kids spend a good amount of time outside, we do a lot of social things with our homeschool group, sign up for various activities and things like that- and we have time for those things, and the freedom to go do them. I love that.

 

Also, being able to do things creatively and hands-on- I love how different our homeschooling can be from all the public school stuff... the emphasis on grades and tests and dry, boring textbooks and sitting at a desk for hours and worksheets and so on. I like our way better :D

[elegantlion]

The relationship I have with my son, priceless. I'm also glad I don't have to run my schedule around the times of the masses.

[prairiegirl]

There are many things that come to mind but the first thing that I thought of when I read the op was the read alouds. The best part of homeschooling, for me, is to be able to have read alouds with my kids. I know that if my kids were in ps I wouldn't be reading aloud to them (it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to do this.) Read alouds are the best part of our day.

[KrissiK]

I love researching curriculum and doing lesson plans and stuff, but what really gives me a kick is when my 7 year old does stuff like, tie his gummy worm into a knot and say, "This is a Gordian Knot and I'm going to slice it in half with my teeth. Now I can rule Asia". And I think to myself, "Would he be saying that if he'd been in ps?":D

[silliness7]

I love planning. I love the books. I love reading aloud to the kids. But I really, really love learning all the stuff I did NOT learn when I was in school.

[kalanamak]

Besides the obvious benefits to the children and the joy we get from seeing them learn......what is your favorite thing?

 

Using my brain nearly constantly. (And I believe, now that I have accepted the habit, I will continue it until dementia intervenes, even when homeschooling is over.)

 

We crossed the street to go look at a lunch van that had been fiberglassed and painted to look like mechanical pig. It had a sign

MAXImus

miniMUS

 

on it. After my son lit up (he loves Minimus), I whispered, conspiratorially, that it should be MAXI-sus, as sus is pig. I remembered that, out of the blue, from when I was a TA at Columbia, and I taught the fetal pig dissection 24 years ago!

 

Or, waiting in line, suddenly coming up with teaching my son the basic waltz steps. He has heard plenty of waltzes, but to see it as a dance: another light up.

 

To think of a way to make an organ concert more interesting for a restless boy (put him on your lap and tap out the base line played with the feet up and down his arm, and when you get to those long blapping bottom notes, put your palms on his back and vibrate them to accentuate what you are all feeling in your guts).

 

I guess it is not only using the mind all the time, but trying to see everything as fresh and new as he, to say out loud, with an example, all the things you can't even remember learning, but just know or do. Why is the salad fork outside the dinner fork. Why would we shake hands. Why were commas invented. Why do we spin faster if we pull our arms in. Why are trees so flexible. Why is the sand near the water wet, and up a bit damp and dry only further up the beach (and it isn't because the further up stuff has had "time to dry out"), and going down with a spade and making measurements and drawing the slope back home on graph paper.

 

To stretch the mind on the rack of thought!

 

(I stole that line from a Millay sonnet):

 

If to be left were to be left alone,

And lock the door and find one's self again —

Drag forth and dust Penates of one's own

That in a corner all too long have lain;

Read Brahms, read Caucer, set the chessmen out

In classic problem, stretch the shrunken mind

Back to its stature on the rack of thought —

Loss might be said to leave its boon behind.

But fruitless conference and the interchange

With callow wits of bearded cons and pros

Enlist the neutral daylight, and derange

A will too sick to battle for repose.

Neither with you nor with myself, I spend

Loud days that have no meaning and no end.

[HSMom2One]

I would have to say -- honestly -- "All of the Above"!!

 

But I also have to add that more than anything else I love teaching my child from the worldview I wish to pass on to her. To be able to incorporate the Christian faith that my husband and I cherish so deeply into our studies is the best part of the whole pie. The deep and meaningful conversations that come out of school lessons is absolutely priceless!!

 

Blessings,

Lucinda

[Rosie_0801]

At the moment it's seeing the kids take it in their stride that Daddy is at work (he's been away all week for the past couple) because they are secure in their knowledge that I'll be here. If I leave them with him when he's home on the weekends, they are just fine because experience has shown that I'll be back before too long.

 

Rosie

[Forget-Me-Not]

Oh, I SO needed this thread today. Now that my son is officially out of PS and HS is looming 'for real' on the horizon this fall, I've been having a panic-fest wondering how in the world I am going to make this work!

[Food4Thought]

Besides everything mentioned above - I love sleeping in, gardening with the kids, and having a house full of critters and things we've discovered. The flexible schedule works with me too. Some days we don't feel like school, so we don't do it. Some days we *really* feel like school, so we spend 10 hours at it. :D

[IsabelC]

Very shallow, I know, but right now my favorite bit is just the actual not-going-to-school bit :lol: It's Winter here, getting cold and frosty, and I really don't like the thought of having to get up in the dark, chivvy the kids into getting clean, tidy, dressed, bags packed, healthy approved school lunch made, and dropped off at school by a certain time. I love being able to get up late in the middle of the week, decide to cook Canadian breakfast, snuggle in front of the fire and let the kids do reading lessons in pyjamas :001_smile:

[TXMary2]

I would have to say -- honestly -- "All of the Above"!!

 

But I also have to add that more than anything else I love teaching my child from the worldview I wish to pass on to her. To be able to incorporate the Christian faith that my husband and I cherish so deeply into our studies is the best part of the whole pie. The deep and meaningful conversations that come out of school lessons is absolutely priceless!!

 

Blessings,

Lucinda

 

 

Oh, I like this too. I like to be "fair and balanced" and give more than one perspective so they can think for themselves. Sometimes they come to different conclusions than I prefer, but I would rather have them critically thinking about stuff than being little robots. Great answer Lucinda!