big picture: strength and weakness of your HSing journey

[kathymuggle]

For those of you who have been HSing a while…..

 

What do you think you have done a really good job with - and what has been a weak area - in relation to HSing? Think big picture….

 

My family's positives - excellent general knowledge, empowered children/teens, and an intact love of learning!

 

My family's negative: organisation and discipline (discipline with regards to good work habits/focus, etc)

[SailorMom]

Positives - great general knowledge, extensive reading, a high level of scientific and historical knowledge, more "real life" learning, ability to work independently (no hand holding here)

 

Negatives - hmmmm,,,, I don't know that I've really seen any negative that are due to homschooling in our family. I'm not saying we're perfect - at all! - but we've had a very positive homeschooling experience here.

[usetoschool]

We have been at this for 20 years, come June, so there have been plenty of opportunities for negatives. I have five years to go and was just thinking this morning that I might actually have it all figured out by then.

 

The negatives are mostly my fault. I was too wishy washy about curriculum and got caught up in a few trends instead of sticking to the path I knew in my heart was right. I also let messes in life get in the way instead of making school my number one priority no matter what was going on and how I felt. The one negative that should be a positive but it is getting in the way is my sons annoyance at having to jump through hoops to get through college. He would like school to be totally focused on what he wants to major in. He did all the humanities, well rounded stuff at home and now wants to just study his major. He hates having to pay for classes that just satisfy a requirement. Maybe he is a little too independent and self sufficient :)

 

The positives? The biggest positive for me was to be able to give each kid his or her own personal education based on strengths and interests. They have been able to follow the path that they set out on without too much side tracking. The other big positive is that they get along well and are friends now as adults, partly because, I think, they were each others company and friends growing up. We were also able to spend a lot of time together and go on trips and vacations and take advantage of some first person, hands on learning.

[Ester Maria]

The positives:

1) I have been always focusing on the concrete content I wanted to teach, not on the curriculum - which brough about a lot of mixing and matching along the way, but I knew what I was doing, so the mishmash of things I typically used was typically successful. I think it is very important to have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish to be able to accomplish it in the first place.

2) My kids are very independent and proactive about their learning and other things in life.

3) I think the philological component of their education turned out pretty neat.

 

The negatives:

1) Delayed musical education. I will not be "democratic" with the next child, I often cannot believe how come I let the practical musical education slide in the grand scheme of things. It cost my eldest a lot of nerves when she decided to pick up an instrument at a taaaaad bit 'old' age (old in the sense of de facto closing her the door of professionalism, should she want to go there). My mistake for not insisting on it earlier. Music is my single biggest regret.

2) I messed up French. Which sort of contradicts 3) of positives, but I really messed that up - too much delaying, too much "they will pick it up via travel", starting to study it seriously at 13, rather than 8-9, at latest, as we should have. Thank Heavens their native language is a Romance one, so they can progress exponentially in French and at the end of the day the difference will probably not be felt, but I should have done it earlier. I should have postponed classics and emphasized modern foreign languages more in the earlier years. The next kid will possibly be off to Alliance's "half-daycare" at 3-4 for a few years (I am going to schedule it the way I get a de facto French babysitting while I run errands :tongue_smilie:, should we live in a place where it is reasonably nearby) and then study French as a regular school subject from the very first grade. French is too important to us to repeat that mistake again.