What are you trying to accomplish?

[TheAutumnOak]

With your homeschool that is...What are you trying to do?...How will you know if your efforts are successful?

 

I am really thinking about these things...Homeschool is tougher than I imagined it would be, and I feel like I am shooting for something I am not even clear about...

 

So what are you trying to accomplish?...What does success look like to you?

 

Thanks in advance to all who reply :)

[Kidlit]

Nothing to contribute, just listening in. :)

[Tanaqui]

We're just starting out. My goals are simple:

 

1. Less drama due to more sleep. We've got that down!

 

2. Stay on grade level with math. So far, so good!

 

3. Learn some science and history, but don't worry too much about it because it's not like middle schools make that a priority.... And that's the trifecta!

 

Seriously, for our very first year, I figure that as long as we stay at or above where the girls would be in public school, we'll be great. Our local middle school is pretty darn awful, though, so that's not a very high bar :) I like to keep my goals reasonable and highly attainable.

[Farrar]

Success to me is kids who are nice, who are mostly happy, who like learning, who are making progress.

 

I have other more specific academic goals, but they move based on the kids' needs. Ideally, I'm striving for a really rigorous high school experience down the road, but I'll consider us successful if my kids emerge having their own goals for their lives and the skills to work toward meeting them - whether that's the ability to get into the sort of college they want or if it's the ability to find another path.

[SamanthaCarter]

It is sort of nebulous isn't it? Good question!

[Chrysalis Academy]

I'm trying to achieve balance: a strong, college-prep education, yet time for developing and pursuing personal interests.  

 

I'm trying to create a space where my kids can be who they are right now - not who their peers think they should be - and can grow into the people that they want to be.

 

I'm trying to keep the pace of life less stressful, more home and family centered, rather than having us always careening all over from one activity to the next.

 

I want to help guide my kids towards being autodidacts & lifelong learners, with the confidence that they can learn anything they want to and pursue whatever career/job truly interests them.

 

I'm trying to make sure not too many doors are closed at this point - they will never be champion gymnasts, musicians, or figure skaters, but they will have the math, reading and writing skills to study and learn whatever they want to in the future.

 

I am trying to stay connected with them, to share their lives and to share some parts of my inner life - the intellectual ones! with them.  Staying close and connected takes time and space and effort, and homeschooling helps to create that.

 

 

[....]

For my long-term goals, I want them to be:

 

1.  Good people who have a positive effect on others around them

2.  People who love to learn new things, read, etc.

3.  Able to teach themselves things if they need to

4.  Comfortable with who they are

5.  Well-educated enough to where they can achieve any goals they have.  If my son wants to be an engineer, I want his education to be what he needs to go to college for that and be successful.

[Hunter]

1. Mental and physical and spiritual health

 

2. Lots of good books

 

3. The skills necessary to understand those books.

 

4. Communication skills of writing and drawing

 

5. Just enough math to facilitate the above goals

[Ad astra]

I'd like my kids to be happy, positive, caring, healthy, capable and feeling good about themselves, our family and the world around us. I hope they enjoy the joy of learning and live their life to the fullest. In our situation, homeschooling is the best option to achieve these. To me, their college choice and job title are not as important as their attitude towards life and people.

[Desert Strawberry]

I do some goal setting each year, depending on our specific needs. I use some of these pages to fill out my planner (most of it comes from donnayoung.org) Her goal sheets change each year, and challenge me to really put some thought into what I want to accomplish, and not just what I want to DO. http://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/free-printables/7-step-curriculum-planner/

 

Overall, my goals are roughly this:

 

Well-behaved, happy, healthy kids. (good habits, good manners, good food, fresh air, exercise)

 

Instill a love of learning.

Provide well-rounded, broad exposure. 

Allow children freedom to follow their interests and develop personally.  

 

Provide basic knowledge and skills to be able to self-educate. 

 

I know we are achieving these goals when my children are generally pleasant, competent (my 5yr old is vacuuming his bedroom right now), physically well, productively or creatively occupied, and making academic achievements such as voluntarily reading books, applying math principles, discussing scientific concepts, completing projects. 

 

 

[Jenny in Florida]

When we started down the homeschool path, my husband and I agreed on the following general goals. Before they left the house, we wanted our kids to:

• Have a comfortable familiarity with the body of knowledge we thought an educated person should have. (The sweep of world and American history, classic literature and its authors, arts and artists, basic tenets of various scientific disciplines, etc.) 
• Master the skills they would need to be successful adults. (Reading fluency, math proficiency, etc.)
• Consider themselves life-long learners.
• Know how and where to get more information when they needed it.

That "comfortable familiarity" thing might need a little more explanation, I guess. Many years ago, my husband and I developed what we call the "immunization theory of education." Basically, the idea is that parents/teachers do their best to expose kids to lots of different things as early as possible at whatever level or depth is appropriate for that child that day in the hopes that, later, that child won't be afraid of the subject. This idea was born, in part, of our experiences watching other kids tackle Shakespeare for the first time in high school. It was, frankly, painful to observe (and to listen to). In trying to figure out why neither of us had as tough a time, we realized that each of us had been "immunized" with Shakespeare earlier. So, neither the language nor the stories were scary, completely foreign things we had to confront for the first time. 

 

We started letting our kids watch film versions of the plays as toddlers. (Midsummer Night's Dream was a favorite. They insisted all four of us dress up as fairies for Halloween the year they were six and three.) We took them to staged productions beginning at age eight or so. We certainly didn't expect them to absorb, understand and analyze the details of the plots or the intricacies of the language, but we hoped they would get familiar enough with the idea of Shakespeare that they wouldn't have to overcome hurdles later when they were assigned a play or three in high school.

 

We did the same thing with classical music, visual art, science, etc.

 

Now that one of ours has launched and the other is in college, I can say that I think we did pretty well meeting all of those goals. My kids are turning into adults with whom I can have intelligent, thoughtful conversations about a wide variety of topics. They are both academically successful outside of our homeschool bubble. They each found their passions and enjoy the time they spend pursuing them. They voluntarily spend a lot of time continuing to learn about the things that interest them. 

 

Are there things I wish we had done better? Of course. But on the whole, I feel like we can check off most of those four boxes pretty emphatically.

 

 

[regentrude]

My goal for our homeschool is to provide my kids with the kind of education that enables them to follow their goals, stretches their minds, gives them the gift of challenge, provides the cultural framework for what I considered educated adults and develops the necessary life skills to function as an adult and study skills to embrace life-long learning habits.

 

I am very happy with how it turned out for DD. Homeschooling provided her with an academic education sufficient to be admitted to an extremely selective school where she can pursue the level of studies she dreams of and at which she will thrive. She possesses great study skills and is able to seek out resources to further her education. She is comfortable interacting with adults and students, has practical sense to solve her problems and function in the world, has the kind of personality and character that enable her to make wonderful friends and be a sought-after tutor. She has wide interests and is enthusiastic about many things. I do not think that I deserve credit for most of this.

 

DS has different goals in life, so our homeschooling reflects this. He is on track to receive a solid college prep education and is developing independent learning skills. In his education, sports play a big role. Homeschooling allows him to fit in a job, where he learns valuable practical skills and has the opportunity to interact with adult supervisors and peers. So far, I am pleased with the way his home education looks like. We have a few more years to go.

 

 

[FloridaLisa]

Our goals:

• To help my kids learn to love the Lord with all of the heart, soul, mind and strength. Trying my best to live this out everyday very authentically alongside my kids. I'm grateful for lots of time for Bible study (not the random dotted stories I got growing up), discussions with teens and working it out in family and life with irritations, stresses, missteps, questions and life issues. 
• To give my kids an education that teaches content as well as reasoning. 
• To help my kids develop character that has vision and goals, works hard, self-initiates, encourages, pushes through difficulty, is willing to to stand alone and think independently if necessary, respects bounds of authority.
• To see the bents in my kids and help provide resources and opportunities to "fan them into flame." 
• To provide challenging academics as I'm able and my dc are able.

Lisa

 

P.S. What a great question. I remember writing our homeschool philosophy when my oldest was applying to college and just having to articulate it to some unknown committee helped me refine my philosophy. 

[hjffkj]

One of my main goals is to help my children become self educators. They will be able to accomplish so much, no matter where they are academically when my time educating them ends, if they know how to educate themselves.

[Chelli]

I kind of had a crisis of direction in our homeschool a couple of years ago and it caused me to sit down and really think about what I wanted for my children to consider our homeschool successful. I didn't mention academic things because I'm assuming that everyone wants their child to be proficient in math, reading, writing, etc.

I came up with what I call my Top Three:

 

1) To love others, to love themselves, to love God (I want children who make a difference to their families, friends, community, and the world because of the love they have in their hearts.)

 

2) To know how to research and learn for themselves (I can't teach them everything, but I want to make sure they have the tools to find information when they need it.)

 

3) To be effective communicators (It doesn't matter how much you know or what you believe if you are not effectively able to communicate that to others through the written or spoken word.)

 

If my children can do the above three things once they have left my home, it will have all been worth it.

[PeterPan]

I kind of had a crisis of direction in our homeschool a couple of years ago and it caused me to sit down and really think about what I wanted for my children to consider our homeschool successful. I didn't mention academic things because I'm assuming that everyone wants their child to be proficient in math, reading, writing, etc.

 

I came up with what I call my Top Three:

 

1) To love others, to love themselves, to love God (I want children who make a difference to their families, friends, community, and the world because of the love they have in their hearts.)

 

2) To know how to research and learn for themselves (I can't teach them everything, but I want to make sure they have the tools to find information when they need it.)

 

3) To be effective communicators (It doesn't matter how much you know or what you believe if you are not effectively able to communicate that to others through the written or spoken word.)

 

If my children can do the above three things once they have left my home, it will have all been worth it.

We're pretty similar, with three major goals (love God, love others, have the skills with which to serve).  And I agree, until you codify what's important to you as a family, you're shooting in the dark and hitting everyone ELSE'S goals.  It's hard to whittle down and realize what's important to YOUR family, but once you do that it helps you prioritize and intentionally do *less* of some things that maybe are more important in other families than they are in yours.  Our goals helped me realize where we could spend *more* time to nurture things that might be unusual but that fit with our values and that's cool too.  :)

[Coco_Clark]

I tend to think of my goals subject by subject. So in Math it's to be able to enter college level math by college, to understand and appreciate that we live in a world of order, and to learn the skill of "puzzling" (basically figuring difficult things out without meltdown). Morning Time goals are more like, to be exposed to and learn to love Truth, Beauty, and Goodness (literature, stories of saints and heroes, poetry, ect), to learn how to see and how to remember (memory work, picture study, nature study).

 

I also think of them yearly. Usually over our summer break. My goals in Science right now are exposure and wonder based, because my boys are in K5 and first grade. But when they are in 9th and 11th grade I'm sure they will have progressed.

 

I think I'd be overwhelmed by big picture school-wide and school-long goals. But I suppose if I had to choose I'd say to raise men with chests :).

[stutterfish]

Bottom line: good mental health and self-esteem that survives into adulthood.

 

If the only things that come out of this homeschooling are kids with feelings of self-worth and a healthy mental state, then I will have done something wonderful. I know far too many adults with poor mental health and low self-esteem and these are far more limiting to their lives than anything else.

 

With good mental health and self-esteem adults are in a pretty good position to educate themselves in anything they feel they might be lacking, and seek out their own achievements and happiness.