s/o of trends....Who influenced you?

[MaeFlowers]

Reading the trends thread has been interesting and now I'm curious...

Who influenced you most in homeschooling? What books, blogs, speakers, etc?

[kewb]

The book that convinced me to take the leap was Homeschooling: take a deep breath, you can do this.

 

Thathomeschooldad told me to read the well trained mind.

 

Then I met some friends who had kids my age and we helped each other create what we needed.

[kroe1]

After a kindergarten teacher suggested we homeschool, my husband bought s Lisa Welchel book. Then we moved to an island without a school. That sealed the deal.

[KathyBC]

Debra Bell's book, the Colfax title and The Unschooling Handbook - a nice, eclectic bunch. :D

[MaeFlowers]

Lisa Welchel wrote a book on homeschooling?

 

Actually, I have never heard of most of the books mentioned. My beginnings started with the internet and the WTM. We didn't have any money and I read what I could find at the library. Most were Charlotte Mason but those just didn't resonate with me. I had some idea of what I wanted and WTM fit the bill. And, more importantly, it gave me some idea of how to do it. Then I found the forums and they have been an immense help to me.

[Farrar]

I read The Teenage Liberation Handbook when I was 17. That pretty much decided me. When dh and I got serious I had to lay out some important decisions I'd made before I met him. Sweetie, we'll be homebirthing, co-sleeping, and homeschooling. Don't marry me if you're not cool with that.  :lol: He was cool with it.

 

I have a grad degree in education so listing all my influences in education would be too long a list, but in terms of the current homeschool world, it's definitely Julie Bogart.

[LucyStoner]

How I was educated. Which was influenced by a school I attended which was modelled somewhat after the free school movement and where the TLH was required reading.

 

More recently, this book that I can not for the life of me remember the title of that was by a teacher in my city and the main gist was that public schooling creates artificially age segregated peer groups. My google fu is not good enough to crack this nut either, I've tried.

[Violet Crown]

As I mentioned on the other thread, E. D. Hirsch's knowledge-based educational ideas were influential; I read The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them shortly after Great Girl was born, and paid through the nose for his Core Knowledge Sequence (now free), which for a long time was my only "homeschooling" curriculum.

 

Dh and I were already very interested in tutoring instead of classroom-based education; dh was in this regard influenced by genuinely classical (i.e. pre-medieval) practices. His theories about math education were also influenced by the New Math movement (before it flamed out) and Eastern European problem-based mathematics.

 

I read Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A History of Failed School Reform and The Well-Trained Mind a few years later, which together helped me confirm that I wasn't so much doing "classical homeschooling" as trying to recreate and update the turn-of-the-century "academic curriculum" which Ravitch explains was supposed to replace the Classical Curriculum but was overwhelmed by Progressive theories early in the century.

 

Once we started homeschooling, somebody loaned me a John Holt book. That was influential. So, I thought, the opposite of that then.

[rdj2027]

I primarily attended Jesuit run schools.  They followed the Ignatian teaching methods or rather pedagogical paradigm.  The two years I attended public schools taught me what I did NOT want homeschool to be.

[Crimson Wife]

My dad has a set of the Harvard Classics displayed in his living room. When I was growing up, I got it in my head that those were the sorts of books I should be reading if I wanted to attend an Ivy caliber university. I didn't read all 50 volumes but I did read most of the fiction, drama, and poetry ones (the history and philosophy ones didn't interest me much) plus lots of other literary classics.

 

When it came time to pick a HS approach, I felt inspired by TWTM, Mortimer J. Adler's Paideia books, Laura Barquest's Design Your Own Classical Catholic Curriculum (wish she'd do an updated version of this book), E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge, and Ambleside Online.

[Loesje22000]

http://www.amazon.com/So-Youre-Thinking-About-Homeschooling/dp/1590525116/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459240862&sr=8-1&keywords=So+you+are+thinking+about+homeschooling

Was my first book about homeschooling.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Learning-Year-Homeschool-Curriculum/dp/0609805851/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459240978&sr=8-1&keywords=rebecca+rupp

My second

 

The Well Trained Mind my third :)

[Melissa in Australia]

WTM

[Mama Geek]

By far personal friends who were already homeschooling.  When I worked as a engineer I knew several fathers whose wives were homeschooling one of which turned me onto classical education.

[Soror]

I think the first book I read was the Welchel one too, it was about the only one my library had at the time. I can't even remember how/when the idea of hs'ing first came to me. Being in the "crunchy" crowd I started hearing more about it and quickly moved past my biases and decided I wanted to hs before I even had kids- no great scholarly reason at first- just because I wanted my kids to grow up in an atmosphere of learning, free to be themselves with time to follow their passions and the independence to do it in a way that worked for them. I'm extremely independent myself and the bureaucracy of school drove me nuts, I also had a hard time with the social aspect of school- I wasn't bullied or such but I'm a bit of an introvert and found it kind of painful.

 

My earliest influences were unschoolers of the John Holt variety, although I've never fully embraced that life parts of it resonate strongly with me. I got into Core Knowledge for awhile, although ultimately it didn't work out long term. I found WTM inspirational for the way it just lays it all out, giving you the confidence that yes, you really can school your kids. I've read and enjoyed inspirational works from PS teachers like Marva Collins and Esquith. I've read various research books- a big one for me being Mindset- it changed how I think about my own life and how I frame things for the kids.

 

Currently I'm mostly just working on living life, following my passions and trying to be a better human. I finally feel a bit settled in, although I still tweak(perpetually)- I'm glad to finally enter a phase of being able to just do homeschooling without thinking so hard about it, when I do feel the need for a shot of inspiration I hit up Julie Bogart. I love her positive attitude and how she approaches learning and her relationships with her kids. I love that it is all just wrapped together, because that is the way it is here. We can pull from ideas and resources from all over.

 

I recently took this online quiz about homeschool styles, my biggest score was anti- traditional education (surprise!), otherwise I scored highly in classical education, Waldorf and Montesorri. I guess Waldorf came up so high because of the high priority I put on nature as I've not really used any Waldorf materials. I've read and gleaned some ideas from almost every philosophy out there I think, although I've never been able to embrace CM to a great degree and obviously I'm extremely biased against traditional education.

Edited March 29, 2016 by soror

[Joyofsixreboot]

http://www.amazon.com/Homeschooling-Familys-Journey-Martine-Millman-ebook/dp/B001EYD1N4/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459245165&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=Homeschool+Milliman

 

Homeschooling :AFamily's Journey

Not a how to, it just convinced me normal people homeschool.

[lllll]

nm 

 

Edited November 15, 2016 by cathey

[MEmama]

I've never read anything or met any IRL homeschoolers who have truly influenced this path.

 

I was introduced to the idea of homeschooling by a brief encounter with another mom at one of my then-preschool age son's rec center classes. It wasn't that I was impressed by her kids (I so wasn't), but I'd never heard of homeschooling before so I went home, did some general research and decided I could make it a better fit than public school. His brief ps experience served to seal the deal.

 

The few books I've read never really resonated with me beyond an idea here or there, and the few homeschoolers I've met homeschool for very different reasons. I don't think I'm one to hang my hat on anyone else's words or experiences though; I'm rarely that easily swayed.

[DawnM]

I honestly don't know.  I thought HSers were strange and set back in the 60s peace movement, but far more conservative.  There weren't a huge number of HSers where I lived.  But my oldest son had so many issues in preschool and then in Kindergarten that I knew I needed to do something.

 

My DH is the one who suggested we homeschool.  I was working full time and had no intention of even being a SAHM, much less a homeschooling mom.  

 

Overall it was a process.  I started reading several of the books mentioned here, and met a woman who was one of the original writers of Sonlight.  

 

I first went to part time and homeschooled on my days off.  Then I realized that I was cramming school in on my days off and not able to do the fun stuff with the kids, so we made the move to a new state where it was more affordable to live on one income and there were more homeschoolers.  

 

And to be 100% honest, I still don't really feel like a homeschooler.  This is technically my last year to HS.  My oldest is at community college, my middle is in a charter high school, and my youngest is homeschooled but will be attending 7th grade in the fall.  My middle son may go to the CC for dual enrollment next year, which means that in our state, he will legally be homeschooling again, but I won't be teaching him.  He just wants to do dual enrollment.

 

We started HSing in 2004.  

 

Dawn

[Night Elf]

I was most influenced by unschooling people. My favorite books was Homeschooling Our Children Unschooling Ourselves by Alison McKee. It also influenced my parenting style that even stuck with me when we weren't unschoolers anymore.

[HomeAgain]

Honestly, it was two books, maybe 3.  The first was Summerhill - a 'bio' of a free democratic school in which children had choice, and were respected as people.  The other two were The Girl Standard and The Trouble With Boys.  I'm probably misremembering the titles somewhat, but reading them I wanted to cry.  They were talking about MY kid.  His experiences at school matched so closely to what the authors were saying, where boys were not given the freedom to be boys and learn by doing/playing/conversing, but were having to sit for long periods of time, punished for being boys at all.  I started noticing more, like how in the classroom 90% of those with a card pulled were, yes, the boys.  Fidgeting. Moving. Talking out of turn. Not paying attention.

They changed my expectations of my child and those who educate him.

[Sarah CB]

I read every homeschooling book I could get my hands on and found that there was always something I could take away from every book - no matter how far from my own comfort zone it was.  

 

The two that had the biggest impact - that I reread over and over - for years - were Educating the Whole-Hearted Child and The Well-Trained Mind.  

[JudoMom]

Well, I decided to homeschool after graduating early from high school, getting to college on a full academic scholarship, and realizing I knew very little, other than how to play the school system.  I could read well (not that I actually read any of the books assigned in high school) and I could write well (fabulous reviews & grades on the papers I wrote on books I never actually read), but I didn't know anything.  I decided then that I would homeschool.

I had my first son in 1999 and checked out all the homeschooling books from the library.  TWTM resonated with me and influenced our path.  It was so systematic, yet could be made our own.     

 

Now I love listening to Andrew Kern, Andrew Pudewa, and Christopher Perrin, in addition to SWB.

As far as blogs, I used to be encouraged by the blogs that were real, back when blogging was just starting.  Many of the old timers on the boards had blogs and would post about their days.  Now I mostly stay away from them because it feels like they are so polished and fake.

 

Edited March 29, 2016 by JudoMom

[Kareni]

I read every homeschooling book I could get my hands on and found that there was always something I could take away from every book - no matter how far from my own comfort zone it was.   

 

This was me, too. 

 

My life long love of books had me reading books about children's books (i.e., by Jim Trelease and the like).  Some of those books were classified as education books, so I read those, too.  Thus I read many books about homeschooling.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[elegantlion]

We had some friends that homeschooled, and one year it seemed like a large portion of private school parents started homeschooling, us included. I really only knew about Abeka as that is what ds had used. Once we realized that wasn't a good fit, I found this board. This board has been more influential on my homeschooling than anyone else. We never did follow WTM very well, but I love the individual lectures, especially the ones on literature. Latin-Centered Curriculum was another big influence, not that we followed it completely either. Those introduced me to the possibilities that ds could receive a deep education at home. Multum non Multa was a huge factor in how we homeschooled. 

 

[Bluegoat]

I read The Teenage Liberation Handbook when I was 17. That pretty much decided me. When dh and I got serious I had to lay out some important decisions I'd made before I met him. Sweetie, we'll be homebirthing, co-sleeping, and homeschooling. Don't marry me if you're not cool with that.  :lol: He was cool with it.

 

I have a grad degree in education so listing all my influences in education would be too long a list, but in terms of the current homeschool world, it's definitely Julie Bogart.

 

That is so funny, that is also what influenced me to be interested in homeschooling when I was 17. 

 

Then I read quite a lot of Holt.  And the Summerhill book.

 

Going to university really changed a lot of the ideas I picked up from those books - I couldn't take seriously the idea that any set of knowledge that kids stumble across will be as good as any other set . I became interested in classical homeschooling after that, but there were aspects that really didn't resonate or seemed very arbitrary.  The first things I read about Charlotte Mason made it sound like a sort of Christian Waldorf, but I've since found it much more grounded than most of the other homeschool approaches and that is where I am now.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Bluegoat

[Farrar]

That is so funny, that is also what influenced me to be interested in homeschooling when I was 17. 

 

Then I read quite a lot of Holt.  And the Summerhill book.

 

Going to university really changed a lot of the ideas I picked up from those books - I couldn't take seriously the idea that any set of knowledge that kids stumble across will be as good as any other set . I became interested in classical homeschooling after that, but there were aspects that really didn't resonate or seemed very arbitrary.  The first things I read about Charlotte Mason made it sound like a sort of Christian Waldorf, but I've since found it much more grounded than most of the other homeschool approaches and that is where I am now.

 

Wow. Yeah. That's very similar to my own path, which also meandered through Summerhill and Holt then through classical and ending up a little more CMish, though still more influenced by child-led ideas as well. I still value that I read Summerhill and a lot of the other more radical education thinkers, it just doesn't sway me as any sort of be all end all the way it did when I was really young, pre-teaching and kids.

[ScoutTN]

I read every homeschooling book I could get my hands on and found that there was always something I could take away from every book - no matter how far from my own comfort zone it was.  

 

 

 

 

:iagree:

 

This was me too. I read a huge variety of educational and homeschooling books. Most influential were I Saw the Angel in the Marble, For the Children's Sake, and TWTM. (first edition!) and the catalogs from Veritas and the Elijah company. The Well-Adjusted Child helped me to be better prepared to answer typical comments or criticisms in our early years, and to discern when to engage in real conversation and when to pass the bean dip.  These boards have been invaluable in our journey - inspiration, encouragement, information, kilts, kerfuffles and all!

 

IRL friends who homeschooled were certainly as influential as anything I read, though. From college on, I was interacting with homeschooling families regularly. Seeing the diversity of personalities, teaching styles, curricula and philosophies all doing this amazing thing and rejecting a factory model of education was inspiring and helpful.

Edited March 29, 2016 by ScoutTN

[pinkmint]

I didn't really know homeschooling was a thing until adulthood. But then I picked up on the negative stereotypes. I met a homeschooling family in real life and saw some things I admired which helped me cut through the stereotypes and make up my own mind.

 

Then we met Gregg Harris (he wrote the influential book The Christian Homeschool in the 1980's) because we used to live near the church he pastored. We met him a few months after his wife Sono died and we love the guy. Big influence on us.

Edited March 29, 2016 by pinkmint

[HRAAB]

At different times and with different needs, I've been influenced by different writers.

 

Elijah Company

Charlotte Mason (still influenced)

The Clarksons

Andrew Kern

Susan Wise Bauer

Mortimer Adler

Laura Berquist

 

And when I get too crazy

 

John Holt

Grace Llewellyn

 

Who was the lady that wrote the book about play being a child's work. She passed away a few years ago. She was friends with John Holt?

[Lady Florida.]

I never even heard of homeschooling until the early 90s when a student at the high school where I taught withdrew "to be homeschooled". She was the talk of the teacher's lounge, though I realize now that none of my colleagues understood it either.

 

A few years later when ds was born ('97) we started talking about schooling. I knew the system where my paycheck came from was broken, but the only private schools in our area were religious. Ds was only 6 months old when I started to research homeschooling.

 

Before he was hs age, I read as much as I could. Homeschooling for Excellence was the first. Another one was called For the Children's Sake. Although it was religious, it introduced me to Charlotte Mason, which then sent me on a quest.

 

Other influences were John Holt, The Lamberts (FIAR), and Home Education Magazine.

 

I didn't discover The Well Trained Mind until we had been homeschooling for several years, and I did what I'd been doing all along. I took the parts I liked and incorporated them into our homeschooling. For a long time I labeled our style as Classical Charlotte Mason* (before that was an official thing).

 

*And yet we did unit studies, which was pretty much the anti-CM. Our homeschooling was truly eclectic!

 

Thathomeschooldad told me to read the well trained mind.

 

 

I miss Tom.  :crying:

 

I was a FIAR baby.

 

Those ladies on the FIAR forum were the best.

 

And I loved the Lamberts. 

 

I was very briefly influenced by their complete opposite, Sandra Dodd. Yeah, that was a year!

 

Then CM's original series. 

 

Then I found my sweet spot with homeschooling. 

 

Except for the part about being a FIAR baby, I could have written this. 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Learning-Year-Homeschool-Curriculum/dp/0609805851/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459240978&sr=8-1&keywords=rebecca+rupp
My second

 

 

My copy of Rebecca Rupp's book was well used. I loved creating our own curriculum and that was my go-to resource for years. I loved that book.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Lady Florida

[kewb]

 

 

 

I miss Tom.  :crying:

 

 

 

 

Me too.  I did see his wife and daughter recently and they are doing okay.

[Lady Florida.]

Me too.  I did see his wife and daughter recently and they are doing okay.

 

That's good to hear.

[reign]

I started with the Mothering forums when my oldest was a baby. After reading all the parenting posts going all the way back I started in the Education sub forums. I gradually changed from "homeschoolers are crazy" to "what a great idea!"

 

There were a couple of very kind ladies who unschooled that were very formative in my decision to home educate. I found The Well Trained mind around the time my oldest was 3 and never looked back!

[Lady Florida.]

 

There were a couple of very kind ladies who unschooled that were very formative in my decision to home educate. I found The Well Trained mind around the time my oldest was 3 and never looked back!

 

We might have been more open to unschooling if I had found people like that. All I found were the Sandra Dodd style unschool warriors. They turned me off of unschooling very quickly.

[bettyandbob]

I was reading a lot about it and thought we needed to do it, but see how I could do it. Then I found the first edition of TWTM. That made a clear path for me.

[Guest]

I don't remember alllll the details...but here is what happened.

 

We observed that our most interesting friends had classical education in their background.  I learned more about this, and my husband and I both found in it our aspirations for our son's education.  

 

We researched it and found a three classical schools in our area, 2 close enough to attend, one about 1/3 the price of the other.  We sent our son to kindergarten and first grades there.  But because of non-educational reasons, we pulled our son from the school.  It was classical but harsh.  Nope.  

 

Late in my son's kindergarten year, I had run across TWTM, and found it to be a treasure of recommendations and both inspiration and practical how-to ideas.  When we pulled my son out of the classical school and there were no openings at the OTHER classical school, I became an accidental homeschooler, with TWTM at my back.  

 

About 4 months into it, I found the Boards and through them got MORE encouragement and friends...and I even found an IRL homeschool mom-encouragement group that met once a months.  More friends, and both paper, internet and IRL friends at my back.  

 

Over time, the CIRCE Institute, Ambleside, Tapestry of Grace and a couple of other books and groups added to my understanding and toolbox...too many to remember, really...but classical was the framework and TWTM was the guided the whole way.  Even at the end when my son went to the $$$ classical school the last two years, and I had to prepare his transcript of our homeschool to date, TWTM guided me through that.  He got credit for every single class...that is very unusual.  It was, in part, because they valued classical teaching.  And, at the end, when my son decided ... ahem ... not to finish high school (argh), he had only one class that he needed to finish at a tutoring organization.  

 

I wrote his final transcript and had it vetted by a college admissions officer, and she said that his transcript was *solid* (not a "Mommy Transcript"), again, because of the classical education we provided through all those years.  I am so thankful we followed the classical route.  I made many mistakes along the way, and have a couple of regrets--mostly for being too urgent and pushy in the younger years--but I will *never* regret giving my son a classical education.

 

 

[Alice]

The Well-Trained Mind and these boards are the biggest influence. 

 

We never really decided to homeschool. When ds was three I asked for a copy of TWTM for Christmas one year. I wasn't really looking to homeschool.  It was more that we had decided not to do preschool that year and everyone in our area does preschool. Actually, I had tried to sign ds up for preschool but didn't realize that April was way past too late in this area and everything was full. So I figured we would just try doing some preschoolish stuff at home. I can't even remember where I'd heard of TWTM but I thought I'd read it. After reading it I thought that maybe I could homeschool and I was really blown away by the ideas about how to learn. The classical method would have fitted me perfectly as a student. 

 

Soon after that I started looking at these boards. I think the biggest thing I learned from here was that there are many different ways to homeschool and that it was more important to teach the children I was given rather than to be a slave to any one method or way of thinking. I've gotten to hear SWB in person several times and I felt like she had a similar message which I appreciated. 

 

At this point our homeschool looks nothing like I thought it would when we first started out but we're still going 8 years later. 

[MaeFlowers]

I primarily attended Jesuit run schools.  They followed the Ignatian teaching methods or rather pedagogical paradigm.  The two years I attended public schools taught me what I did NOT want homeschool to be.

 

This was my experience. I attended Catholic schools for many years and then finished high school at a ps. I knew what education could be and that the public school I had attended had failed miserably. I live in a different state from where I grew up and hoped that the public school system would be different here. I met so many kids leaving our ps system around the time ds was born and started to worry. When my BIL was a freshman in college, he brought me a paper that he was writing for a history class to proof read. It was awful. There were so many issues I didn't even know where to start. It was probably written at a fourth grade level. He had graduated high school writing at this level. I was upset but I knew it wasn't his fault. He was (and is) a smart person. The school system had completely failed him. I wanted to homeschool then but dh was worried. After two years in ps, he realized that our ds was being cheated, too. I didn't really want to homeschool but I felt I had to educate my children.

 

I don't remember alllll the details...but here is what happened.

 

We observed that our most interesting friends had classical education in their background.  I learned more about this, and my husband and I both found in it our aspirations for our son's education.  

 

We researched it and found a three classical schools in our area, 2 close enough to attend, one about 1/3 the price of the other.  We sent our son to kindergarten and first grades there.  But because of non-educational reasons, we pulled our son from the school.  It was classical but harsh.  Nope.  

 

Late in my son's kindergarten year, I had run across TWTM, and found it to be a treasure of recommendations and both inspiration and practical how-to ideas.  When we pulled my son out of the classical school and there were no openings at the OTHER classical school, I became an accidental homeschooler, with TWTM at my back.  

 

About 4 months into it, I found the Boards and through them got MORE encouragement and friends...and I even found an IRL homeschool mom-encouragement group that met once a months.  More friends, and both paper, internet and IRL friends at my back.  

 

Over time, the CIRCE Institute, Ambleside, Tapestry of Grace and a couple of other books and groups added to my understanding and toolbox...too many to remember, really...but classical was the framework and TWTM was the guided the whole way.  Even at the end when my son went to the $$$ classical school the last two years, and I had to prepare his transcript of our homeschool to date, TWTM guided me through that.  He got credit for every single class...that is very unusual.  It was, in part, because they valued classical teaching.  And, at the end, when my son decided ... ahem ... not to finish high school (argh), he had only one class that he needed to finish at a tutoring organization.  

 

I wrote his final transcript and had it vetted by a college admissions officer, and she said that his transcript was *solid* (not a "Mommy Transcript"), again, because of the classical education we provided through all those years.  I am so thankful we followed the classical route.  I made many mistakes along the way, and have a couple of regrets--mostly for being too urgent and pushy in the younger years--but I will *never* regret giving my son a classical education.

 

I think I have looked to people I admire as well. My father, my grandfather and other people I met along the way. I noticed that they all had certain traits. They were well read, continued to self-educate, and could apply knowledge from one subject to the understanding of another. They kept an open mind, knew how to ask questions, knew how to think critically, and, essentially, how to learn. It was second nature because of the way they had been taught. I wanted that for my dc (and for myself.)

[Chris in VA]

I was influenced by educators, first, when I was in school to become a teacher.

I loved the New Zealand woman, Sylvia Ashton Warner, who taught Maori children to read using Key Words.

I loved the books Torey Hayden wrote about her emotionally disturbed kids.

I sent my firstborn to Montessori school for several years, and was influenced by that lovely, calm, beautiful place.

 

For homeschooling, WTM was the biggest influence, with some Karen Andreola (Pocketful of Pinecones) and others thrown in.

[HS Mom in NC]

Not everyone had the same amount of influence on me, but there was something to be gleaned from each of the following:

 

The Colfaxes

Charlotte Mason

Susan Wise Bauer

The Elijah Co.

Karen Andreola
Ruth Beechick

C.S. Lewis (Abolition of Man)
Mary Pride
John Holt

David Elkind

John Taylor Gatto

The Harrises

I started researching homeschooling in 1998 when my oldest 2 were toddlers. Back then you had to get a librarian or bookstore employee to order books for you and there was no internet, so research was harder. I sent a post card to every curriculum supplier in the back of Mary Pride's Big Book of Homeschooling requesting their catalogue. I got hundreds and read through most of them.  I knew 3 or 4 families who homeschooled and only one of them was really weird.

 

[Garga]

I hated school. I was a nerdy outcast so school was difficult for me. I always hated the idea of sending my kids to a place that I hated so much.  The thought made me feel slightly sick to my stomach.

 

My son was born just before the cut off date so he could enter K when he was 5.  But then, the year he turned 5, they changed the date by 2 weeks. He was suddenty born just AFTER the cut off date, so he could NOT enter K when he was 5 (though he was sooooo ready.)

 

I read a book by David H Albert that struck a chord with me at that time.  I have no idea if I would still agree with it or not.  :)  My homeschool philosophy has changed over the years and I barely remember the book, other than if your kids are ready to stop a formerly beloved hobby, then let them stop.  They change as they grow and it's ok. I also read a bunch of books from the library, but they're all a bit of a blur. None of them stand out (except for the Albert one) as being something that had a huge impact.  All together they influenced me as they demonstrated that homeschooling was a valid and do-able choice.  Individually they weren't much impact.  It just took reading a few different books for the idea to settle into my brain and feel comfortable.

 

Since I was such a social outcast at school and parts of that never left me, I've well-learned the lesson that people won't understand the things I do, so I might as well do them anyway.  So any naysayers were happily ignored, being that my life has been chock full of naysayers. I can't tell you the number of times I've caught people rolling their eyes at me either where I can see them or behind my back.  (I'm often outside of the box compared to everyone else.)

 

So...my hatred of school, my son being ready for school and then told he couldn't go, my reading a positive book about homeschooling, my comfort with doing my own thing even when no one else understands...all those things led to homeschooling.

 

I'm not sure when I found the WTM website (sometime before 2008), but it's been the number 1 influence ever since I discovered it. 

Edited March 29, 2016 by Garga

[Mrs. Y]

Elijah Co

Mary Hood

Ruth Beechick

The Colfax family

John Holt

 

Besides, IRL most of the people I knew personally were hs'ing for mainly religious reasons and were using anything from Abeka to CLE to Gothard Wisdom Booklets (which NEVER appealed to me!).

[Guest]

...snip...

 

I think I have looked to people I admire as well. My father, my grandfather and other people I met along the way. I noticed that they all had certain traits. They were well read, continued to self-educate, and could apply knowledge from one subject to the understanding of another. They kept an open mind, knew how to ask questions, knew how to think critically, and, essentially, how to learn. It was second nature because of the way they had been taught. I wanted that for my dc (and for myself.)

 

I was NOT classically educated but sitting with them in conversations, I wished I had been.  So I tagged along with my son...until I became not just a caboose but an anchor.  Then he went to classical school.  :0)  But what a good trip it was together.

[EMS83]

My best friend made me aware of it as an option, and helped me realize it was possible for me and my family.  My husband supported me, even when I was feeling inadequate.  As for philosophy and approach, a bit of everything.  Mary Hood hits closest to my way of doing things, and reading her was encouraging, letting me know it was "ok" to do it that way.  But I read into all the major methods/philosophies and I see the value in each of them, and what we do reflects at least a piece of each of them.  

[nrg]

I loved Better then School by Nancy Wallace and worked as the first homeschool teacher four our district.  I was asked to homeschool my then kindergarten son for first grade by the first grade teachers. No problem.

[pehp]

*Sally Clarkson

*Julie Bogart

*Charlotte Mason 

 

That's my personal triumvirate! 

[OhanaBee]

I discovered homschooling when I was in college, in a class for teachers, and the professor was deriding this "new trend" of parents actually thinking they could teach their own children....AT HOME [oh, the horror]. I remembered seeing about about homeschooling in our college bookstore, so went straight there after class to buy it.  It was the Colfax book, and I was fascinated by the many different ways their kids were learning outside of a classroom.  My mom had "supplemented" our education with the subject she thought were important, but weren't covered in the schools, so in a way, I grew up part-time homeschooled.

 

Charlotte Mason was probably my biggest influence during the early years. 

[BlsdMama]

Reading the trends thread has been interesting and now I'm curious...

Who influenced you most in homeschooling? What books, blogs, speakers, etc?

 

There's another thread on this somewhere. I think I started it about a year or so ago. :)

 

 

Definitely SWB.

Educating the WholeHearted Child

All the women and sites dedicated to Charlotte Mason

Bluedorns

[Scarlett]

My Mom (retired public school teacher)

 

SWB and her book TWTM.