Original link:https://conge.github.io/2022/09/07/NewDaddy-homeschooling/
September is the school season. In my WeChat Moments, friends in North America are posting pictures of their children before going out on the first day of school. Domestically, there are fewer people cheering the return of the beast to school as in previous years, and some people complain about the failure of “delivering” their children to school – because “static management” has to take online classes.
As for my family, I started to try Homeschooling. When translated into Chinese, it should be referred to as “homeschooling” for homeschooling.
Why study at home
Don’t ask, ask is dissatisfied with Seattle’s school system.
Homeschooling also appears to come in various forms, but in common, children learn outside the traditional school system. The differences are too numerous to list. For example, when I recently read the book of Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, I learned that his children are taught at home by himself and his wife. The reason is that he often travels for work because of his work, so when he and his wife together, they take their children with them on business trips, and then they can be their children’s teachers.
We weren’t going to teach ourselves the way Seligman did. The Seligmans have both teaching experience and the patience to be teachers. I don’t have that ability. So, we teamed up with some like-minded parents to set up two Pods (or study groups, squads?), interviewed together and hired teachers to lead the children in class. Unlike the general Home School, the teachers we employ are not focused on subject teaching. In other words, teachers are not responsible for teaching them literacy, reading, math, etc. The teachers we hired are two young people with rich outdoor experience. They teach outdoors three times a week, leading the children to explore nature and learn simple wilderness survival and tracking.
We want children to have more contact with nature, learn in forests, grass, beaches and seaside, and have more contact with bright sunshine and fresh air, and keep their curiosity and exploration of nature. The school’s support in this regard is obviously not enough. As for math, literacy, and reading, we usually teach and play by ourselves. Anyway, preschool, first and second grade levels don’t need much study in this area.
children’s schedule
Daughter and son are in separate Pods. Except three times a week, the children go to the field/park/sea to learn with the teacher, the rest of the learning is at home. Their study programs are as follows:
daughter:
- Chinese, every day literacy, reading, writing
- Mathematics, I plan to use Beast Academy as a textbook to guide her to learn arithmetic
- Piano, one half-hour piano lesson per week + daily practice
- Swimming, one half-hour swimming lesson per week + family go to the swimming pool on weekends to play in the water
- Arts, go to the community once a week to take an art class and learn to draw
son:
- Chinese, literacy every day, reading
- Mathematics, intends to use Beast Academy as a textbook to guide his interest in arithmetic
- Swimming, twice a week, half-hour swimming lessons each time + family go to the swimming pool on weekends to play in the water
Listed above are learning activities that require a fixed investment of time. At other times, children play and do activities by themselves. These activities include but are not limited to Arts, Reading and Sports:
- Arts, provide paper, crayons, watercolors, and play freely at home
- Reading, borrowing books from the library, reading independently, reading with parents
- Other activities including cycling, picking, plenty of free time
- Handmade items, subscription from Kiwico , handmade Natsume once or twice a month
- There is a 50-minute screen time every Saturday, and the kids decide what to watch.
The current situation
My two children have been attending Outdoor Forest School since Preschool, so this year’s arrangement is still a familiar form to them.
The difference is that there will be no fixed campus this year, and every other month, the location of classes will change, giving them the opportunity to explore a different environment. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you don’t change the place. In nature, even if the place remains the same, the environment will change as the seasons change.
In the first class, my daughter saw drilling wood to make fire. The son also helps the teacher pick up trash and learn to keep the environment safe and clean.
There are also downsides. Because it is in the open field and without the protection of campus walls, children’s teaching and learning may be distracted by the passing of others. For example, the daughter said that two of her classmates had a conflict with an older child towards the end of the day. How to solve it, I have no idea.
The wife put a lot of time and effort into the establishment of these two pods and the various curriculum arrangements for the children. I am a hands-off shopkeeper. So, thank you wife for your hard work!
2022-09-07 初稿
This article is reprinted from:https://conge.github.io/2022/09/07/NewDaddy-homeschooling/
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