What benefits, perks or advantages have you experienced from homeschooling?

@minismallholding and @johndoer123 found me and immediately turned me onto @homeedders where I just accepted my first Steem challenge. It seems like great exercise for my wordsmithing and a nice place to start dialogue in the greater Steem community.

There are so many answers to the benefits to home education and what you might gain from it that you can't gain from public school! I am going to limit my answer to three choices for this challenge.

Do you love or hate the pressure of timepieces? Flexible scheduling is a huge bonus for me. I have never been great at chasing a time clock, and being able to have fluidity allows for exponentially more opportunities throughout the school year. We start school after Labor Day, and it runs until Memorial Day. We can plan amazing field trips to encompass whatever we want. Last year my kids went on a five day trip with their grandparents to Atlanta where they went to the Puppetry Arts Center, Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum and Library, Fernbank Science Center, Emory University’s art museum, and probably a few other places escaping me as I type. My 13 year old son @aurynthenorse is a magician, and when he got a special invitation to get a tour of the world’s largest private magic collection in the world, we were able to take him to see it. The past 3 years, he has been able to participate in an annual magician's convention sponsored by the International Brotherhood of Magicians that would be completely impossible to manage if he was in public school. When my very dear friend Ines is visiting from Germany a couple of times a year, we tailor classes to include her ~ as a student and as a teacher, depending the subject!

What habits do your children practice? Which of those habits were learned in the home, and which ones were learned through their time with the public school system? How much of your child's waking time do you actually get to spend with them or actually know what they are being exposed to? Home education gives parents the ability to make sure that the children and adults that will be in a child’s life have similar values. I have pointed out in my house more than twice that about the only thing public school kids have in common with each other are geographical location. While it is vital to make sure your child gets socialization throughout their development, that doesn’t mean you have to lose complete control over what they are learning during that time. For people who may live in an area where geographically their neighbors have fundamentally different philosophies or religious preferences (such as myself), it also makes it a lot easier to balance teaching kids about other beliefs without feeling the pressures of those beliefs being forced into your home.

What do you consider a well-rounded education? In our home, education includes things such as community service and kindness. It includes spending time with elders, work on the homestead, or helping to make meals for the family. Honesty is non-negotiable and communications are direct and respectful. Children are included in the conversations (at an age-appropriate level) and talked to as equal members of the family. We have a motto in our community ~ “It’s who we are and what we do”. This means that the adults go by the same standards as the children are expected to hold. While you can instill these things in public school children, it’s much more effective when it permeates every moment of the waking hours during those critical developing years.

I will conclude my post with this thought: Home education isn't a job just for parents, and public school education can't be successful without parents and other caregivers. Without the support of many folks in our lives, my children's homeschool education would not be superior to public school education. My job as a home educator isn't just to educate the children; it is to analyze what their education needs are and facilitate that education happening, sometimes with someone much more knowledgeable than me in a particular area of study. However, education must include whatever tools are needed to have an end result of accountable, responsible humans who know how to think for themselves, practice integrity, solve problems, weigh consequences, and peacefully communicate with others to help get any job done.

This photo is from my 18 year old graduating in May 2019. He and my oldest daughter graduated from a Paidea school; the younger two are steadily working their way through middle school as solely homeschoolers.
Thanks for reading!