Busy Life

I know it has been a while since I last blogged.  Life has gotten crazy-busy and school has taken on a life of it's own.  Today on a Facebook group I'm on, someone posed the question about home schooling and cyber school.  They are considering Connections Academy, a cyber school, for their young children, but are afraid that they won't live up to the expectations of a home schooling parent.  As a homeschooler, I wrestle with cyber schools.  On one side of the coin, my kids use the internet and computer for a lot of their learning and they enjoy it.  My daughter does reading and Spanish daily on my iPad apps and the boys use an online portal to learn algebra and geometry.  However, what the discussion centered around was cyber school, where everything is inclusive and the parents act more as facilitator than teacher and the school dictates curriculum, graduation and report cards.  I am of the mindset that this isn't really home-schooling, but rather, school "at home." 

Homeschooling is so much more than just checking off lessons on a daily basis and worksheets.  It's about discovery, following ones passions in learning and learning how to learn.  It's not about regurgatating facts and figures to pass a test, but to figure things out and to be able to explore the world in which we live.  Kids have a wonderful sense of discovery and creativity, if we allow them to function in those things.  My kids, admittedly, hate textbooks and worksheets.  I use them to "measure" how they're doing, but in reality they learn better when they can figure things out for themselves.  For example, my oldest decided that he loves computer animation and animee.  So, without my knowledge, he found videos on YouTube which taught him how to make animee shorts using Windows Movie Maker.  One afternoon he showed me his new YouTube channel (with his 1500+ subscribers) and the shorts that he made in his spare time.  Could I have ever taught him this?  No way.  But I was impressed that he figured out how to search for the skills he wanted to learn and taught himself.  I doubt he would've been given that freedom in a traditional high school classroom.  What did he learn beyond that?  He learned how to create a script for his short (English), art and design and how do do voice overs (Fine Arts), and publishing to social media (Computer Science/Internet).  Far stretch?  Not by any homeschooler's imagination or standards.

By the way, this week we also added another member to our family.  This little guy is our "science project" for the remainder of the year.  We got a kit a few years ago and finally sent in for him. He arrived yesterday and will soon have a new habitat and a friend added to his little world.  We've decided to wait to name him/her until we know for sure what the sex is, which will be in a few weeks.

So, I'd love to hear your thoughts about cyber schools or our tadpole.  What do you think?