13 of the Best Homeschooling Quotes

After a week of ticking things off a long to-do list (I have both an actual one and one that exists only inside my head), homeschooling parents like us like to take it slow. One of the things that I usually do is to pick up my current read and play catch up.

I also like to breathe in as much inspiration as I can, so I read quotes from some of my favorite writers, personalities and people who matter. I’m sharing with you some of them right here. Who knows, you yourself might need a little pick-me-up soon.

1 . “So you think the best way to prepare kids for the real world is to bus them to a government institution where they’re forced to spend all day isolated with children of their own age and adults who are paid to be with them, placed in classes that are too big to allow more than a few minutes of personal interaction with the teacher-then spend probably an hour or more everyday waiting in lunch lines, car lines, bathroom lines, recess lines, classroom lines, and are forced to progress at the speed of the slowest child in class?” ~ Steven James, Placebo

2. The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda – a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make ‘good’ citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens. ~ H. L. Mencken

3. “Change the world one “what-about-socialization” question at a time, my friend.”~ Jamerrill Stewart

4. “Break the teacher certification monopoly so anyone with something valuable to teach can teach it. Nothing is more important than this.”~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

5. “We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people.”~ Diane Flynn Keith

6. “There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.”~ Mahatma Gandhi

7. “I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.” ~ Agatha Christie

8. “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.”~ W.B. Yeats

9. “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.”~ Ezra Pound

10. “What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn’t a school at all.”~ John Holt

11. “Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature.”~ Charlotte M. Mason

12. Reward and punishment is the lowest form of education. ~ Zhuang Zhou

13. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination. ~Albert Einstein

I can’t get enough of these inspiring lines. Share your favorite quote on homeschooling with me. Shoot me an e-mail at cure4mondays@gmail.com. I’ll be waiting!

Homeschool Must-Have: Homeschool Skedtrack

Organization is the key to everything in homeschooling. Before we begin a homeschool year, we (try to) put together everything that we need such as books, various reading materials, binders or notebooks and art materials.

And by we, I mean me.

If say,  I don’t get to fill up our school supply/craft cabinet before the start of the year, I’d just collect other needed materials as we go along the way. But then I have this thing for supplying supply cabinets with a lot of supplies, so you can come knocking on my door for anything from scratch paper to sponge paper and I’m ready to supply you with those.

There is, however, another kind of organization that calls for a lot of attention: the planning and managing of weekly or monthly lesson plans, activities, presentations, discussions, field trips, etc.

On our first three months back to homeschooling, the load of work drove me up the wall—and I don’t mean that in a cute way. Cole was five years old when we first homeschooled him so we relied on what was around us—we counted cars, watched birds and their colors, listened to sounds of animals, etc.  Click here for a portion of our homeschooling story.

Now that Cole’s 12, we’re following a more structured curriculum which my husband and I prepare on our own.

My Ultimate Virtual Homeschool Organizer

I discovered that so many homeschooling parents around the world were just as addled as I was when they started homeschooling.

Am I doing things wrong? Is there something wrong with how I sequence my lessons?
 
Those were just some of the questions that bugged me every single day. And of course, there were the perpetual questions on record keeping, grading, compiling study materials, and a long list of everything else.

I constantly searched for help on how to organize everything until I found Homeschool Skedtrack, a free online lesson planner, scheduler, and tracking system in one. It was a bit confusing to use at first but they provide comprehensive video tutorials every step of the way. With a bit of diligence on my part, I was able to fully understand and appreciate how HS worked.

What I like about Homeschool Skedtrack

Writing down lesson plans could be a daunting and time-consuming task (I kid you not!). With the skedtrack I am able to put all our subjects (or courses as they call it in HS) in one place and create activities for each course. Cole has nine courses for 2014-2015, seven core subjects and three electives.

The Activities page contain the lessons that we want to cover for a homeschool year. In my case, I only had time to prepare for two days’ worth of activities (or lessons) before we started homeschooling for 2014-2015, so I just kept adding lessons as we progressed.

We’re on our third week now and here’s our Activities page for Grammar just to give you an idea of how it looks like.

I clicked on Predict Dates to see how much work we could finish at a given time and at what dates we could accomplish them if we stick to the lesson plan that I prepared without delay. Delays are okay, especially if it means sticking to a certain lesson if you think you need to.

If you’re not crazy about computing grades (I’m not!), the Homeschool Skedtrack provides that service as long as you provide them details of your graded activities. You can also go without a grading system if you choose to. That’s one of the beautiful things about homeschooling. If you think your child will soar higher without you giving him A’s or B’s and whatnot, then you can always opt for a hug rather than  a grade of A+ for a job well done. There are also kids who think of grades as their mini trophies, so give it to them if gives them motivation.

What’s great about homeschooling is that it gives you the opportunity to explore what type of learning works best for your children. It also allows you to find the kind of lesson planning that matches your creativity level as a teacher.

The Homeschool Skedtrack is just one of the virtual organizers that can assist you with your day-to-day activities. It works for me but other homeschooling moms think that it’s not for them. Keep in mind that a great part of the success in homeschooling comes from understanding by heart your goals and how you want to reach them.

Homeschooling: A Homeschooling Mom’s Perspective

I was recently given the opportunity to talk to a small group about homeschooling at the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication. The questions that came after my presentation were all wonderful (and very encouraging). Maybe you have questions on homeschooling, too, that you’d want to send my way.

It’s never too late to start bringing education home.

I would love to share my presentation with you. If you want a copy, please e-mail me at cure4mondays@gmail.com

Is Homeschooling Legal in the Philippines?

I have been asked so many times if homeschooling is legal in the Philippines. The answer is a definitive “yes”, as stated in the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines Article XIV:

Section 1. The State shall protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality education at all levels, and shall take appropriate steps to make such education accessible to all.

Section 2. The State shall:

(1) Establish, maintain, and support a complete, adequate, and integrated system of education relevant to the needs of the people and society;

(2) Establish and maintain a system of free public education in the elementary and high school levels. Without limiting the natural right of parents to rear their children, elementary education is compulsory for all children of school age…

It would help if you talked to experienced homeschooling families if you’re considering homeschooling your children. There are many ways to get affiliated in homeschooling, but you would be shocked to know that some people in the Department of Education (DepEd) may not be able to answer your questions. I have spoken to five people at DepEd who were unaware of the concept of homeschooling (speaks a lot about our educational system). Based on my research, homeschooling families have experienced the same thing so please know that you’re not alone in this challenge. Looking for the right person to talk to at DepEd about homeschooling would be a challenge, I kid you not, so go ahead and look around so you can assess the best homeschooling method for you before you attempt approaching DepEd about it because I don’t want you to end up discouraged.

The first two things thing that you might want to know is how to get back to regular school later on if you decide to; and what happens if your homeschooler is ready to fly high to college. We will deal with that in the next post.

We have been homeschooling for a total of four years now and we unschooled during the first two years. Unschooling is a learning method which allows the learner to develop his interests without following a curriculum or a set of lesson plans. If say, your child is interested in skateboarding, you allow him to develop this interest and inject knowledge in science, math and vocabulary into this particular interest. How? If you look closely, the ollies and kickflips apply the basic principles of physics. Ask your learner to write an essay on what makes skateboarding so interesting for him or her and that’s English subject (theme writing and grammar) for you. So on and so forth.

This can be a challenge to your creativity as a teacher, but imagine the fun that goes into learning.

Now that our son is 13, we decided that getting him to a more structured learning would benefit him. We are independently homeschooling, which means we create our own curriculum.

“How is Homeschooling Done?!”

Yes, we get that kind of reaction a lot. Deciding on what your children should learn for a homeschool year is not an out-of-this-world concept although it may sound that way since we have always relied on expert curriculum developers and teachers to design our curriculum and create lesson plans for our learners. One thing that makes homeschooling work is that you can customize your lessons.

Lesson planning in homeschooling is based on what you think your child is ready to learn, how much information your learner can take in one homeschool day, the method of teaching that works for your learners and creating lessons that will also make way for their interests.

“Homeschooling is Impossible!”

Yet again, so many people tell us that they can never be homeschooling parents like us because “they can’t do the impossible like we do”. We’re not hiding wings inside our shirts and we don’t morph into superhumans when no one is looking. We simply are parents who know our children better, therefore we brought education home.

There are so many exciting things about homeschooling, and you just learned one of the most important information — that it is legal in the Philippines. Consider this a good beginning.