I agree, and have the same tendency though I’d never thought of it in this light before. I still feel almost panicky about hanging out with young children I don’t know because I don’t speak kid anymore 
Awwww! Some of my favorite moments are when my son (15) is teaching my daughter (3) something. There’s just something so indescribably precious about seeing him so patient and caring. And she, of course, thinks the sun rises and sets at his whim!
Whew. I’m not certain yet. Here’s the thing: the schools around here DO suck, and they suck spectacularly. I’m sure you’ve heard horror stories of Chicago Public Schools; let me tell you: they’re not exaggerated. So that’s a big motivation to homeschool for me. I didn’t with my son because, even when he was a preschooler, it was obvious that he and I share the same laziness around schoolwork. My daughter, on the other hand, won’t take “later” for an answer. She’s the driving force, and she’s incredibly eager to learn. *She *inspires me.
My goddaughters, who are the homeschooling family I know best, are somewhere between homeschooling and unschooling in technique, which is what I think I’d be best suited for. I don’t think I’d have the gumption to stick to a prepared curriculum, nor do I think it would take the best advantage of what I think homeschooling’s strengths can be. I adore the notion of taking what the kid is interested in and finding a way to teach general ed stuff through that as well as the topic itself.
What do I mean by that? I mean that if the kid is interested in lions, not only can we learn about lions, but we can practice spelling and handwriting and composition by writing to lion researchers. We can learn map skills by finding areas lions live naturally and zoos where humans keep them. We can learn fractions by figuring out how much of a cow a lion has to eat in a week to stay healthy. We can learn nutrition by studying a lion’s diet and our diet and figuring out why they’re different. We can learn history by researching circuses and private zoos and the people that owned lions in the past.
So it’s sort of the unschooling idea of letting the child’s interest lead, but also making sure that the academic fundamentals are throughly covered at the same time - not as discrete lessons fighting for time, but as a gestalt. Does that make any sense? Does it have a name within the homeschooling vocabulary? About 20 years ago in public education, it was called “Whole learning”. In college, it’s called “multidisciplinary”.
I like the idea of periodic testing to make sure I’m not overlooking gaps in education, but I’m also not too concerned with things happening at the exact same age they do in the public schools. I’ve been really impressed with the Waldorf school’s take on reading, for example. I’ve watched half a dozen Waldorf students go from being complete non-readers at age 8 to reading Lord of the Rings at age 9, with no stress, no tears and a greater fluency and comprehension than kids who are parroting the alphabet at age 3 and struggling to sound out *Ramona *at age 6. But I also think that it’s not a matter of not teaching your kid, but that Waldorf education very carefully structures their lessons to encourage neural development in a way that lets reading “click” in 2nd and 3rd grade. So I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think the academic requirements set by my public school are inherintly right and proper, but that there are other ways to do it, as well.
What makes things more complicated, of course, is me going to nursing school and after that working. I don’t know how homeschooling will work with that logistically. It might work, it might not. At the moment, I’m happy to leave it open. She’s just turned 3, and already exceeds our local school’s “kindergarten readiness” guidelines, so I’m not worried about her falling behind if I keep her at home and work with her while I can. After that, we’ll take things as they come.
Well, that sounds a lot like what unschooling is supposed to be like to me. I admire people who can do that really well!
Lifted from my homeschooling MS just now, a warning of the perils of homeschooling:
Other warnings include: don’t put cuneiform tablets in the oven if they’re made of air-dry clay, and don’t forget about the mummified chicken in the garage. Hm, now I need a list!
We call it ‘organic learning’, but I doubt that’s the official term 
One of the greatest things about homeschooling (and I didn’t realize it until recently) is that it’s okay to admit that this is not all about the kid. My learning style and teaching style, stuff that’s going on with the farm business, or the family’s needs at any given time can take precedent over whether or not my son learns to scratch out the perfect cursive upper case ‘S’ this week. That’s what I meant when I posted about taking solace in the the unschooling philosophy. Remembering that our prime objective is to unleash and nurture a passion for learning helps us be okay with the fact that this week’s science time was taken up in the wee hours of four different occasions when we stayed up all night to watch lambs be born even though our curriculum tells us we should have been out gazing at the stars and mapping the position of the planets.
Which reminds me, I did want to finish posting about curriculum, standards and tests.
We don’t use a standardized curriculum and our state doesn’t require one. To be compliant in New York you simply have to inform your district of your intent to homeschool, file your child’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) (formats vary, non-standard within certain parameters all clearly laid out) and then submit quarterly reports documenting satisfactory growth in the key subject areas as outlined in the IEP. Standardized testing begins in grade 4 or 5 and can be substituted with narrative assessment written by the parent in alternating years until grade 9, at which time testing happens annually.
I’m really okay with these regs because of the vagueness of language which allows us so much freedom to school (or unschool!) as we wish. I’ve reformatted the state’s standards from their own website into a checklist document I use for my final reporting. I find this to be a very useful tool to check our progress… perhaps more so than the standardized assessments I order and administer each year (even though I don’t share the results with the district…I believe in not setting a poor precedent by reporting anything more than what is required)
Others in my community question my willingness (eagerness?) to administer standardized tests each year. Maybe it’s the teacher in me :smack: but I honestly have no beef with a test that checks whether or not a kid has mastered basic literacy.
Agreed. My wife and I give our kids the California Achievement Test at the end of each year. (Aside: Iowa’s is better, but it takes longer to administer, and while the CAT has limitations, it does a pretty good job letting us know where the kids stand.) We look forward less to getting the results than we do to seeing how the boys are progressing.