Homeschooling

I agree. Personally I could never offer my kids the learning that a school, public or private, can offer. My folks didn’t think highly of homeschooling and all of us kids went to one of the public schools in my area. They didn’t get themselves involved with the school either. In retrospect I don’t necessarily think that was for the best, but things went well anyhow.

The problem is, though, whenever you’re raised in a rural area, the academic vernacular ain’t no easy business to be learning...so whenever I ventured into academia, I realized that being from a rural community was far from being an advantage.

schools in rural areas dont have the resources schools in urban areas have just by sheer numbers.
I think if youve got access to a library though, it sort of levels it out a bit. Now that internet is easier to access, it has changed learning a lot, because teachers can do remote learning.

A lot of parents though will not be cut out for teaching, I know mine werent. Even driving lessons..no way could my dad teach me. Cooking? not a chance, mum would want to do it all if I wasnt perfect.
And they definitely didnt want me to do the same jobs they did for a living.

I think homeschooling was always the best... and to keep the lambs away from the wolflings

I grew up in a rural community, as did most of my classmates and teachers. Education was the most important thing that my parents, and for that matter, my grandparents, always stressed. My mother taught us to read and write, and to count before we entered school. That was a definite advantage. There was also the incentive to get good grades. One C was allowed per grading period, and never more than one per year in a subject. My father gave us a thirty minute lecture, followed by a "this hurts me more than it hurts you" backside warming. All of us graduated from high school with A/B averages, and all went to at least 2 years of college.

Our days were
5AM up and dressed
5:15 Morning Chores. (feed and water livestock, milk the cow, gather fire wood. etc)
6:00 breakfast
6:30 catch bus for school
3:30 off the bus, through the house to put books on the table, grab a cookie and a glass of milk, then off to afternoon chores. If we finished chores before dinner 5:30 PM, we had free time.
6:00 we gathered around the table and did homework. If we finished before 8:00 we had some free time (1940s and 50s home school)
8:30 it was prayers and bed time. We always had a book that we could read before going to sleep.

Saturdays were work days, and Sundays were Church, dinner at Grandma's and a free afternoon.

My children had a lot less work and a lot more free time. Looking back, maybe I should have found more work for them.

That, is a genius reflection!! However, I still say, throwing good kids in with bad kids (not referring to your comment but the other), is a bad idea. There is too much terror to go around for youngsters in public schools, I think.

This. Stay involved with the school. While it is important that we shield our kids from evil, we must not give ground to evil either, the forces working to use our system to pervert our children. The more of us that do so, the more effective we can be. People tell us we are the hateful ones for not accepting the LGBTQ narrative and lie, and they hate us for it.

But we ARE to hate the sin (not the sinner). There is nothing wrong with hating and despising sin, and working to fight it. None of us are perfect, but that does not mean we have to tolerate this or this revisionist history or socialist propaganda in our schools.

God still required His people to fight, even when He gave them victory. They were still required to go out and stand up to their enemies and not give that ground, unless He commanded it.

We must do the same.

I think I only know of one person who has been home-schooled, whom I met during college; she is also a Christian. She is a Foreign Service Officer (a diplomat) with the State Department who rotates to a new country every few years. I think her mom was a housewife, who probably did most of the homeschooling, and she had a couple of other siblings. She did mention she belonged to some sort of homeschooling network. She also majored in International Relations, which require good reading, writing, and critical thinking skills which can be taught at home. However, I'm not sure how well homeschooling prepares one for STEM fields.

Kids can be introduced to bad things/habits in public school. I think most of these bad habits are learned after hours, when kids are just hanging around the school with nothing to do. They may decide to go for a smoke, a drink, or drive away/get a ride somewhere. If the kid just goes to classes, and maybe their extracurricular activities (band practice, soccer practice, etc.) and then are picked up to go home, a lot of these bad things won't happen. I remember when I was in high school, a lot of kids were hanging out on campus with nothing to do (no extracurricular activities, etc.) even after I was finished with band practice. I would see some kids making out now and then. This is when bad things happen, when kids have freedom and are not being watched. It is not the fault of the school, but the parents.

That is incorrect. 2-3 hours a day of focused teaching and learning is sufficient. The public school system spends 80% of its time baby-sitting.

Furthermore, if you do not want you child indoctrinated with Leftist and ungodly ideologies and philosophies, you have no choice (other than expensive Christian schools).

I never understand why many parents, usually non-Asian, say kids get too much homework. American students need to study more hours in order to compete with Asians; there is no other alternative. The goal for every student should be to take advanced classes as early as possible, and get "A" grades on all of these classes. Homework is important because it reinforces what is learned in class, and this is outside of school/study time. This can take many hours of study. During the summer, students can have a break but should go through the summer reading list. In Asian families, parents don't mind doing chores as long as kids are studying hard.

Kids should actually get ABSOLUTELY NO HOMEWORK. If teachers are doing their jobs as they should, then all learning activity should be confined to the classroom. The entire educational philosophy worldwide is false. But we won't get into that since it is another subject.

Homeschooling at its best is actually tutoring. You are not trying to fail the child, but help him understand why he or she does (or learns) what they are being taught.

I am homeschooling my grandsons, and not a single workbook of theirs begins mathematics with the multiplication tables. Yet those tables are the foundation of all mathematical computations. Therefore we have had to drill them to memorize the tables. And it has worked.

Learning, perhaps. What about practicing their skills? Do you think it appropriate for kids to conduct research, or engage in creative writing, during class time? Should all kids be forced into the mould of learning according to the style that works best in a classroom setting?

Perhaps it's better to back off from your dogmatism... on almost every subject.

If you're talking about public school, then I agree. Kids need to play and have fun. Homework is a sham. It's just conditioning people to get used to being a wage slave later in life. But if you're talking about homeschool, then I totally disagree. All day, every day we'd always be on the lookout for a learning opportunity. Man, I can't wait to be a grandparent!!

One drill that I used to do with my boy was to do multiplication races while we were driving somewhere. No pencils or paper allowed. We'd do something like 784x63. Whoever gets the right answer first wins. I had a bit of a disadvantage because I was the one driving. It takes a little bit of time to do that in your head. It's a good drill.

that works great if you can hold numbers in your head.......
I remember in grade school they would do things like that in the classroom.
For visual learners and those who need hands on (even if it's just pencil and paper) it is more difficult and can lead to great frustration.

Does anyone have any (fun and engaging) suggestions for reading and language arts cirriculum for 4th grade (boy) ?

For reading, I try to find books my kids are interested in. For one daughter, its foxes. For one of my sons, it's Minecraft. They read and tell me about the book. Pretty laid back. Tried having them do traditional book reports but that usually ended in tears. So we just chat about the book.
My fox-loving daughter was REALLY into the Junie B. Jones series for awhile and we had many great conversations about Junie's ugly attitudes.

For LA/grammar we just use Abeka. To make it more "fun", you could probably do crafts/games. Pinterest is a great source for fun activities like that. I've gotten a LOT of good ideas from that site!

Also, for writing, my kids (especially my eldest child) have enjoyed entering writing contests, online. They've even won a few (they won something like $20 and headphones, etc). Its amazing how kids are suddenly interested in writing when they can win a cash prize. Lol.

The site, Tynker (teaches coding) currently has a contest with cash prizes that my 11-year-old is thinking of entering.

Anyway, contests are a fun, great way to write and practice grammar skills.

The long-standing literary classics should be used as much as possible. They have engaged children for many generations.

However "language arts" is a term which should never have been coined, and actual phonics should never have been abandoned.

Contests are also a great way to earn scholarships. Home schooled students here are allowed to participate in most school extracurricular activities. Most of the activities have scholarships associated with them. My granddaughter participated in the FFA forestry program. Her best friend, also home schooled, earned a scholarship to study forestry management.

I don't know about all the classics. I'll pass on some that I had to read. (Like "The Scarlet Letter", or "The Red Badge of Courage".) I'll also pass on the old English poetry. I did enjoy "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Cannery Row", along with Poe and some Shakespeare.

So, right now he is REALLY into Diary of a wimpy kid series, and I get it. It's so relatable for this age, BUT because it is the "diary" of a middle school boy, the grammer is VERY POOR and much of the spelling is incorrect.

One of the things I was unhappy about in the public school is that they are teaching the "sound it out" approach to spelling, and reports are typed up then "edited" so the whole process of teacher reading and spell checking is gone. Sure the computer can spell check and instant correct, but there's no learning in that. He made a family newspaper today (mostly because he wanted to make comics based off wimpy kid humor for the comic section ) I got to see just how much misspellings he makes, or rather just how much he still "sounds it out"

What are some titles that are considered "classics" now?

I have to be very careful with Pinterest......
I can spend WAAAAYYY to much time there (also teacherspayteachers)