Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vito" data-source="post: 2025850" data-attributes="member: 20162">Speaking from the perspective of my wife and myself, we think a blend is far more appropriate.At first we very carefully considered home-school only, as we are both products of public education with very mixed results – the key here is that our public schooling alone prepared neither of us for our future lives (I joined the military and she went to college).  We both faired well with our life-choices, however, very often we had to work harder to make up for deficiencies in that public education – the military made me a master at self-learning and research.  Of course, we both now consider ourselves at least fairly intelligent adults through a hard process of learning over the course of the last 30-something years.  At the same time, home schooling has its own limitations and problems.In the end, we agreed on a mixture of public, private, and home-schooling.  We enrolled my oldest daughter in public kindergarten this year.  I also enrolled her in basic reading and math courses at the local Sylvan Learning Center, which she attends for 6 hours each week.  My wife and I also spend a substantial amount of time collecting materials and working with both our daughters on any subjects they show even the smallest interest in – reading, mathematics, science, biology, history, etc. (at least 2 hours every single day).  Of course, we also spend a considerable amount of time researching local private schools and their teaching methods – we plan on mixing years of private and prep schools once they are older and can take more away from the experience.  In case you’re wondering, kindergarten was not challenging her at all and we were very close to pulling her and either home-schooling or private school.  In the end we agreed on a compromise of all these systems for the reasons stated above and because we could not find a single “perfect” method.Our greatest hope is that this combination of techniques will give them the best part of these different methods and try to allow for the weaknesses of each individual method.  We are both firm believers that learning is life-long process, and we are committed to giving our children the best education we can afford.Of course, coming from a background where my family traveled around the US constantly – I can say that it definitely was a mixed blessing as a child.  Moving 3-4 times a year is very hard on most children above the age of about 6 – I spent a lot of lonely times in areas until I was around for a few months to make friends.  Of course, I also learned a great deal more about the ways of the world than many of the friends I made…but YMMV.  For example, I know that public schools vary greatly from place to place...some public schools are far better than their local private counterparts and many have specific subjects or curriculum that compete for best on state and national levels.</blockquote>

Verification