Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A Benefit of Homeschooling

In my last article I talked about the park we went to. One thing I started thinking about after that day was the interaction my girls had with older kids.

I think that is one of the benefits of Homeschooling. In the public school system kids are around other kids their own age all day. Most companies do not hire employees that are all the same age. In the world of work you have to learn how to relate to older and younger employees.

When you homeschool, especially if you have more then two children, your older children learn to help the younger children and the younger children learn to work with the older children.


At the park that day Josh, who is 10, was sitting on a rock with Madison who is 4, just entertaining her and making her smile. My girls spend a good amount of time at Josh and Jacob's house. His mom is my friend Stefanie and she has Josh who is 10 and Jacob who is 8. She homeschools them both. Whenever we go to their house both boys take it upon themselves to play with the girls or entertain them. My girls are learning some valuable lessons on these days too. They are learning how to play with older kids and the boys are learning how to be responsible and entertain the younger girls. I think the boys usually enjoy it when we come over and it is so fun watching them relate to each other and just have fun.
It is important to me that my girls can relate to kids their age and older or younger kids. I would hope that they would learn to carry on intelligent conversations with people and this is one way they can learn that. Since this is important to me one of the things I am trying to implement next year is a small co-op between me and couple of my friends. I have about four friends who will be homeschooling next year and we are going to do a science co-op. It is in the beginning plans but I hope we meet once a week and learn our science together. My friends and I will take turns having it at our houses. The person's house it is at doesn't have to cook, the others bring the food. We meet, do our lessons and the activities that go along with the lesson and let the kids play. If all of us do it we will have a good mix of kids. We will have a few 10-11 year olds, 7-8 year olds and 4-6 year olds. I think this will work great. Some lessons we could have the older kids teach the younger kids and other days the younger kids get to pick what activity we do, all the while we are teaching and watching them interact. Who know what the kids will learn besides science.

The next few posts will cover other benefits of homeschooling, along with the trials and learning experiences that come with homeschooling.

Feel free to ask me any questions, I would love to answer them.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Please click on the "Amen" below and leave your comments. Thanks!

No comments: