Tina

Hi everyone!
I'm new here. My two oldest children have both graduated from public
school, but my "baby" has had difficulty since he started kindergarden.
He is incredibly smart, but "bookwork" drives him nuts! Even his
teachers have said that he doodles when he should be taking notes, but
when asked about the lesson, he can almost repeat verbatim what she
said. So, to avoid another year of struggle, I decided to home school
this year. OMG!!! Bookwork drives the child nuts, and he doesn't
concentrate worth a flip! However, if we go on a field trip, he pays
very close attention and gets so much from it.
My problem... how do I document this for "report cards", and have paper
work to show if the child wants to attend college? How do I get over
this feeling that I'm doing something wrong by not using books all of
the time?
Geez, sorry to make this so long, but this has really been bothering me.
Blessings,
Tina

jlh44music

"Tina" <fae_dragonfly@...> wrote:
> my "baby" has had difficulty since he started kindergarden. He is
incredibly smart, but "bookwork" drives him nuts! Even his teachers
have said that he doodles when he should be taking notes, but when
asked about the lesson, he can almost repeat verbatim what she said.>

This was my child in school as well! She's a right brained learner
and doodling helps her to concentrate. Check out
www.visualspatial.org and the book "Upside Down Brilliance" by Linda
Silverman. Her difficulites in school drove me to find the "answer"
and I eventually came to homeschooling and unschooling (which I had
never heard of 3 or 4 years ago). My dd is 14 and I pulled her from
school after 6th grade.

> My problem... how do I document this for "report cards", and have
paper work to show if the child wants to attend college? How do I get
over this feeling that I'm doing something wrong by not using books
all of the time?>>

Each state is different as far as what they require (is that's what
you mean by "report cards" or are you referring to grades for a
diploma?). Have you read any books etc about unschooling? The book
that first that "did it" for me was "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden
Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto". Others
are "Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With
or Without School" By Grace Llewellyn and "The Teenage Liberation
Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education" By
Grace Llewellyn. Anything by John Holt (Learning All The Time, How
Children Learn, How Children Fail, Teach your own etc).
"Parenting a Free Child: An Unschooled Life" by Rue Kream is
wonderful!

There are some great websites as well (hopefully someone can post
them quicker than I can, I can't find my list!).

How old is your son? How long has he been out of school? He needs
to deschool. The common "rule" is one month of deschooling for
every year he was in school. (I included K and day care!). Let
him heal.

It's definitely a paradigm shift. You will find YOU need to deschool
even more than your child, to change the way you look at learning.
Before I started reading and understanding, I, too, thought that my
dd had to fit into the way the schools were "teaching". What I know
now is that she is not "broken" and does not need to be "fixed"!
Jann