What's the difference?
"What's the difference between parent-led and teacher-led? Why do some families get different homeschool funding than others? I hear about 'aligned' or 'blended' or 'school-delivered' or 'teacher-led' or 'parent-led'... are there really that many kinds of home schooling?"
We hear questions like this frequently, and hope that the following information will help you to make an informed decision in your own educational journey. All learning-at-home options in Alberta fall under one of the following categories.
Are you beating your head against a wall? Is your thirteen year old impossible to teach? Is the curriculum that has worked so well in the past suddenly "boring?"
I recently spoke with a mother of many who, after completing an enjoyable unit study of reading and discussion on Holland, decided her fourteen year old son should follow-up this project with something concrete. She asked him to write an essay on the history of the development of the tulip industry - a topic they had all found to be interesting. As days of reluctance dragged into weeks of resistance, a normally affable mother-son relationship became outright antagonistic....
Many students are thinking about the spring-times of their future careers, or summer jobs, or 'after school' jobs.
But with that thought comes anxiety: as a home school grad, what do I put on my resume and what do I say in a job interview? What will I say when they ask “do you have your high school diploma?” I have some ideas…
(Note: this article isn’t a comprehensive list of everything you should put in a resume or say at an interview, but simply a few ideas for you to consider and get you thinking).
Often, history education consists of a short study of ancient history and several years of study about the time since the discovery of the Americas. There is so much information about the last 500 years that the sheer volume overwhelms earlier history. This emphasis is what most of us of the last generation experienced in our schooling.
There is a danger in this. We begin to think that the time before 1492 is in the same realm as myths and legends. Biblical stories, and perhaps Christ himself, are not seen as historically true. But if we have a more complete picture of history, preferably chronologically from the oldest known civilizations, we can see how God prepared the world for His coming, and how mankind responded. His Incarnation can be seen for what it is: the central event of all history.
The number one thing to remember in the process of buying technology is that you really get what you pay for. That doesn’t necessarily mean that a cheap computer is less powerful or less good, as different brands and product lines within those brands have different priorities.
Marriage has taken a beating, and it has more than a bleeding nose.
We have all known of marriages that seemed doomed from the beginning, and sure enough didn’t survive the test of time. But something has changed. Many strong and healthy mar-riages that have been an example to others have collapsed. Christian matrimony has not been immune to attack. What is going on and why now more than ever?
Committed couples are suffering the same difficulties that are afflicting our world. As Christians, we may think ourselves separated from present culture, but we are ill affected, aware of it or not. We are living in a world where pleasure, entertainment, and the avoidance of suffering are top bill. Man is at the center of this worldly culture. We live in the “disposable society”. Cultural forces and destructive spirits have the marital camp surrounded. But isn’t the devout Christian immune? Doesn’t faith insulate us and protect us?
When Gayle and I began the journey of home educating our children, I applied my efforts to seeking out useful science resources. Since science was my interest and strong point, Gayle welcomed my initiatives. We were encouraged by a friend to add a lot of science to the children’s learning – especially in the primary grades. So, we set off to find books that could help us bring science to life in the minds of our young children.
When I look back on my years of home schooling through high school, I am sure that I will have many fond memories of WISDOM’s Online Courses. Since the autumn of 2003, I have taken seven online courses, all of which were profitable. I take one every season – In fact, one season I took three at the same time! My plans are to continue into my eighth course in the upcoming school year. I do not wish to stop!
I was not sure that I would feel this way when I first signed up for a course three years ago. This was the “Introductory Great Books” course. When I looked at the reading list initially, I was uncertain as to whether I could manage the weekly reading assignments, or discuss them adequately. After all, books such as the “Iliad”, the “Aeniad”, and, at that time, “War and Peace”, can seem rather intimidating to a nearly-thirteen-year-old! I thought that the conversation might be over my head, especially as there were students in the class several years older than me. However, encouraged by my parents, and made hopeful by seeing that such favourite authors of mine as Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien were on the list, I took a deep breath and signed up for the course.
I was somewhat thrust into home schooling without a great deal of preparation. About all I knew was that I had the right to teach my children at home, and in my first year I simply brought home all our daughter’s textbooks from school. It soon became clear that importing the school into our home wasn’t going to work very well so, in our second year, I copied both method and curriculum from another home schooling family. This whole time, in an effort to research what other options might be available, I spent a lot of time reading books on education in general and some on home schooling.
I would venture to say that most people have enough interest in robots that they would give a few moments of their time to allow themselves the amusement of watching robots in action. Beyond this, I have observed that fewer people actually have enough interest in robots to wrestle with how they work and to learn what their abilities and their limitations are. I think that there also exists a middle-ground camp of those who imagine that they might have an interest in robots but they are just not sure of ‘where to start’.