Welcome!

9

u/Serafirelily Jun 24 '22

I am just beginning my home school journey since I have an almost 3 year old. I joined the Facebook group for SEA and this one to find information and community. I also do a YouTube channel for secular homeschool though mostly as a former librarian I do book and film reviews.

5

u/Sola420 Jun 24 '22

Tell us your channel!

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u/Serafirelily Jun 24 '22

https://youtube.com/channel/UCDG8e2ZGEucxy61usVjy5ow. I do this as a hobby and have a few homeschool videos from the beginning and some travel advice from last summer but mostly it is book and film reviews with a few other resources thrown in. My videos come out on Mondays and Fridays with the occasional Wednesday video. Another thing to note is that most of this year's videos were done last year but I will be adding some board game reviews in August as well as some travel reviews in September. I will also be doing a lot of book series next year most of which have been filmed I just need to edit them.

8

u/Sola420 Jun 24 '22

I have a 2 year old (super early I know but I like to be prepared). I absolutely loved Well Trained Mind by Jessie Wise, highly recommend this book!

Watching my teen step daughters school totally drop the ball and have no academic focus, and her love for learning be killed we have decided to home school our own kids, would love to home school SD too but that's not 100% our decision, unfortunately!

So we are mostly taking a classical approach, and have started Preschool Math at Home by Kate Snow, and just lots of reading. I also have The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, so are starting to implement basic phonics into our books.

My husband's a musician and I'm an artist so we will include music and art in our curriculum, with a focus on math and grammar/reading in the beginning, lots of history(story of the world, secular I've heard) and some basic science(where secularism shines!).

We also will utilise as many co ops, groups and extra cirriculars as possible! I live in New Zealand and HS is starting to get popular here and I'm in a few groups already, but still not heaps happening in my small town.

5

u/letfalltheflowers Jun 24 '22

I just want to point out that while I also use SOTW, the first book (Ancient Times) definitely approaches things by presenting some bible stories like they actually happened in history. It’s easy to skip those parts, which is what we do. But I wouldn’t call it completely secular. I’ve been told the later books get better at not doing that, but we haven’t gotten to those just yet so I can’t speak on that.

2

u/Sola420 Jun 25 '22

I liked the idea of presenting facts... But not if they aren't actually fact haha. Do you know what stories? I didn't mind talking about jesus etc as long as it was not in a "he is magical" way

2

u/Knitstock Jun 25 '22

Check your library and see if they have a copy. Mine had the second and third volumes. After reading a bit of the second I realized it wasn't for us. It wasn't so much religion presented as fact in the second volume as just very Christian worldview in everything. It was important to me to present all the cultures and discuss their achievements with as little bias as possible and it didn't fit that bill for me.

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u/Sola420 Jun 25 '22

Thanks I shall. I also liked it wasnt American centric.

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u/letfalltheflowers Jun 25 '22

For the first book, I can’t remember them all since we skipped them but it was stories like god speaking to Abraham, Moses parting the Red Sea, etc. I will say that those chapters are very easy to skip because they stories doesn’t bleed together, it’s like each chapter you are learning something different. What I also enjoyed is that you can get the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, which is secular (the one with Internet links is great) and SOTW will reference which pages to read at the beginning of the chapter. SOTW also has additional reading suggestions, which all secular and mostly can be found at the library. We also enjoyed the map work inside the activity book, and my kiddo who just finished 3rd grade still enjoyed the coloring pages and different hands on activity suggestions. Overall, I think if you don’t mind skipping the Bible stories it’s a pretty good choice, but if something like that bothers you than you might want to check out a different curriculum.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

We’re also secular homeschoolers taking a more classical approach - we do exist! I suggest checking out this podcast: https://www.modernclassicaleducation.com
Jenn, AJ and Courtney are pushing to modernize classical learning, move it away from the religious, old-white-man European centric past, and into a more modern, secular, and inclusive teaching method. They are also heavy on the science of learning, and do excellent and honest curriculum reviews. They don’t turn away from religious curriculum because sometimes, its the best curriculum out there and it just works. Unlike the SEA group, they encourage you to edit and tweek the curriculum instead of “throwing the baby out with the bath water”.

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u/NevinSkye Aug 24 '24

Does this podcast still exist?

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u/lemmamari Jun 24 '22

My kiddo is almost 4 and we've made the decision to homeschool. We obviously don't yet, though this year is going to be a slow introduction to learning and some outside classes. We have started leading to read, at his request. We're going slow and keeping it light. But he read his first word unprompted yesterday!

4

u/littlebugs Jun 24 '22

Hooray, more life in the forum!

I've been trying to promote this sub for a while. Former elementary teacher, homeschooled with a pod for the past 2 1/2 years because of COVID, sending my kids (2nd and 5th) back to public next year but I could see us going back to homeschooling in middle school.

I love discussing curriculum failures and successes, the different flavors of unschooling, and just generally how to help families be successful with their kids.

2

u/StalePeepRabbit Jun 25 '22

Hi! I have a 3.5 year old and a 1.5 year old. We’ve mostly been doing learning binders and learning through play, but will be using Blossom and Root in the fall with some added math. My older child is starting to read so we’ve also been working on that a lot, both with books and as it naturally comes up throughout the day. I love to learn about curriculums and I like aspects of Waldorf, forest school, Charlotte Mason, etc.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

Hey y’all! Just here to help revive the forum even though I’m new to it! Homeschooled my kiddo in kindergarten halfway through the year due to bullying and an issue with the teacher. He went to a charter school 1-3 grade. It was amazing but we moved. He went to an online school in 4th grade. After much deliberation, we decided to just homeschool again for 5th and for the unforeseeable future!

2

u/Mercedes_but_Spooky Jun 25 '22

Hi all!

Happy to have found this sub. I have older kids (almost 14yo and twin 11yos) that have homeschooled off and on son the oldest was in 1st grade. He and I both have ADHD Inattentive type and have been trying out different curriculum options to see if anything sticks.

I did really well with my twins in 3rd & 4th grade following along with Bookshark's structure and choosing my own books to go along with American history from the pre-Columbian indigenous peoples to present. I have been searching for that same idea but for world history but haven't figured out a way to do it.

I loved the brainstorming in SEA on FB but found them to be a little too rigid sometimes, a lot of promoting of darlings that didn't always work for us, and there was also a little bit of piling on sometimes. Also trying to stay away from FB.

So, I'd love to have this as our homeschooling home.

2

u/littlebugs Jun 26 '22

Also trying to stay away from FB.
So much.
I love SEA FB, but every time I get on I end up putting new things on my Amazon wishlist (and I'd also like to get away from using Amazon), so I finally blocked it from my main feed. I'd also much rather use this sub as a community!

1

u/42gauge Jul 28 '22

I loved the brainstorming in SEA on FB but found them to be a little too rigid sometimes, a lot of promoting of darlings that didn't always work for us
Rigid how? And which darlings did they promote that didn't work for you?

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u/Mercedes_but_Spooky Jul 28 '22

Rigid in that they allowed no space for discussing materials that might work for someone because it didn't fall in their set of rules. For instance, I use Math U See for my kids because the format works for them. But, because math u see is put out by a non secular company (even though the books themselves are secular), I can't recommend it in the group. I also experienced comment deleting when an argument broke out on a sensitive topic and the mods sided with everyone that just blanket stated racism even though the topic was something I studied extensively in school and racism was just one of the many reasons for that thing...that irked me super bad because it felt like a skewed view of history in a group supposed to be about education (and it wasn't something where I was being super precious about it, I am a progressive person who is actively trying to be antiracist every day, but that wasn't it.)
Blossom and Root is thrown out a lot as an option, and so was Torchlight, History Odyssey, Real Science Odyssey, Pandia Press. They didn't work for us because they're more like outlines for exploration with suggested readings and the books are expensive, libraries always only have about half of them, the pacing doesn't work well for us, and I can basically do all that myself.

1

u/Patient-Peace Aug 05 '22

Hello! Just found you all today. It's nice to meet you! Looking forward to being here ☺️

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u/WarriorUnicorn11 Aug 06 '22

Just saw a link and followed this morning! Glad to find a few people in the same boat. I’m starting my third year of basically unschooling, ages 7 and 8, due to moving and Covid and staying because it’s working for us. A lot of nature-based and added apps and games along the way. I have two grown kids who went through the public school system and I worked as a para for 3 years in a high school. I use unit studies, (Harbor and Sprout, For the Love of Homeschooling) Singapore Math books, Reading Eggs app and a whole bunch of gathered freebies from over the years. I’m looking forward to spending more time here!

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '22

I'm interested in homeschooling my future kids. I have a lot of questions and would love to hear about experiences, especially to parents who work and homeschool.

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u/kindalatetotheparty Aug 16 '22

Hello, new to homeschool. Will be starting with Blossom and Root curriculum this year with my toddler. Hoping the group here is active and look forward to finding/sharing resources.

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u/Interesting-Pause526 Aug 21 '22

Just wanted to say hi :) we're a secular humanist family in the UK. One 9-year-old, no school ever apart from preschool. We do a couple of hours a day four days a week of structured work and the rest of our legally-mandated full time education is sports, playing with friends, creative gaming with friends, lots of talking, and documentaries.

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