5 BENEFITS OF HOME SCHOOLING
This is our fifth year in homeschooling. We started out a bit too early as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog.There have been no regrets.
Home schooling has been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. I’m giving you 5 of our reasons why we plan to stick to it for a very long time.
WE CAN HOME SCHOOL ANYWHERE
At home, we do have a designated home school room where the kids have a desk (a table, actually, that we’re using for a desk) but we don’t always do it there. Sometimes, my kids bring their activities to the dining table, on the floor, at McDonalds, at Jay’s office or anywhere we find ourselves at.
The thing about home school is that it’s not just about the books and keeping up with the required curriculum. It’s a lifestyle. So anywhere we go is an opportunity to teach them something even in things as simple as a train ride during a rush hour or our children seeing us at work.
WE CAN HOME SCHOOL ANY TIME
We used to home school in the morning and we still try to do that, but most of the time, we end up home schooling in the afternoons or early night time while I prepare dinner. Pablo got really interested in the Wizard of Oz, which is our first read-aloud chapter book for the year that sometimes we read some more in the evenings when my hands are free of the chores and the baby butts. We can choose to home school on stormy weathers and through holidays, too. We can alter our breaks as needed.
HOME SCHOOL CAN BE AS ECONOMICAL AS WE NEED IT TO BE
It’s okay if you can’t afford the expensive books and text books for the moment. Booksale stores hold many good books for half the price. The internet is rich with free online resources, from literary books, including picture books to printable worksheets and exercises in game format are readily available.Or you can do what we do: We personally prepare the exercises ahead. We have a big drawing book assigned for that purpose alone. Of course, nothing beats having the real books in hand, but the inability to purchase them right away should not hinder us from moving forward.
THERE’S MORE ROOM FOR GENUINE FRIENDSHIPS
Pablo is not wired to think that the best people to be friends with are the ones within his age group within a particular group; we’re teaching our two younger boys the same. Our children enjoy each other’s company. They go running around the house, jumping off the head board, climbing up tables, balancing on water gallons, laughing, shouting, mimicking dialogues from their dvds, painting cans, wrestling on the bed, and doing all sorts of things together. We teach them to love one another and to be forgiving of each other. If they learn this, then they have learned how to treat other people outside our family with kindness, too.
Friendships are also not limited to a certain age group or gender. One of Pablo’s best friends is a smart little girl named Danae. He’s particularly fond of his 9-year old cousin, Wacky. He’s made friends with John, a 9-year old who is instrumental in rekindling his interest in Dinosaurs. Pablo calls Pastor Sonny of our Alabang church — my Pastor Friend, and though it’s mostly just an exchange of playful talks from the pastor for now, who knows what tomorrow would bring? The possibility that it can grow into a real, genuine friendship is exciting.
WE CAN IMMEDIATELY ADDRESS THEIR CONCERNS
Since we interact a lot, we can sense right away if something is on their mind. We have a lot of opportunities to figure things out with them, work things out with them, reassure them, correct them, discipline them, comfort them, give them a boost or simply give them a much-needed hug on-the–spot. We are the biggest influences in their young lives. There’s lots of time to play games with them, read books with them or watch their DVDs with them. They can ask us questions as it forms in their heads and can just as soon discover the answers together.
I’ve only listed 5 of the benefits, but there are so much more. Bottom line is that, I think that we can never really go wrong with home schooling. There are definitely challenges but home schooling is too flexible for us not to be able to work through it. The most challenging would be our own character issues which inevitably spring up during the journey. But we take it as an opportunity to learn to be better people and we give it our best shot. As we continue to grow, our children grow with us.
“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” Proverbs 22:6
7 Comments
mommadaise
Hi! I would just like to ask what curriculum are you using or under what homeschool provider are your kids enrolled in? I’m also considering hs my kids, my son will turn 5 next year and I’ve decided to hs him. Would love to hear from you, thanks!
May De Jesus-Palacpac
Hi there! I’m sorry for such a late reply. I’m using a combination of sonlight and but I refer to the DepEd list of competencies now and then to make sure I have not missed any of the required subjects/topics just in case my son would have to take the PepT in the future. We’re doing independent homeschooling right now (not enrolled in any provider) but we’re considering signing up for homelifeacademy.com for the first years and later on, re-enroll with Peniel Christian Academy (local). 🙂
Leah Opinaldo- Cantos
hi Mommy May! I am Leah and I am a stay-at-home mom with baking stints once in a while. 🙂 I homeschooled my 2 girls when we relocated to the US, she was 2 months already in Preschool as Prep student when we had to relocate. we were in the US for a year, we did not have any tie up with any provider, I think it worked out well, we went back home (here, Cavite, Phil) my eldest girl took the PepTest and was right on track, she was ready for grade 2. She and her younger sister, Ley attended regular school, but me and my husband are planning to homeschool the kids again, I think they learn more and focus more on their interests when they are homeschooled. My plan is to buy books that would be compliant to DepEd K-12 curriculum but with the aid of resources from the internet, and explore deeper especially when a topic really interest the girls. Do you think this approach is on the right track? Do you have advise? I’ve read you have been homeschooling your kids for 5 years now. Thank you very much. 🙂 God bless!
May De Jesus-Palacpac
Hi Leah! Yes definitely, you’ll have more time and opportunity to invest in your children’s interests and strengths if you home school them.
I think your plan can work especially if your children can speak our native language fluently. That’s one of my biggest mistakes. I thought learning our language would come naturally to our kids.
One of the reasons why many home schooling families here have opted for DepEd accreditation is because if you fail one subject in the PepTest, you fail the entire year. And most of the time, home schoolers who fail that are very poor in Filipino so they fail the Filipino-based exams like “Filipino” and “Sibika”. Enrolling with a provider buys us more time to teach the language to our children at their own pace.
I don’t know know about buying books compliant to DepEd but it works for a lot of families. What we do is that we keep a list of the DepEd curriculum more as a guide on what may be an important topic that we may have missed. We use books – local or international, depending on the level of our children. The internet is amazing! We’re using Science and English workbooks that we downloaded, but they’re actual books in PDF format.
Researching for worksheets and materials from the internet is helpful but it may be a bit too taxiing because resources are dispersed in many different sites. Most of them are incomplete. And if you have a lot on your plate, having to download and print may take a lot of your time and in the long run, may cost more. I’ve seen some E-books and those are helpful too but kids love writing on hard copies. 🙂 There’s nothing wrong with it, though. It really depends on your lifestyle, I guess. It’s not really a one size fits all kind of thing.
God bless on your home schooling (again!) Hope to run into you one of these days. 🙂 I hope that my answer helps somehow.
Leah Opinaldo- Cantos
Hi May! Thanks! About the Filipino part, my kids have just started conversing confidently in Filipino again. My eldest that took the PepTest last year, she understood some of the instructions but she needed help from the proctor with the uncommon vernarcular ‘malalim na tagalog’, well at least for her. But I’m really glad they speak more in Filipino now, I may have a problem with my youngest as she really doesn’t speak Filipino, she understands a few action words, we may need a Filipino tutor for her. I also bought a lot of local and international books but my worry is if I don’t get the DepEd compliant books, they might miss out and fail in a subject when they get the PepTest. I hope you could help me with the DepEd curriculum, I found a DepEd curriculum for Grade 1 from a variety of linked sites, I even had PDF copies but I could no longer access those sites, I am not sure if there was just a glitch and it was not supposed to be accessible to public or maybe it was just a draft. Another plan I’ve come up is homeschool and have them train competitively for swimming or train them in baking. It seeems that these 2 activities have really caught their interest. We have bake days and just a month ago, they had basic swimming classes and I think the coach saw potential. Hope to hear from you again, I do hope to meet you one of these days. 🙂
May De Jesus-Palacpac
I can email you the one I have but I’m not sure if they’re updating it this year. As far as I know, they were following it till last SY. How about sending me your email addy via fully housewifed facebook private messages? I’ll email the curriculum to you later today. 🙂 I’ll also give you links to home schooling support groups on FB in case you have not joined any yet.
Swimming is a great and necessary skill. And if your children have the potential, that’s even more exciting! 🙂 And baking’s a great skill too. YOu can integrate it into your Math and Science subjects, and later on, entrepreneurship. 🙂
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