Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Effective Homeschooling

Can I effectively homeschool my children if I am constantly taking pictures of the activities they are doing so that I can blog about it later on? I remember reading on a blog that your could share your link in a Mr. Linky ways you can get ideas about what to blog about. Her suggestion was to keep the camera close to take pictures of what they are doing. So are we taking picture for posterity OR are we taking pictures so we can show off what we're doing with our children? Does the world really need to know what we're doing in our homeschool? Are we crippling ourselves by sharing so many different ideas on the web and yet never giving people a chance to come up with ideas on their own? I know for myself that I simply cannot teach my children when I am constantly focused on taking pictures of them. i do take pictures of them working and such. To be honest, it's always with a blog post in mind. But am I doing them favors by doing this? It's distracting to them as they do study.

I have recently joined a few yahoo groups in order to gain ideas for these workboxes and such. All it really is about is people sharing ideas for what to put into their boxes. Um, most o it reminds of the stuff that my mom has tried to push off on me to use with my kids. I call it busy work. Certainly the workboxes can be effective in maintaining order for the school. It can also give activities to little ones that don't otherwise have anything to do in the day. But I absolutely refuse to through a bunch of busywork into these boxes into to keep my older children "busy" during the day. That isn't learning. It's artificial. I don't think everyone is doing that but it sure does seem like most of the emails that cross my path are about activities like these.

So I am getting off the yahoo groups. That should save me time. I wish I could find a community of people that apply the "Teaching the Trivium" method to their days. I think there is minority of people that follow the Bluedorn ideas. I was hoping to find people on these yahoo groups that did. But I think these workboxes were truly designed for people that tend to school in a more traditional way. I am seeking a different path at this point. So I hope to be able to adapt the workbox idea to fit our style of learning.

I am just thinking with my fingers today. I want to be a more effective homeschooler. But the most I visit sites for homeschooling and workboxes the more I feel just completely overwhelmed by it all. Oh how I miss the days when the computer just wasn't need except for typing out a paper or a letter. There is just WAY too much information out there.

No comments:

Post a Comment