Homeschooling – Break Free of the Public School Mold

You don’t need to behave like a brick and mortar school when you are homeschooling science and social studies.

Any articles/advice about teaching Science/Social….making sure they’re covering what they need, without falling back into the whole teacher/student mode?

If your child is planning to go into a hard science like biology, engineering, or medicine, then they will REALLY benefit from learning biology, chemistry and physics in high school.  If they don’t seem interested in science, then sometimes it can help to give them biology and chemistry and physics just so you can make SURE they aren’t interested in science!  But when colleges talk about what they want to see in students, they usually don’t get too specific.  Most often they will say they want three years of science, and at least one of those years is a lab science.  They often don’t get specific about which science they want, so you can branch out.  They don’t get specific about what a “lab science” is, so you have some freedom there as well.  For that reason, you may be able to encourage the love of learning if you provide a science that your child finds interesting.  If they WANT to learn about astronomy, and they will be bored to tears with chemistry right now, then you have the freedom to follow their interests while still providing a college prep education.

For social studies, colleges are usually more specific.  They like to see US History, World History, American Government, and Economics.  Still, you can do a lot of different things within those subjects, and you can also branch out to include more than these areas.  I have a list of other social studies options in this blog post, and maybe that will help you draw outside the box.

Whether it’s science or social studies, you can break out of the school mold by considering alternate methods of evaluating your students, rather than relying on tests.  Here is an article I wrote about how to give grades without grading.  Try to wrap your mind around the word “evaluating” instead of “testing” and that may help.

Check out my new profile on The Old Schoolhouse’s Speakers Bureau, and then ask you conference coordinator to invite me to come speak to your conference in 2010!

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