You may not think that you can actually learn things from watching t.v., but there are some great educational shows that you can learn a lot from. Some of the shows can even be informative or mildly entertaining. I'm not one that will usually watch a lot of television, but there are a few shows that I catch in between or while I am cooking or cleaning. It's rare for me to have the time to sit down and watch an entire show or movie from start to finish. When I hear a certain word or phrase that catches my eye, I will usually take a break long enough to see what is being told about what I wanted to hear about.... in this case, the words "Wild Mint" caught my ear as I was preparing dinner the other night. I was watching a snippet (what I call a bit of any t.v. show or movie while I'm doing other things) from an episode of Call Of The Wildman, and learned that the weeds that we have growing all over various places in the yard were actually wild mint and that it can be used to deter rodents. Now I know why there have not been any rats or mice seen in any of the areas where the wild mint is growing. It was finally nice to be able to put the reason as to why the what we thought were weeds, were smelling like mint when we mowed those areas. This was amazing to learn, because I've been into learning about outdoor foraging and what purpose various weeds have.
There was a really great show that just went off that was talking about where many of the words that we use came from. I was not able to catch the name of the show because I was.. as usual cooking and doing dishes. I was however, able to catch a few bits of information about words and sayings that I would have never guessed where they came from. This has inspired me to look more into where we got most of our words from and use that as part of a lesson in our home-school studies. I was not aware about some of the things that was shown about many of the sayings and words that we use in our everyday language. This was something that I wished that they had taught us about in school. That is the great thing about home-schooling, you can teach things that are normally not taught or considered important in public school curriculum.
What I didn't like most about attending a public school while I was growing up, was that if you had questions about something that you did not understand, the teachers would act as though they didn't have the time to help you come to a better understanding of it. There would also be fellow classmates that would poke fun at me when I would ask questions, so I decided to save myself the embarrassment and go to the library to research and learn more into what I didn't know. If I still had any questions after that, I would confide in friends who were in higher grades to see if they knew about the subject. If none of those ideas worked, I would try to find a tutor, but usually the library worked enough for me.
I just didn't like to be laughed at, and I think to this day, that was what made my outlook on things backwards. I was more of a book nerd, but I did have friends and I was extremely shy. I'm way more outgoing than I was 18 years ago, and sometimes I think that if I had been as outgoing as I am now, that things would have been better with school... and perhaps less teasing. I had my share of bullies, but tried very hard to make the best of things. I never wanted to hurt anyone's feelings (still don't like to do that to this day) and just tried my best to ignore much of the bullying. It made me stay to myself more and grow to dislike going to school everyday. After all of the bad experiences I had in public school, I just didn't want our children to have a similar experience, because it seems that peers of today are a lot more cruel than they used to be.
When I would tell the teacher or anyone else about it, they would just shake it off, so I just got to where I never told anyone or asked for help, since I knew it would do no good to tell anyone. When I was in 2nd grade, I once got stuck sitting beside a much older student who was in the 7th grade. The girl would demand most of the entire bus seat or else she would poke me with a pencil, which she did very often. I got to where I would sit as closely to the window side of the bus seat and just ball up, in fear that she would jab me with the pencil again at any second. After a year of such horror, she was finally riding a new bus route, which was fine by me... no more of that awful pencil poking. It was quite painful and I think that the bus driver should have really done more about the situation, because I had told the bus driver several times about it, but I don't think that they even cared. There's no way that I would even consider letting our son's have to deal with this kind of thing.
I know that not all school are alike and that not all teachers are alike either, but we know several people who send their kids to public school and they have had to go to the school due to bullying, problems on the school bus, and other kids trying to pick fights over needless stuff. I'm not sure why things are allowed to go as far as they do until bullying escalates. I think that if a child comes to any member of the faculty, that they should help better protect students from such incidents. It's not just older students that bully, but also students that are the same age or grade that are like this as well. I have had my share of bullying and jeering, enough to know that more should be done in the public school system. This was another motivation for us to choose to home-school our children. It's just a shame that teachers and other administration will turn blindly to the side once a student has told them that they are being bullied or ridiculed. I guess it was because I was nerdy..... or maybe my looks.... or how I dressed, that caused me to be the target of bullies, I really don't know. I know one thing, it did make my whole public school experience a total nightmare and I would never want to relive those days or have my children experience something like I did.
I have learned a great deal of things from watching educational shows on television and by also doing a lot of reading. I admit that there were some things that we were taught in school, that I was left wondering why this was even in the curriculum. There were a few teachers along the way that would just show movies (non-educational, by the way) and not really teach us anything. I was sadden by that because I thought that they were supposed to have been teaching us something. I guess that is why I turned to self-educating myself about things that I did not understand or know about. Most of the things that I know now are from reading, research, and educational programming. I'm still a little wonky on fractions, measurements, and percents, due to how these areas were taught or simply in most cases just never taught at all. I plan to continue my studying alongside my children and teach them about things that I had problems with. I plan to include counting money and telling time into our lessons this year. Along the way, I will slowly add in some fractions, percents, and measures. I want to home-school our children because I love to spend time with them and because there is so much more to offer them than just a basic curriculum.
Also, moral and financial reasons are behind our decision to home-school. There are a lot of families that home-school in our area and there is even a group that meets several times each month so that the children can meet with other peers and participate in various activities. No, home-schooling does not mean that a child will not get to make friends or play sports, because that is very far from the truth. With area home-school groups, our children will get to have as many opportunities as many other children. Yes, many area groups have proms, field trips, and even graduations. I have been researching about home-school options for many, many years and I plan to incorporate various different styles into our learning. Since we will be doing this as a family, we will all learn something and enjoy the time that we spend together. God has led us to the final decision to home-school and I think that we will not have made any mistakes by doing so.
I'm excited to get started working on some of the learning games that we will be using in the lessons. I'm glad to have found that most of the things that you can use to home-school are pretty much free and cost very little. You don't always have to purchase the curriculum, which are most of the time pricey. I began looking last spring and getting catalogs from some of the home-school curriculum companies. I was shocked to see that many of the studies were just way out of our price range. I dug deeper and was able to find out that a lot of the things that you can use are free.... with some even being found at the Dollar stores. As we prepare for school, we as a family are excited and can't wait until what I like to call "tee-time" begins. I've always wanted to be a teacher deep down, but I never really knew it until we had children of our own. What a great experience this will be, with God by our side throughout everything. Take care and have a great day!! Until next post..... May God bless!!!
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