Home School Online

My readers know that I’m a big fan of Time4Learning. Time4Learning provides an online interactive curriculum which includes an interactive middle school curriculum, elementary school curriculum, and a preschool homeschool curriculum online.

I’m now also a fan of their new offering: Time4Writing. Writing skills are so important and so hard to teach.  And correcting writing is a surprisingly sensitive issue between many parents and students.  Time4Writing provides a suite of eight week online writing courses for kids K12 which the kids really like.  I recommend giving them a try.

I love getting together with my extended family on holidays.  This time, we had three generations, about ten grown-ups and another ten kids. Some of these kids are now deep in college and are bringing boyfriends to some of the family festivities. 

We get along extremely well in my family and we invariably talk philosophy of life, politics, about ourselves, and then, of course, all the questions regarding homeschooling come up. Do I think homeschooling is good for society? Doesn’t it lead to a loss of a shared community?  Won’t each extremist group tend to “in-grow” which will reduce mutual understanding and lead to a more fragmented society?

The questions are provocative and I do not have glib answers to them. In fact, for many of the questions, I share their concerns.  OH, please note, there were no questions on socialization or the quality of education. All the questions had to do with how segregated our society becomes if people withdraw from one has previously considered the question builder of common vision.

So I had an interesting and great Thanksgiving. And I’m glad to be home. Happy holidays to all of you.