Famous Homeschoolers
Dec 19, 2009
Homeschooling has been going really well for us. It’s the perfect fit for our family! I love being able to taylor Emma’s education to fit her learning style and interests. It’s also loads of fun to learn alongside her. There are so many interesting things to read about and explore! Emma can be so creative. She’s a unique individual and I want to help cultivate her gifts and passions.
As a way to help inspire both Emma & I, we worked together to make a poster of several famous homeschoolers. It’s amazing how many of the greatest minds in history were actually homeschooled. In homeschooling they had the freedom to pursue their unique interests and to think for themselves. As Laura Ingalls once said, “Home is the best place for teaching many things, first and most important of which is how to think for one’s self.”
These are just a few of the many famous people who were homeschooled that we also included on our poster:
Alexander Graham Bell
Mozart
Dwight L. Moody
Louisa May Alcott
Claude Monet
Abraham Lincoln
Whoopi Goldberg
Louis Armstrong
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Beatrix Potter
Ansel Adams
Robert Frost
Sources:
FamousHomeschoolers.net
Posted In: Homeschooling • Comments (1)
Preschool For Emma
Aug 24, 2007
With my daughter Emma turning 4 this Fall I realized I should start thinking about Preschool. It’s always been my goal to homeschool if possible so this will be a nice practice run to see how it will go. I’m not wanting to do anything formal (like with textbooks) but just wanted some regular activities that we could do together. While researching I found an excellent article entitled ”Much Too Early” by David Elkind Ph.D. In the article he warns against teaching children to read or perform mathematical calculations at too young an age. Elkind notes that until age 6 or 7 children aren’t ready intellectually to understand such concepts. In fact, introducing these things too early may stress the child or negatively affect their view of school. Meanwhile there is more important groundwork to be laid in play and creativity. He says, “early education must start with the child, not with the subject matter to be taught.”
So here are a few areas I’ve decided to concentrate on with my daughter:
Dramatic play
Exploring and observing our surroundings
Learning about various professions (Farmer, doctor, mother etc)
Exposure to various types of music and rhythm
Lowercase letters (she knows the uppercase already)
Sounds the letters make
Creative play (blocks, playdough etc)
Memorizing nursery rhymes
Drawing, cutting & tracing
Possibly writing letters
Helping around the house
This website lists various skills to work on with your preschool child. Some of them are rather ambitious but I just use it for ideas and not as a strict guideline.
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