We've been homeschooling since 1995 and since we've had internet, I've had some kind of blog or website to post our homeschooling adventures. I want to list some basic information here for the locals and any new imports to the area. Homeschooling out here is different than the rest of the USA. If you live somewhere else and think you live in the Boonies, let me tell you, you really have no idea. We are HOURS away from the nearest mall or Sam's Club. I have never been in a Cosco. Really. I didn't even know what it was until last year. That being said, imports to our area go through a major culture shock when they realize our homeschool coop classes are sometimes hours away, in a different state, and seldom meet weekly. We have yearly functions out here. Arts & Crafts at Guymon. Track Meet & Robotics Camp in Liberal KS. Science Fair at Garden City KS. Dance Lessons in Dodge City KS. Mom's meetings and other functions in Perryton TX. Anything else is in Amarillo TX, Enid OK, Weatherford OK, or Oklahoma City. If you have a farm or ranch, you have critters to care for and crops to attend to, so conventions are a near impossibility. Everything costs more out here because it has to be trucked farther. Fuel is more, food is more... Well, maybe you are starting to get the idea.
Homeschooling in Cimarron Territory is a unique challenge. But don't give up, I'm here to help.
These thoughts can apply to any geographical area, but the lack of an overwhelming number of available activities, attractions, and opportunities can give us a unique perspective. “Thank goodness my education was neglected." ~ Beatrix Potter
"In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but classics. I think this was wise; the greatest service we can to education today is to teach few subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life." ~ C.S. Lewis “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.” ~ Plato “You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.” ~ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey “The key is to understand that our children don't belong to us—they belong to God. Our goal as parents must not be limited by our own vision. I am a finite, sinful, selfish man. Why would I want to plan out my children's future when I can entrust them to the infinite, omnipotent, immutable, sovereign Lord of the universe? I don't want to tell God what to do with my children—I want Him to tell me!” & “We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.” ~ Voddie T. Baucham Jr., Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God "The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation." ~ Thomas A. Edison "Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education." ~ Charlotte M. Mason (The Original Home Schooling Series by Charlotte Mason) |
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