I have been a "homeschool mom" for nigh unto 25 years now. My oldest son is 29 years old and my youngest daughter is four. We will be homeschooling for another few years it looks like. We have used many different methods, as well as non methods. The best method we have found is the one we are using right now. We are living in Costa Rica and loving it.
Two years ago we sold everything and moved here to Costa Rica for a five year adventure. When we made the move we were concerned about our two youngest daughters who would be moving here with us. I researched private schools and decided on one my older daughter would attend here. She attended school for two months at the private school, after which time we pulled her out and proceeded to homeschool, again.
One of the reasons we had put her into the school was so that she could make friends and work on her Spanish. After a few days we saw this was not going to happen. All of the girls were afraid to talk to her because they were self conscious about their English and felt that it was not good enough. She did make friends with some of the braver boys, but she was not happy there with the situation.
Fot the past year and a half she has been homeschooling. When we agreed to her pleas for homeschooling we put some stipulations on it. We were both tired of homeschooling and had finally decided it was time to send the kids to school. For this reason she agreed she would be responsible for getting all of her work done, exercise everyday, and get out and make some friends so that she could polish up her Spanish.
It has proven very effective. I do have to preface this by saying that there were others of our children that it would not have worked with. Every child is different and has different outlooks and needs. For my daughter the "unschooling" has worked great and we are very happy with it. What does one of her days look like?
She gets up at 8:30 every morning during the school week. I will not even say when she gets up on the weekends! She gets up, drinks a glass of juice and packs up her swimming gear. She gets her 300 colones from her Dad for bus fare and walks the block down to catch the 9:15 city bus. She goes downtown to Heredia for her swim workout at the city pool. It is $20.00 for a one month pass. It is a beautiful 50 meter outdoor pool with all the lanelines etc. She gets her workout from a free online swimming class she is enrolled in through BYU Independent Studies Program. She walks over to the store and catches the bus home, arriving by 11:30.
When she gets home we all have lunch together and she gets started on her school work. The one rule we do enforce with her is no laptop until the school work is done. That is the only motivation she needs to get her school work done in a hurry. Her curriculum consits of a program we ordered online for $400.00, entire year included. It includes all of the basics and she seems to be progressing well. She is very conscientious about completing her school work as she plans to return to the States to attend college.
After her school work is completed my daughter spends part of her afternoon on-line keeping up with all of her high-5 friends from Costa Rica. For the first year she kept up with all of her myspace friends from the states. In the afternoons her school friends come by to pick her up. The walk to the park down the street or to town to look at the pet store, or buy food. Sometimes they will take a picnic to the park. In the evening she helps with dinner and clean up and has her chores to do.
Her friends all speak Spanish and her Spanish is very fluent at this point. We are very happy with the progress she has made and wonder about all the time we spent forcing out other children to get their school work done! She has gained so much more from this experience than she would have ever received from attending a regular high school. Yes she will miss prom, oh well maybe we will go spend a week at the beach for her graduation!
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