| Using Your Local Resources As Homeschooling Learning Experiences |
| "It Takes A Village" was the slogan for Hillary Clinton's book campaign. I recently read the book "And The Skylark Sings With Me" by David Albert. He shares the joys and challenges of homeschooling his two daughters who were very musically talented. I was very excited to see that he used their local resources in their daughters education. Neighbors, school teaches, university teachers, friends, and organizations like the Zoo, Nature Center, Planetarium, and Childrens Museum are all wonderful resourses for homeschoolers. We can't do it alone. We don't know everything, and we have realized that we will need to call on others from time to time to help our children with learning. Not only that, but lets face it, a fresh face could encourage anyone. It's also nice to have other adults who can mentor our children. One of the first things we did was subscribe ourselves to our public resources. We have memberships to the Zoo, Childrens Museum, Botanical Gardens, Lichterman Nature Center, Pink Palace (another museum), and we take advantage of the library. We don't attend these places in peak hours because we are home in the day time and can take advantage of wide open spaces and special attention for our kids. Also, the local theaters have family nights, the planetarium has a kid friendly constellation show, often our local sports groups will have family nights where it is free or half price, and of course we have a wonderful co-op homeschooling group and parents set up social and learning opportunities and a monthly meeting..most of these are free. If you are adventurous, you could take your family on a city bus tour. Call up your city bus office and ask for the routes to take, and see the city from a different perspective. Do you have something unique about your city? We have the grand Mississippi river flowing through our city, and the bluffs are a wonderful place to picnic, watch the sun go down, or just play. We have a island called Mud Island, and there is a Riverboat museum, a Mississippi River walk (walk it in your bare feet!) and a city pool at the very end (the Gulf of Mexico!!). Camping and hiking opportunities.. We have many places in our neighboring states to camp, hike and explore. Most of these things cost very little...much less than a weekend in a hotel. One of our favorite places to camp has a Folk Center, and there you can see how the people of the Ozarks lived many years ago. We got to make candles, watch folk dancing, watch a broom maker create a beautiful broom and see the clothes from this era. Many professionals and organizations are willing to hold special classes for homeschoolers. Contact them in advance and let them know your needs. Often there will be a group discount and that is appreciated amoung homeschoolers. For example: Our Botanical Gardens holds a monthly class for homeschoolers. The kids (age 5-10 years learn about various things in our natural world. The last class was "Oceans Alive" and our son Ravi learned about how seaweed was used in many foods in place of cow bone marrow. They boiled the seaweed and then let the carageenen drip off the seaweed and with the carageenen, they made vegetarian gummy worms. He learned how to make a seashell candle, and other sea worthy things. As a family, we attended Star Gaze recently. Star Gaze is a free event held at night between 9pm and 11pm. Employee's and friends of the Planetarium bring and set up powerful telescopes to our Nature Center where it is very tree lined and dark, and they set the scopes on various things like the moon, saturn and mars. The general public is invited, and this is a very kid friendly event. By exposing your child to these activities, your child gets a new perspective on life. It takes a village to raise and educate a child! |