Life Learning Lab: Homeschooling

An acceleration experiment

When Mom and Dad first told us we were going to Costa Rica, I asked, "What are we going to do about school?"  Dad replied, "We're going to homeschool." At first, I was really excited. We were going to homeschool, something that I've always wanted to do.

But when we got here and started homeschooling, I learned that everything has it's advantages and disadvantages. For example, there's no commute, but that means that instead, you have to work during that time. Here's a graph of it's advantages and disadvantages:

 Advantages                                                                                                      Disadvantages

no commute	you have to work instead
work at your level	harder work
do-whatever-you-want play breaks (recesses)	no playgrounds
mom as teacher	less experienced teacher
more one-on-one time	very few classmates
more field trips	(no disadvantage)
(no advantage)	more writing
less spelling	(no disadvantage)

As you can see, there are more advantages then disadvantages. But don't get too excited if you're a mom. I hear it's very hard work to get everything ready!

Also, we have Spanish. There's a really nice college student down the street that teaches us Spanish an hour every weekday. She speaks English and Spanish, which is nice because then we can understand what she's saying.  She doesn't just teach it, either. She shows it in real life. For example, we played tennis together. We learned the words tennis, racket, shoes, throw, and turn. Just from one hour!

Don't get too excited, kids. It's hard work!

-Kyle Wilson