Читать книгу Homeschooling For Dummies - Jennifer Kaufeld - Страница 7

Introduction

Welcome to the adventure called homeschooling!

Teaching your children at home is a rewarding and engaging way to spend your time. You relearn cutting and pasting skills if you teach kindergarten, and you review algebra facts right along with your high school student. No matter what age your student happens to be, you find yourself learning and relearning right along with your child. If you tutor your children all the way through high school, you look up one day to realize that you just relived the academic portion of your high school years — doing it one-on-one makes school time less stressful for everybody.

About This Book

Whether you’re just about to embark on the home education journey, you already have a few years under your belt, or you’re interested in learning about this home teaching thing that your family member or friend pursues, Homeschooling For Dummies is your hands-on guide. These pages explain the intricacies of homeschooling in plain English and show you that you can do it too, if you decide that homeschooling meets your family’s needs.

For the most part, this book reads exactly like any other: Words progress from left to right, sentences begin with capital letters, and so on. No surprises there, thank goodness. You may want to be aware of a couple additional features, however, as you read. They’re designed to help you get the most out of this book.

Many pages contain an icon in the margin that points to important information. Icons save you the time and energy it takes to use your handy underlining pen. (The section about icons shows you the individual icons and tells you what they mean.)

In other sections of the book, you may find words in italics or in bold type. These words tell you what to type into an Internet search engine if you want to find certain homeschooling information on the web. For example, using homeschool magazine as a search term should give you most (if not all) the homeschool newsletters and magazines that maintain their own websites, plus a few miscellaneous discussions about the pros and cons of homeschooling magazines in general. (Don’t you love the Internet?)

Foolish Assumptions

Knowing you picked up this book tells me who you are. You, of course, knew who you were all along. I’m the one who has to figure it out, and this is what I came up with so far:

 This phenomenon called homeschooling interests you and you want to find out more about it.

 You are thinking about teaching your children at home, you already teach your children at home, or you may know someone who does.

 This book is the answer to your search for an understandable guide that you can hand to concerned-but-loving grandparents, siblings, and friends because you already homeschool.

 You may have a computer at home with Internet access (because most homeschoolers around the country do). Or you may not. Either way, you can use this book because it was written with you in mind.

 Words such as unschooling, classical education, and portfolio reverberate in your mind like a half-understood foreign language.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout the book, you see a collection of handy icons in the margins. While they manage to make the pages look cool as you flip through, they also perform a useful function. They mark information that you want to note for one reason or another.

Beginning homeschoolers need to know more than the basics. They want to see a working example of how homeschooling looks in real life. This icon gives you a glimpse into the daily life of a homeschooler, usually me. Browse through the paragraphs attached to these icons when you need a reminder that teaching your kids at home isn’t always a bowl of chocolate ice cream (although whatever the current crisis, you usually find yourself laughing about it later). These icons mark real life in action: the frustrating parts as well as the huggable ones.

This icon saves you from tying strings around your fingers to help you recall information as you read. This icon sits next to a paragraph that you may need later, and it makes the section a little easier to find the next time you need it.

This icon makes your life easier. It may mark a handy resource you should be aware of, a shortcut that saves you time, or a tidbit of knowledge born of experience. These icons mark the places you may want to highlight so you can find them later.

Think: Danger, Will Robinson! When you see this icon, tread carefully. While nothing in this book causes your computer hard drive to crash or the dog to eat your brand new science textbook, these icons do remind you to pay attention. Some icons point out information that the general public doesn’t know, but you need to be aware of. Other icons mark information that can change depending on which state you live in.

Beyond the Book

While Homeschooling For Dummies gives you a good introduction to the topic, your adventure certainly doesn’t stop here. For a list of child- and family-friendly magazines and newsletters (some specifically for homeschoolers and some just for fun), take a look at the book’s Cheat Sheet online at Dummies.com. In addition to possible periodical reads, the Cheat Sheet also gives you some handy website suggestions and an easy way to determine a grade point average. Find it at www.dummies.com, and then search for “Homeschooling For Dummies Cheat Sheet.”

Where to Go from Here

Because Homeschooling For Dummies, like all For Dummies books, is divided into easily managed sections, you don’t actually have to start reading at Chapter 1 if you don’t want to. Diving into the middle of the book is great — especially if it contains the information that you need right now. How you read the book is up to you. Read it from front to back, back to front (a little more difficult, but still manageable), or start in the middle and go from there. This decision, like almost every other one in homeschooling, is entirely up to you.

No matter how you decide to digest the book, dive right in — a wealth of information, ideas, and other tidbits await you.