Homeschooling preschool links

This is a handout I provided to attendees of a session I did about Homeschooling Preschool at the 2010 VaHomeschoolers Conference, which I updated for the 2013 conference

Homeschooling Preschool

Helpful Websites:

VaHomeschoolers -- The Organization for Virginia Homeschoolers has a page with tips and links for homeschooling preschoolers

http://homeschoolnewslink.com/ -- The Link is now a website with an e-newsletter that has many resources and ideas for homeschooling; I especially loved this preschool article, Wax On Wax Off from Vol. 7, Issue 3

http://www.universalpreschool.com/articles/time_and_freedom.asp - an article about considering the preschool decision; this was the first article I read that lead me to choose not to send my child to preschool

www.unclimber.blogspot.com. This is my personal blog. Posts labeled preschool, resources and reading lists will have the most useful information. Posts labeled homeschooling tend to be about educational philosophy and can be emotional. You've been warned. If you like my writing but find my unclimber persona a bit abrasive, check out my posts (and those of others) on Life Without School. I was far better behaved over there.

Books to inspire or support you:

Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk by David Elkind -- this may put you at ease if you are worried about that your child may be left behind by skipping preschool.

How Children Fail, Learning All the Time, Teach Your Own by John Holt. How Children Fail is more of an indictment of school and how the system can be harmful to children. LAtT and TYO are more helpful as to how to homeschool.

Local support groups: whether you consider yourself a homeschooler and plan to continue homeschooling beyond preschool, you may find support groups helpful. The VaHomeschooler website has a listing of Support groups

On-line support groups. If you are not are not familiar with yahoo groups, it is easy to sign up for a free account. VaEclecticHS is an especially good group. You can also find local and specialty groups on yahoo.

General Preschool:

Scope and sequence - what preschool kids should be learning; World Book, other websites

Get Set for Kindergarten Series by Rosemary Wells - these are set in a school environment, but will cover typical preschool subject matter.

Helping Your Child Learn - free publications from the Federal Government

            Available on pdf at http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/hyc.html

Homeschooling the Early Years by Linda Dobson

Preschool Power videos - kids engaged in Montessori activities; we found these at our local library; YouTube has a channel with clips from the series; you can order the DVD with all the episodes

Games: dice, playing cards, board games, puzzles, play dough, arts and crafts

Placemats - Wal-Mart and K-Mart are good sources, as are toy stores.

The public library - you can likely find books on any subject you'd like to study. Befriending the librarians is not a bad idea, either.

Math:

American Library Association list of picture books that teach math concepts

Math Start series by Stuart Murphy

Anno's Counting Book - or anything by Anno; many of his books are wordless

Swan Harbor by Laura Rankin -- a counting book but also ties in nature themes

Loreen Leady - author of many math picture books

Eenie Meenie Miney Math, Math Play for You and Your Preschooler by Linda Allison and Martha Weston

            out of print, but the library may have it. Helping Your Child Learn Math from the Federal Government is similar.

Reading:

The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease

Book lists - Chinaberry catalog; Sonlight catalog - the curriculum is Christian but includes many books that are not, click "included items" to see a listing of the books; other search terms to use are "living books", "Charlotte Mason", trivium, classical.

Videos for learning to read: Read Alee Dee Da Lee; Leap Frog - Letter Factory, Word Factory 

Scholastic books videos are read-alouds; turning on the captions may help some kids learn to read

Stories and books on tape

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read

            "The general assumption in our culture is that children must be taught to read...., Here [] are seven principles relevant to the question of how children teach themselves to read without formal instruction."

           

Fine Arts:

Classical Kids CDs - we've enjoyed introducing our kids to classical music through these. They pair the music with a story; most of the stories follow part of the composer's life in a tale directed at children. One exception is Mozart's Magic Flute, which tells the story of the opera rather than the story of Mozart.

My blog has a post listing storybooks exposing young children to the world of art (9/21/2004).

Cross-curricular:

Charlie Needs a Cloak by Tomie dePaola -- takes you through the process of making a cloak -- shearing the sheep, spinning, dyeing the wool, weaving, sewing. What’s also nice is that it takes you through the seasons of the year. Available as a book and in a Scholastic video

Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle -- Jack wants pancakes and he has to cut the wheat, get it milled, get eggs, milk, etc, all the ingredients of pancakes.

How to Bake and Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman - a trip around the world to get ingredients for an apple pie.

Books featuring kids that do not romanticize school or take place outside of it:

Prairie School by Avi. A skillful teacher fosters a desire to learn in her pupil, without forcing lessons on him. Set in the 1880s.

Sailing Home told by Gloria Rand. Out of print, unfortunately, but may be available at your library. This is such an interesting story and a beautiful book (the Rands have many books to their credit and I've enjoyed those that I've read). The schooling aspect is that the children learn their basics from their mother; after that, a tutor is hired. I liked the idea that perhaps the tutor wasn't necessary and that structured learning can be tedious while life itself can be far more educational.

Abigail Takes the Wheel by Avi. Another sailing book set in the late 1800s. In this one, a girl takes the helm of a steamship boat in New York harbor. There is a brief mention of a test at school, but I felt like this book showed how much more interesting and important real life is than being in school.

The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola. I found this book to be deliciously anti-school, though I'm not sure it was the author's intent (maybe it was and its point is to encourage kids to overcome the obstacles that school presents). The story is about a young Tomie who has to wait until he is in first grade for art lessons at school and then is bitterly disappointed by the lack of artistic freedom the lessons entail. A workable solution is found, but the blaring message I got is that institutional school only pens in your true talents.

Homeschooling Preschool - article

I wrote this article for The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers and it appeared in the Summer of 2008.

homeschooling approaches - it's more than curriculum choice

I sometimes answer questions from new homeschoolers or those considering homeschooling as part of my volunteer work. Here is one response I wrote to a parent of a 12 year old who is considering homeschooling next year. This response was to his follow-up question asking me what curriculum I use. I know that I can sometimes be very defensive (and offensive as a result ;-0) and strident about homeschooling, but this is actually an even-tempered response that might be informative and helpful to some of my friends. That is why I am sharing it here [originally published as a Facebook note].

--------------

We used Singapore Math last year. Before that, we didn't really use anything or you might say we used a bit of everything, just not packaged curriculum. My kids are self-motivated and we've always had lots of learning materials and books in the house and available to them. We love the library and its amazing the resources available there. We've also been involved in co-ops with other parents and homeschoolers.

What lead me to this approach was reading Mary Hood's book The Relaxed Homeschool -- she has a PhD in education and her book made a lot of sense to me. A very relaxed approach has worked well with my kids though I understand that others want or need more structure ororganization in their homeschool. I also enjoy books by John Holt, especially Teach Your Own and Learning all the Time.

Since your child is 12 and has been in school, this relaxed approach may be very unappealing to you (or might seem slightly insane). Also, you may have concerns about academic performance and having the ability to return to school in the future. This is why it's good to join the lists and talk to a variety of homeschoolers. There are many ways to homeschool and to prepare your kids for college and beyond.

I don't know your reasons for looking into homeschooling and this might not appeal to you, but if your child seems burned out by school and needing a new perspective, you might want to look into the concept of deschooling - the idea of which is to get one's intrinsic love of learning back. I just googled the term and found a lot of information--

http://www.justenoughblog.com/?p=68

What I love about homeschooling is the ability to question the educational assumptions of institutional school. We started our journey when the kids were very young, so I spent a lot of time reading educational theory and about various approaches to education and I didn't need to worry about what they were learning or how fast. Now, as my kids get older (I have a 12 year old as well), I am beginning to get a bit more concerned about whether our relaxed approach will continue to suit us well. You might want to think about your goals for homeschooling as well as for your child. My goals for my kids are that I want them to be good, honest, productive people with strong family relationships. I'm a little murky on how the whole college thing is going to work and I do expect that my kids will get at least bachelors degrees. I follow what the homeschoolers with older kids are saying on the lists and I know that it will work out. So far, our needs are being met.

Like I said, my approach might not appeal to you at all and that's why it's important to talk to other homeschoolers. There are plenty of people who use curricula that they love and are happy with (and they may have used several different ones over the years because what works well one year might not the next). I would suggest that you not jump in too quickly or spend too much money because what works for one kid might not work for another and you don't want to sink a couple of hundred dollars into one curriculum only to learn about another curriculum that might work better. One thing a lot of us homeschoolers like to keep in mind is that we don't really have a timetable like the schools do. You are not required to have math, science, language arts and history taught every day. If your child has a strong interest in a subject or topic, you might be able to use to study cross-curricularly, something that schools may not be able to do, especially at the higher grades where each subject has a different teacher (one approach that does this is unit studies; but you need not formalize it).

Sorry, I feel as if I've babbled a bit. I suppose my main point is that homeschooling is an opportunity for you to look at education from a different perspective than the school system has offered, if you choose. There are many museums to visit and activities to do and lots of ways to learn that look nothing like what an institutional school has to offer. Otherwise, there are a number of packaged curricula that might work well -- going on a list and describing your child (learning style, special needs or gifts, what they like) might help you find out what worked in families whose children are similar.

The Sins of Forced Education

Psychology Today has a blog called Freedom to Learn which is pretty interesting to me. I've linked a post before, and now I'm linking again -- this time to Seven Sins of Our Forced Education System. Like I said in my other post, this is no surprise to me and I think most, if not all of the items, were brought up by John Holt in his book, How Children Fail (this link actually gives you a preview of many of the pages). I loved that book, which I could find my copy of it and all the stuff I underlined. Alas, I cannot, but at least I did some posts early on this blog which quoted some of my favorite passages.

Back to the Seven Sins -- I strongly agree with his second premise:

2. Fostering of shame, on the one hand, and hubris, on the other.

It is not easy to force people to do what they do not want to do....Children are made to feel ashamed if they perform worse than their peers and pride if they perform better....Those made to feel excessive pride from the shallow accomplishments that earn them A's and honors may become arrogant, disdainful of the common lot who don't do so well on tests; disdainful, therefore, of democratic values and processes (and this may be the worst effect of all).

 While I agree that what happens to those who don't measure up is terrible, what happens to those who do is not much better. I think tracking can be useful, but it's not without it's downside. I wonder if some of these successful students don't internalize the constant competition and become somewhat fearful that they will find someone better, smarter, or more accomplished. To look at others as a constant source of competition strikes me as a barrier to healthy relationships. But I'm no pyschologist.

Teaching Ourselves to Read

I admit I don't find this article very interesting because it has been my experience. My response is more like, "yeah, so?" than, "wow, are you serious?"

My oldest started reading somewhere between ages 3 and 4, I think. My attempts to use a reading program (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons) did not go well. The first few lessons were fine, then she got bored and I got impatient. The CD case of ABBA Gold seemed to provide her more help than reading instruction. I would play that CD in the car, Suzanne asked to look at the case and I'd hand it back.

My youngest started reading around the age of 7. Unlike her sister, she was not a big fan of being read to. However, she started writing earlier than her sister did, so she was working on her own things, at her own pace.

It's nice to have them both reading now. Now go educate yourselves, kids, and let me know when you need me.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

I fell down the rabbit hole again. While writing my last post to share a link for preschool resources, I wandered across this link. It has extensive listings and I don't always trust the Federal government when it comes to education, but there might be something useful in there, so I'm posting the link here.

Ed Pubs Resources for Preschoolers

The Helping Your Child series were not designed with homeschoolers in mind, I'm sure, but they are free publications available from the Federal government. They are now available as pdf files, but when my kids were little, I ordered printed copies of the books. They may be useful in their suggested activities and worth a look.

If I recall correctly, I found the Helping Your Preschooler and Helping Your Child Learn Mathematics most useful.

No Us v. Them in Homeschooling, please

The Diosa Dotada Endeavor has a number of posts in response to the Robin West article -- I believe this was the first post on the subject on this blog. My focus is to archive my comment on my blog, but her response is well worth reading.

And now to my comment

fantastic response! I’m so glad you had stats to back you up. Here Robin goes on and on about the Fundamentalists Protestants and yet she uses their (HSLDA and NHERI’s) data — to the degree she uses any data, which is very little.

I really tried to read her article, but the opening page was alarmist and emotional and then she makes a rather bland statement that her thesis is about regulation.

I am not a Fundamentalist Protestant but she clearly has an ax to grind against them – but even her concerns make no sense. On the one hand, they can raise a political army, on the other hand, they are uneducated and lack skills. Which is it? Are they a potent enemy to reckon with, or hapless and ignorant?

She wonders why no one is worried about the looming scourge of homeschooling. Well, maybe because it’s not a looming scourge? Maybe what’s going on in the public schools is of greater concern? Maybe people are worried about health care or the war on drugs, whether homosexuals can marry, international foreign policy, or anything other than whether or not the local homeschoolers are teaching creationism. Honestly, I’m not a creationist but I really can’t see why anyone cares so much as to whether people believe in evolution. Maybe I feel this way because I’m not a scientist, but it’s just not had a huge impact on my life.

I’m also wary of anyone who wants to start and us vs. them with homeschoolers. Oh, you liberal types, you’re okay, it’s THEM we’re worried about. Well, freedom is freedom, no matter what anyone’s personal, political, and religious views are.

Oh, and can someone please explain to me why the critics love to carp on teaching credentials? What do they actually do, teach classroom management techniques? Tell you how to get a large, diverse group of students with different learning abilities interested in a subject? Someone please explain to me how a certification which helps teachers teach classrooms of kids is necessary in a homeschooling environment. But then she lobs “over-educated” at us — which is it? Can we teach our kids or not? Or is it just that she thinks we should be doing something else (like contributing to the sexist media machine, consumer-driven culture by having more spending power with the money we earn at jobs that are more deserving of our time than our own children)?

Thanks for the forum! and thanks for your posts and the dialog you’ve begun with Robin.

Homeschool on! Ever seen that t-shirt “The Revolutionaries will be homeschooled!”? I love it, except that it drives me nuts because shouldn’t it be “The Revolutionaries will have been homeschooled.” Opps, must be showing my over-education!

     by Marjorie December 22nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm

Fleshing out the feminist bitch-slap in the Harms of Homeschooling

Just for the sake of archives on unclimber, since I refused to link myself when I made the comment.

This is a link to The Diosa Dotada Endeavor, another post that discussed the aforementioned Robin West article and another place where I left a comment. Many homeschoolers and other commented and once again, my comment is not easily found (though it is easily linked).

yeah, I, too was wondering about the “over-educated” comment of hers. How is it a feminist professor can label some women as over-educated and what makes her different from the paternalistic professor of the 60s who pointedly asked the women in my mom’s class why they were there, taking up a seat that could have been filled by a man? The irony of it all. And I’m a homeschooling mama who is, was, and always considered herself to be a feminist. Why do some feminists think that all women need to listen to them and do as they say and what makes that any different from the current paradigm of male-domination? Sorry, but I don’t see it as an advancement for women to stop doing what men say in order to do what some “feminist” tells us to do. Makes no sense – isn’t feminism about women thinking for themselves? And I choose homeschooling for my daughters.

     by Marjorie December 22nd, 2009 at 6:27 pm

The Scary, Scary Harms of Homeschooling

At the risk of giving publicity to an article I don't agree with, I am posting about a slightly dated article The Harms of Homeschooling by Robin West. A friend of mine called my attention to the article and pointed me to a blog post commenting on it. I was quite pleased to see that West herself commented on the post and she did so in a way that suggested a far more reasonable mind than her original article. Despite my normally shy and reserved demeanor, I couldn't help commenting on it also, within the comments section of the post. The comments continue, because I just received notice of another one, which is what reminded me to write this post.

When I first read the article, I was surprised that it was published and even more surprised that it was written by a law professor. It was very alarmist, not terribly factual, highly anedoctal, and mostly just a rant. As anyone who has read the earlier posts on this blog, you'll know that I recognize that style of writing because it's so similar to my own. But I publish on a personal blog, not a university journal. Clearly I have some career soul-searching to do.

I just want to pull out my comment from the comment field and reprint it here because I like it, it makes me proud (up until the end when I go a bit nutty) and because there are so many comments that if I just leave this here hoping one of my blog's readers will find it, they might lose interest. I'm kicking myself for not linking this blog to my name but I was worried it would reduce the impact of my comment if it became clear it was posted by a nutcase.

- if I counted correctly, it's the 14th - this link might take you directly to it, but I've reprinted it below

Marjorie 

Robin, I appreciate your comment here. I was disturbed by the alarmist nature in the PPP article and hope that the full treatment of it in your work does not sound as emotional and poorly reasoned. I’d also be interested in seeing your legal reasoning and hope you have more comprehensive coverage of the laws regarding homeschooling. As a homeschooler, I have only focused on the laws of my own state, Virginia, and have not had the time nor inclination to research beyond that. I would caution you against relying on the HSLDA (or NHERI) for your homeschool facts — many homeschoolers disagree strongly with that organization, it’s approaches, tactics, political and religious views, and how it derives it’s data.

I’m not certain why you feel that testing is the only way to give adequate evidence of education – in Virginia, it is but one option. Another option is an evaluation with an accredited evaluator. Personally, I believe in the value of learning to take tests, but I don’t see how that ensures a literate and numerate citizenry any more than a meeting with an evaluator.

I’d also love to hear more discussion about the state’s legitimate interest in education and how best to ensure that. I’m always curious to learn how private schools are regulated and why they are free from the concerns that plague homeschooling.

Finally, I think when you mention the “children of the over-educated and under-employed suburban mothers who simply would prefer to do this work for themselves than delegate it to the state” you show a fundamental lack of comprehension (and interest) for why many choose to homeschool. Simply stated, a homeschool education can be richer, deeper, and more individualized (and often has little to do with religion or conservative politics, which seem to be your greatest concerns). To comment on the mothers seems to underscore the emotional nature of the piece and sounds more like an attempt to ignite the Mommy wars than a reason why homeschooling should be regulated. It strikes me as poor reasoning that one moment you seem disturbed that homeschoolers are not accredited to teach their children and then you comment that some of us are overeducated (but I understand that advanced degrees are not teaching credentials. However, most homeschooling mothers have fewer than 30 children in their families, so perhaps they don’t really need teaching credentials. Which raises the question of what teaching credentials are and what they are for – a question no one ever seems to examine, they just seem to assume that homeschoolers should have them).

Thank you, Milton, for calling my attention to this article and for providing a forum for comments.

The Mathematician's Lament

From the linked paper:

Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is [a] nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Product vs. Process Learning

This is a link to a post I wrote on the Life Without School community blog.

One reason I love homeschooling is because the product aspect is removed in some regard. Even when there is an actual tangible product or project, doing it for the love of learning and not for a grade is a very different thing. So much of what I did for the first 20-odd years of my life was about getting someone else's approval. It's amazing to start doing things for no other reason than that you are intrigued by something. 

Adventures in Arithmetic

This is a post I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School. It tells about our approach to math. I notice that one link in the post is dead, but I will update it here.

The excerpt from my post with the working link:

I also found a great article in Book Links, a publication by the American Library Association, that lists and summarizes a number of books that help preschoolers through elementary aged kids learn about math.

Learning from Testing

This is a post I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School.

I love that homeschooling allows my children the opportunity to learn about testing without having testing overshadow actual learning.

What is wrong with The New York Times?

What kind of sensationalistic crap are they writing? Did you see the article about that horrible multiple homicide in Washington, D.C.? The mom had pulled her kids out of school at some point and claimed to be homeschooling them. As a result, the NYT used the headline Lack of Supervision Noted in Deaths of Home-Schooled. Terrible, tragic, awful -- but she wasn't a homeschooler. She was a woman who took advantage of the law and pulled her kids out of school and said she was homeschooling.


If you read The Washington Post, the hometown paper for this incident, you'll find out the woman had a long history of troubles. Here's their headline - Making of a Tragedy: The Single Mother's World Included Drugs, Homelessness And Paternity Suits. Her Children Paid the Price. This was not a woman who was reading about education, going to homeschool conferences, perusing websites and chatlists and catalogs to figure out what curriculum to use. This was a woman who was falling apart. One wonders why the school-system and home education are to blame when welfare and social services failed this woman. Heck her food stamps were cancelled because she failed to update her information. Why not go after that? No, who cares if they eat, let's wait until she snaps and blame it on homeschooling.


The Post article barely mentions homeschooling. It only does so in the chronology of the mom's very sad life. It's obvious she is sick and has had bad luck and lots of troubles and it sounds like homeschooling was one of the last things she did. She certainly was not a 'homeschooler' gone bad but a very troubled woman who pulled her kids out of school.


I think it's outrageous that the Times would put it into the headline that these kids were homeschooled (make that "home-schooled"). So many of these abuse stories aren't about homeschooling, this one seems like it really has very little to do with homeschooling and far more to do with poverty and mental illness and instability in the family.


And what is Mitchell Stevens babbling about in his quote in the Times? He is paraphrased as saying that "school officials, who are required by law to report suspicion of child abuse, were society’s best watchdogs of how parents treat children." Yes, and we all know there are no abused kids going to school who aren't getting noticed and helped. Please. Mitchell, shame on you, you should know better. But hey, it's nice to see your name in the Times.


What gives, is the NYT pissed off about Huckabee? That's not our fault. Really.

My Educational Philosophy - Get a Life

This is a post I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School.

"Get a life" was a comment I received fairly recently on my blog, unclimber....For a moment, I felt a bit upset to get what seemed to be only a mean-spirited comment. Then I realized it was an opportunity for reflection....

The irony is that in ruminating on "get a life", I realized that it sums up my educational philosophy. 

The Socialization Fear and Homeschooling

A nice article about one homeschooler's view of socialization.

My favorite -- the author recounts a story of being scolded for talking in class and being told "we are not here to socialize." She then wonders, "If schools weren't made for socializing, then why on earth would anyone assume that homeschoolers were missing out?"

Why is "what about socialization" often one of the first questions we homeschoolers hear? Just think about it for two seconds and a whole slew of answers come:

-- why would you want your child "socialized" with or by other school children? Is anyone laboring under the illusion that much of school interactions are polite and courteous?

-- is socialization one adult per 30 kids, telling them what to do? How is this like real life?

-- how many quiet or shy children really wish they had been pushed at age 5 or 6 or 7, to interact with other kids their same age? See question 1.

Oh well, to each, his own. I, for one, am glad that my second-grader does not respond to my requests with "whatever." I am glad my second-grader doesn't ask me if I'm going to talk about "s-e-x" when I ask for a few minutes to chat with my friend alone.

I've got a post coming up in a few weeks on Life Without School that discusses my thoughts on socializing vs. civilizing. Stay tuned!

Thats Why I Unschool

-- no guarantee my kids won't hate me anyway, but they'll have to find a different reason.

Why We Hate Our Parents
Western parents feel it is their job to make their children into who they should be rather than relate to who they already are.
By Mark Epstein, M.D.

I was not unschooled myself and I don't hate my parents. They always accepted me and encouraged me, but never made me feel like I should be anyone else.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

Shifting Paradigms Through Books

this is an article I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School.

Because there are so many books about school or set in school, I wanted to share books with my daughter that showed other ways people learn and have learned over the years.  School has been the norm for a long time, but it hasn't always been that way and there are others even today who choose a different way to educate. Some of the books we've enjoyed are listed [in this post]. 

New Class for Homeschoolers

After reading an article in The Washington Post Magazine about the efforts required to get your child into preschool and reading the class listings in my county's recreation guide, I've come to the conclusion once again that its all about money and prestige, it has little to do with what is best for the child (other than assuming if everyone else is doing it, it must be best for the child). Really, preschool, it seems, is necessary because who can go to the trouble of making playdates?

Throw into the mix all the Back to School advertisements focusing on 'fashion-musts' for the institution-bound and I'm inspired to provide what has been lacking for homeschoolers for too long.

Plans are in the works for a new Social Trauma for Homeschoolers class. Topics addressed will include: Negative Body Image; Owning Your "Loser" Status for those who have been placed in the lower tracks; and Its Not Who You Are, Its Who You Date (And What You Wear). There will be a special "Back to School" night so that parents can be take part in the social trauma as well. There will even be a silent auction because nothing says status like showing how much you're willing to pay for an item you don't need or want.

The classes for the kids will begin with putting large groups of children on buses and ostracize and torment many of them. Those not tormented will be deemed 'popular' and they will have to conform to peer expectations or face ostracism. Just like in the 'real world', in Social Trauma, even the winners are losers. We will move on to a simulated cafeteria environment in which snubs and mockery rule -- fear of being different will be the focus of additional exercises. At the end of the year, we will have a Prom, for which we will prepare the entire year, focusing on fashion, dating, and how to secure a hotel room for teenage drinking and sex. Learning will be done at home, as it usually is.

I enjoyed school, the work is easy if you're aural/visual and quick to grasp the lessons and there is a lot of drama to keep you from getting bored. I really did learn more at home, though.