I think homeschoolers have proven that the lack of socialization myth is just that: a myth. But the fact is that everyone, homeschooled or not, will meet all sorts of people during the course of their lives, and sometimes they’ll have questions about how to deal with them.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie has been in print since it was first published in 1936 because Carnegie was so good at explaining how to get along with people. This particular copy is a vintage copy, but I don’t know the exact year it was printed: inside it says “Copyright 1936, 85th printing.”
This book is especially valuable for homeschooled students, because they will be heading out into a world where they may face some negative experiences and people that they missed out on by not attending public school.
What do you think about homeschoolers and socialization? Leave your answer as a comment on this post by Friday, March 19, and you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing for this hardback copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks With Over 125 Illustrations
Being homeschoolers, we love books: the older the book, the better. Buying old books is something we just can’t seem to stop doing.
Last summer, my husband and I were at a book sale up in Door County when we found the cutest book. It’s a kindergarten story curriculum published in 1890. The author, a teacher, organized it into a school-year’s worth (September to June) of stories and object lessons for young children.
Our youngest is 17, so we didn’t really need this book, but I just couldn’t resist it. We bought it, and both my husband and I read it. We were quite taken with the animal and nature stories, fairy tales, fables, and simple object lessons that explained how items in daily use at that time were manufactured. In fact, we agreed that it would be a great book for homeschooling parents except that the print is so small that it would be hard to read aloud. And that got us thinking……
What if we republished the book with a larger font and wider margins so it would be easier to read aloud? Then my husband said he thought he could find some nice illustrations, appropriate to the time period and even the specific stories. After all, kids today are very visual. They love storybooks with pictures! So he spent ages finding the coolest illustrations to go with the stories. Being the artist he is, he also came up with a beautiful cover. The whole process took several months.
And the result? We’re happy to announce that the book, Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks With Over 125 Illustrations, is now in print! It’s available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and pretty much everywhere you can buy books. It was just published, so it’s not in the homeschool catalogs yet, but we’re working on that. In the meantime, we just put it up on our site if you want to learn more.
I wish I’d had a book like this when I first started homeschooling…. I think it’s an ideal first curriculum for homeschooling parents and teachers of young children who enjoy and appreciate vintage texts.
Escape those winter doldrums with a visit to this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling. There are quite a few interesting posts this week about things like:
What’s the most important thing you want to teach your children so they’ll be prepared to live on their own someday? Is it how to budget? How to cook? How to live within their means and debt-free? Or something else?
Leave your answer as a comment on this post by Friday, March 12, and you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing for a hardback copy of Life on the Edge, one of the books on the Recommended Reading List of my book Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers. As I said in that book:
Dr. Dobson discusses important subjects like choosing a career and a marriage partner, as well as just dealing with the ups and downs of life as a young adult in today’s society. His Christian faith is always evident in what he writes, yet his practical advice is valuable for readers of any faith.
Gever Tulley’s Tinkering School sounds like a lot of fun, and it’s just the kind of experience today’s overscheduled, classroom-imprisoned kids need. But at $1200 for 6 days, it’s out of the reach of many parents.
But why couldn’t a few parents get together to provide a similar experience for their kids? Maybe hang out in someone’s garage with a bunch of power tools and some donated lumber, and let the kids loose (with some parental guidance) to tinker to their hearts’ content?
As long as the parents teach the kids how to use the power tools safely, I think this would be an awesome learning experience. Perhaps a homeschool support group could sponsor a day-long tinkering workshop for kids. I mean, who wouldn’t want to build their own roller coaster?
Last week, I posted about the questions I’ve been getting latelyhaving to do with surviving the homeschooling life. It occurs to me now that while I addressed some difficulties that come with homeschooling and how to handle them, I should also remind those newer to homeschooling of all the advantages of this lifestyle.
