Long Term Relaxed Homeschooling (RHS) Goals

*Series Intro*

*For the past 6 months or so I have been exploring the ins and outs of Relaxed Homeschooling (RHS) and Unschooling (UnS).  In that time I have come to see that my daughter NEEDS this type of learning and education if she is to be who she is meant to be.  Anything else will not support her full development.  My reason for coming up with any kind of plan at all is twofold. This school year we will be moving to a state in which we will be joining an umbrella school.  So, my task here is to come up with a relaxed plan that will meet the requirements of the umbrella school.  Secondly, a dear friend of mine in state that only requires an attendance record for homeschool statute compliance, was accused of educational neglect.  Having never tested her children, and not done much record keeping, it was difficult for her to prove that her children were in deed growing and learning as they should. So now I am a bit paranoid about the remote possibility of this happening to us. If it ever does, by some fluke chance, I will have this plan to back up our efforts.

I've decided to put our plan into a series of posts. Both as a reference for me in the future and with the hope that it might be of help to other homeschool moms! ;)

See all the entries in the series by clicking HERE*

Long Term Goals - Part One

Begin with the end in mind.  This is our starting point.  I think we all need to know a little about where we are going on this journey. What skills, knowledge, attributes, habits, etc... do what want your kids to realize before they leave your home? These are tough questions that we all must answer to have any type of path.  I highly recommend you get this little booklet titled, Relaxed Record Keeping by Mary Hood, Ph.D.  You can get it the ARCHERS website and lots of other great resources too.

I used her guidelines to come up with our own Long Term Goals.

Long-Term Home Education Goals

Values:
• Biblical values. We accomplish this through Bible reading,
discussion, problem solving together, and parental modeling.

Attitudes:
• Develop a life-long love of learning
• Enough organization to accomplish life goals
• Respect for others
• Perseverance in adversity
• Optimism

Habits:
• Cleanliness
• Finding out what you don’t know
• How to fill your time
• Getting work done when it’s needed
• Reading regularly
• Work on something you don't really like to achieve something
   you want
• Checking habits for results

Skills:
• Communication -reading, writing, speaking & listening
• Enough mathematic skills for her goals
• How to find out what you need to know
  and then finding it out
• Test taking skills
• Goal setting skills

Talents & Interests:
• Find out what these are
• Pursue them
• Learn to work hard and in depth at something you love
• Internships
• Lots of exposure to different things
• Have a way to earn income by the time she leaves the house

Knowledge:
• Mainly dictated by talents & interests
• Grounding in History
• Grounding in Basic Science

As you can see these broad and basic, yet how they are accomplished will be specific and individualized for La.  I hope that these goals will be tool for making future plans and decisions.