Since nearly every school-age child in Ontario (and their parents) are now experiencing school at home, I – a former homeschooled student – feel an obligation to tell you what it was like in my day.
I was homeschooled from Kindergarten until the end of Grade 8, making my first day at a public school when I started Grade 9 in September 1999 at Collingwood Collegiate Institute. (Go Owls!)
It was a time before online classrooms, but I did use a screen for school. It was a 13-inch TV/VCR combo, and I used it to play VHS tapes filmed in a classroom in Pensacola, Florida (we lived in Ontario).
The tapes came in boxes delivered by UPS, and I had a couple of months to watch them and return them.
As you have no doubt discovered, the teasing we homeschoolers endured for getting an “easy road” where we can "sleep in and wear pyjamas to school" was completely baseless.
My mornings started around 8:30 a.m. with my first video of the day, which included a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and the reciting of every US president in history (the list was set to music and yes I still remember it). Florida is not messing around, y’all.
I had full days with many subjects including all the basics like math, history, geography, English, science, and some non-standards like penmanship (yeah, cursive writing) and poetry classes.
My mom, a full-time nurse who often worked all night and endured teaching three children directly after her shift ended, also supplemented our education in the macabre fashion common to the nursing profession.
Once she brought home a cow’s eyeball from the butcher so we could learn the parts of the eye. She really liked moo-ving the diagrams from paper to real-life.
I don’t think we even had a home computer until I got to high school, so my “PowerPoint presentations” were pencil crayon drawings stuck to construction paper backing. Manual slide transitions of course.
It was a stroke of genius that had me include 3D elements on a multi-page report on hamsters. (OK, I glued a sunflower seed to the page about what hamsters like to eat.)
For our social education, my mom enrolled us in recreational sports and clubs like scouts/brownies. We also regularly attended church and Sunday School.
Since it was the 90s, our backyard trampoline also meant we were popular with the neighbourhood kids.
Sorry, now I’m bragging about the days when we could do things with people.
I have no advice, because I have no kids of my own. But if you’d like, I can teach you the song to remember the names of all the US presidents.
