When my friends started fifth grade, I was being taught by my mom. My Parents made the decision to home school me for a lot of different reasons. I was willing to try it because I thought it would be fun and it seemed like a good idea. I learned a lot about myself through this experience. There were both good and bad things about homeschooling.

The hardest part about homeschooling, for me, was that it was lonely. I finished my work by noon and all my friends were still at school. It was kind of boring waiting for them to get out, I didn’t have much to do except for helping my mom around the house or play a game by myself. During the day my main chance to socialize was with other homeschoolers. I had to be more open to trying new things. For example, there were these homeschooling events where I didn’t know anybody and I had to try and make new friends. As part of my gym class, I was in a homeschooling bowling league where all the kids already knew each other. So I was the outsider and had to introduce myself. Homeschooling taught me to be more outgoing. Now I know how others feel about being in a new group, and I try to be more understanding because of my experience of being the “new kid”.

Some of the good things about being homeschooled was that I got to pick my own hours and my schedule. We had a lot of field trips, which was fun. Homeschooling really helped me understand myself better. For example, I can learn better visually than verbally. An example of visual is someone drawing something out to help understand the topic better. This was better than someone just telling me what to do. When I was learning about geography and weather, my parents used sticky notes on a big map of the United states to describe how fonts, tornadoes and other weather related work. I also learned that I had to break down bigger projects and work into smaller chunks to complete it better. For one of my favorite projects I did a cross topic research project on woodpeckers. It involved most of my subjects including math, art, science and English. Also, working with my mom made me more comfortable with my work. Because my mom picked an unstructured way to do all our subjects, I discovered that some learning styles work better for me than others.

Homeschooling taught me a lot of things, including being outgoing. If I didn’t have this experience, I don’t think I would be as outgoing towards new things like the bowling league. I don’t think I would make myself be as outgoing or friendly to new kids. Also, I would have a harder time focusing and learning in school now. If I had the chance to take up homeschooling again I would because I think I would even learn more about myself.