Montreal Homelearners: February Parents Meeting

Homeschooling families from Montreal and the surrounding area are encouraged to get involved with the Montreal Homelearners. This is a wonderful & growing resource, that offers monthly meetings for parents as well as monthly children’s activities. Also on their site you will find ideas for field trips, links to curricula (some of them free for you to use!) and a place to blog, build a community and connect with other families near you.

The next parents’ meeting will be 11 February 2008, 19:00 at Sonya’s place - Jeanne Mance near Prince Arthur. (If you’re taking public Accessible by Public Transit! transport it’s a short walk from Place des Arts.) Please visit the Montreal Homelearners site to sign up for the event, to see who else plans to attend, and to get Sonya’s address and contact information.

Topic: Socialization

This is a question that always comes up when dealing with the detractors of homeschooling. Some things to think about before the meeting (a random collection):

What do we mean by socialization, and what is its role in our children’s development?
Is there a legal requirement or guideline in Canada or Quebec regarding socialization of children?
Does homeschooling prevent our children from learning social skills, or is it more likely to reduce distractive socializing during learning periods?
How can homelearners assure their children maintain social contacts outside the family, and develop social skills?
Is it really true that homeschooled children are shy and awkward with their same age peers?
Is it true that homeschooled children are just as involved in their communities as (or more than) their public school peers?
Do homeschooled children develop a better ability to relate to adults than public school children?
Do the presumed benefits of public school socialization (including learning to cope with bullying, personality conflicts, etc.) outweigh the disadvantages of negative peer pressure, bullying, etc? How does homeschooling stand up by comparison?
In the Montreal area, what are the resources available to homeschool families, in order to assure children will be adequately socialized?
Any other thoughts?

There will be a children’s activity on the 4th Monday of February, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, so keep watching here or at the Montreal Homelearners web site for more details.

If you have ideas foe either the parent meetings or the kids’ outings, you can share them with the rest of us. Login at Montreal Homelearners, it’s a free account!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.