Just because you go to school in your living room doesn?t mean you can?t go on fun field trips like the other school-age kids.
Programs are being developed all across the area to provide home-schooled kids the opportunity to get out of their houses and meet other home schooled students.
Erin Noseworthy, the senior education coordinator at The Walters Art Museum, said that the museum offers special programs for home schoolers.
“Our program allows kids to go on the regular school tours, because it bring the local home-school population into the museum together,” she said.
The museum offers two different programs. One is a monthly tour and class for students ages 5 to 12. These classes focus on not only art, but social studies, culture, and history as well. The teen workshops are six-week fine arts courses, where students ages 13 to 16 work in the studio in various art mediums.
Students can explore the museum, learn about art and culture, and evencreate their own work modeled on the art they view in the museum.
Noseworthy said the students respond in a positive way to the program, and are encouraged to go home and continue their art and learning as well.
“We have home school students who have come since they were 5 and have participated in all of the programs and are now in the teen workshops. We?ve really developed a relationship with the families and home-school providers in the area through our programs.”
The Maryland Science Center in Baltimore also offers special curricula for home-schoolers. This week, it is hosting its sixth annual home schooling event offering free programs for home-schooled students of all age grounds and their chaperones, as a way to encourage students to learn more about the environment, animals, their bodies, inventions and technology.
More than 2 million children are home schooled in America today. The Maryland Home Education Association, established in 1980, provides support to the 13,000 home-schooling families in the state.
According to the MHEA Web site, “There are support groups in every part of Maryland with new groups forming all the time?no matter what group you may ultimately belong to, it?s important to keep an open attitude to different views and approaches so that you can provide the optimum learning experience for your children.”
