ALL HOM ERSONAL CONVICTIONS ey: prompted Kim Brinson to begin nie ae teaching her two children at home. “| just had this feeling that this is what | should be doing with my kids. right now,” she says. The family started home-schooling after her oldest daughter, Krista, now 10, finished grade two at Centennial Christian School. ‘‘We were happy with Centennial,’’ Brinson empha- sized. ‘'This is not about dissatisfaction - it’s about our own per- sonal feelings.’’ Brinson said her family enjoys having school at their kitchen table. “I like being with the kids, knowing what’s going into their minds and being their total influence at an carly age,’’ she said, ‘‘I want to get them really well established in their life.’’ Now in their third year of school at home, Krista is going through grade five and Keana, 7, is working on grade two:““You do miss your friends from school, birt Kids’ were: always, fighting and swearing on the bus,” said Krista. "ae “It shi nice. ‘fo be at home and all of my best friends now are home-schooled, too.” Brinson starts teaching at 9:30 am. and the sludents usually finish by 2 p.m. **If you ask for help at school the teacher has to help every- _body else too and you don’t get as much work done as you could,”’ said Krista. ‘‘At home I can work for four hours straight if I want.”’ Brinson said one of the most common misconceptions about home-schooling is that the children are deprived of, “normal”? socialization. ‘*That idea is just so wrong,’’ Brinson said. “The girls have friends over almost every day - they’re around kids-all the time.’ Krista is taking piano lessons and both girls are involved in the Thorahbill Community Church youth group. Brinson said home-schooling has taught her children a sttong work ethic. ‘‘I like this because they have a structured cur- riculum and I’m just overseeing them,’’ she said. ‘‘They are learning to read instructions and do the work on their own until they get really stuck and need help.”” While Brinson feels comfortable teaching her children at. the lower grade levels, she said they may choose to go back to school in the future. “‘T really enjoy this right now but I’m not one of those people who says they will definitely home-school forever,’’ Brinson said. ‘I'd like to have them at home at least until grade seven _ and then we might look at them going back to school.’” Because there is no independent, Christian high school in the The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, January 19, 1995 - AS “AN | INCREASING number of families i in the Terrace-area a are opting to teach their children at home.. Kim Brinson started a support group for parents who home school their children i. in J 992 with seven families, The Christian Home Educators Support Group now includes 28 families and 60 chil- - dren in their activities and monthly meetings. While two men aitend the meetings, Brinson said the overwhelming majority of those who teach tn the home are women. Parents who home school are required to register their children at a school approved . by the B.C. education ministry, Thirteen children are registered at Centennial Christian, reed while about 13 families have registered their children through the Skeena Christian ootocny i... Academy at Northside Christian School in Vanderhaof. . While no Terrace students are registered with the correspondence school as home _schoolers, several families use B.C. correspondence curriculum and register as regular a corresponden ce Students, KEANA AND KRISTA Brinson split t their kitchen table into working stations. They both use the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum, an American curriculum package supplemented with metric and Canadian history. The ACE program requires divided work stations for concentration. Terrace-area, Brinson said the family would consider sending their children to public school. ‘They may have to go into the public system for high school but [ would be in very close contact with the school and their teachers.”’ Brinson first started Krista on the Alpha and Omega cur- ‘Ticulum, an American Christian educational package. But Brinson said she found it to be too difficult. ‘It was very academic and boring - there was no colour or il- lustrations to help make it interesting,’ said Brinson. Both children now use the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum, an American package supplemented with metric and Canadian history for students north of the border. ‘ACE helps to establish their confidence and self-esteem be- cause they learn to succeed,’’ she said. ‘“They learn everything they need to know without being frustrated with useless informa- tion.’’ Both Krista and Keana take five core ACE subjects: English, math, word building (spelling), social studies and science. If they finish these subjects early in the year, Brinson has three extra subjects for them to work on: Bible, animal science and writing. The Brinsons, along with 13 other local families teaching their children with the ACE program at home, now have the help of the Skeena Christian Academy, a local organization that started this year to provide support lo families leaching the ACE cur- riculum. The academy, headed by Kevan and Naomi Peters with the help of Helen Schlamp, buys the ACE: books in bulk for the families and provides tutoring and testing services. Schlamp collects marks from the parents and sends out report cards to the students about every nine weeks. She also conducts exams every two weeks to ensure the stu- dents are keeping up with their grade level. According to the ACE requirements, Krista must get at least 80 per cent and Keana 90 per cent on their exams to pass or they must redo the entire booklet. | The academy registers the students: at ihe Northside Christian School in Vanderhoof, an independent school teaching. the ACE curriculum. Brinson and her husband Rob pay about $350 for Krista’s books and $250 for Keana per year, plus a user fee for the scor- ing keys shared hetween the families and a fee. for the Schlamp s services. schooling remains a way of life. — Time. together a plus LISA AND GORDON Froese began teaching their children at home out of necessity. The couple started working for the parks service as caretakers at Boya Lake up Hwy37 near the Yukon border in 1989, taking them out of © were just seeing how this would work,” she said. “(Now I sce this as my career, Be- tween 7:30 am, and 2 p.m., I am a teacher - I don’t do housework or visit friends then because I’m teaching.”’ Froese said they enjoy home schooling because it allows them to spend extra time to- gether as a family. ‘Tf your kids are coming home from school at 3:30 in the afternoon, then do homework and extra- “The first year I thought we - town from May-October every year, , *. *It wasn’t good for the kids to be missing that much school ‘as they got older, so we de- cided to try home-schooling,”’ said Lisa Froese, . Four years later, the Froese ' family’s annual trcks to Boya ‘Lake are over but home ‘ curricular activities, you get no time together as a family,’’ she said, ‘“‘With school at home, we get all the time we wanttogether’’ = Because of the flexibility home schooling allows, Froese said their children have well- rounded lives, - ‘Education is good’ and j im- THE FROESE FAMILY has transformed a room In their bench home Into a classroom for their four children, (from left) Levi, Renee, Dani-Marie and Terry. Lisa Froese uses the Alpha and Omega curriculum for Renee and Dani-Marie while Levi_and Terry are working on the B.C. correspondence curriculum. Their school day starts at 7:30 every morning and runs untll 2:00 p.m. skills that they otherwise wouldn’t have time for - it brings about a little more balance.” - portant, but it’s not every. thing,’ she said. ‘‘They have time to spend with thelr dad learning things like carpentry home schooling, T usually try Terry, Levi and Dani-Maric were initially skeptical at their Froese had. all. altended : decision to’ school their chil. . Céntennial - ‘Christian School dren'athome, 2. before © starting.