{"id":59828,"date":"2015-08-30T13:12:09","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T05:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=59828"},"modified":"2025-01-12T17:05:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T22:05:29","slug":"september-just-another-month-for-home-schooled-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/08\/30\/september-just-another-month-for-home-schooled-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"September just another month for home schooled kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_52126\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-52126\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/shutterstock_90689089.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-52126\" src=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/shutterstock_90689089.jpg\" alt=\"shutterstock\" width=\"1000\" height=\"604\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/shutterstock_90689089.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/shutterstock_90689089-300x181.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-52126\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>TORONTO &#8212; As many kids prepare to return to school this fall, the back-to-school season just doesn&#8217;t have the same meaning for other Canadian families choosing to home-school their children.<\/p>\n<p>September is in the middle of the school year for Lisa Marie Fletcher and her five children.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t start a new math book, we don&#8217;t start a new language book &#8212; we just keep going wherever we are,&#8221; Fletcher said in an interview from Whitby, Ont.<\/p>\n<p>Fletcher, who home-schools her kids, says she schedules her kids&#8217; school year between March and December because her husband is off work in the winter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My family is kind of a weird twist,&#8221; Fletcher said. &#8220;We take time off in the winter to spend time with daddy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to Fletcher, September&#8217;s only significance to the family is the beginning of fall programs and activities at community centres, accompanied by a &#8220;fresh start&#8221; feeling and &#8220;sense of newness&#8221; the time of year brings.<\/p>\n<p>Fletcher says she&#8217;s never done fall back-to-school shopping but does use the time of year to celebrate her family&#8217;s differences.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of home-schoolers seem to be into the &#8216;not back to school&#8217; party, so they get all their home-school friends together and go hang out at a park,&#8221; Fletcher said.<\/p>\n<p>Like Fletcher, Kara-Davison-Wildeman, her husband, Rob, and their 11-year-old daughter, Zoey, design their own school year that doesn&#8217;t follow the traditional September start.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t fit into that mould,&#8221; Davison-Wildeman said from Clarksburg, Ont. &#8220;(In September) we just do what we do normally.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Davison-Wildeman says she will plan a &#8220;fun and special&#8221; event with other home-schoolers in September similar to Fletcher&#8217;s &#8220;not back to school party&#8221; to mark the season.<\/p>\n<p>Juliet Forrester of Mississauga, Ontario, also home-schooled her daughter, Katherine, and followed a unique schedule.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As far as September, our lives were just so different that it really wasn&#8217;t part of our routine,&#8221; Forrester said.<\/p>\n<p>That will change soon when Katherine begins high school at the Etobicoke School of the Arts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;(Katherine&#8217;s friend) is going to be teaching Katherine how to do back-to-school shopping,&#8221; Forrester said. &#8220;It will be an event.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some home-schoolers choose to conduct class year round, meaning they never experience a back-to-school season. Andrea Nair, a parenting educator, says she believes the year-round schedule works best for her two boys.<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:absolute;left:-99195px;\"> buy professional cialis online <a href=\"https:\/\/greendalept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/jpg\/professional-cialis.html\">https:\/\/greendalept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/jpg\/professional-cialis.html<\/a> no prescription pharmacy <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Home school is a departure for Nair, a former teacher who sent her boys to school previously.<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:absolute;left:-99195px;\"> buy periactin online <a href=\"https:\/\/greendalept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/jpg\/periactin.html\">https:\/\/greendalept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/jpg\/periactin.html<\/a> no prescription pharmacy <\/div>\n<p> She said not having to worry about the September rush this year is &#8220;oddly relaxing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s nice not having to buy backpacks and extra shoes and lunch kit stuff; I&#8217;m not going to miss that,&#8221; Nair said speaking from London, Ont.<\/p>\n<p>Fletcher, Davison-Wildeman, Forrester and Nair&#8217;s families are all part of a growing number of Canadians deciding to home-school. A report from the Fraser Institute released in June found a 29 per cent increase in the number of people choosing to home-school their kids over a five-year period.<\/p>\n<p>Each family takes its own approach, with some choosing to follow a September to June schedule.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Simms and his family have chosen to mimic the traditional school year in some ways. Simms and his wife have been home-schooling for seven years from their place in Conn, Ontario, northwest of Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>He says his four kids follow the September to June school year, carry backpacks and take part in back-to-school shopping like many kids destined for classrooms across the country.<\/p>\n<p>Simms says his kids even wear uniforms.<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:absolute;left:-99195px;\"> buy super cialis online <a href=\"https:\/\/greendalept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/jpg\/super-cialis.html\">https:\/\/greendalept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/jpg\/super-cialis.html<\/a> no prescription pharmacy <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The reason why is to give them the sense that it&#8217;s school, and during the hours of school this is your job, so it just gets them into that mode,&#8221; Simms said.<\/p>\n<p>They also participate in a variety of sports and activities outside the home with some kicking off in the fall, according to Simms.<\/p>\n<p>Simms can&#8217;t hide his passion for his brand of home-school, sharing a joke explaining his family&#8217;s choice:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a caption I used to have on my Facebook page that said I home-school my children because I&#8217;ve seen the village and I don&#8217;t want it raising them.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TORONTO &#8212; As many kids prepare to return to school this fall, the back-to-school season just doesn&#8217;t have the same &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":52126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,604,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-education","category-lifestyle","mauthors-matt-ingram","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282934,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59828\/revisions\/282934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}