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Secular Parenting and/or Secular Home Schooling resources?

What are your go-to resources for raising your children to be critical free thinkers? Does anyone have experience with sourcing and using a secular curriculum for home schooling? It seems that the vast majority of home school curricula are faith-based.

Dkevinscott 3 May 22
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I know there are secular homeschool and parenting groups on Facebook. They may be helpful (until our community here is larger).

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Make your kids aware that others hold beliefs that are important to them, even if they are as irrational as the Easter Bunny, because they are scared. Give them an education that includes mythology along with and explanation of how these beliefs got started. Why would you include just one god when there are so many, which are quaint and fun to know about and that none of them are real.

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Well I do informal science education as my career, so I am literally devoting my life to teaching kids how to critically think. I can't think of any specific resources, but I tend to look up resources as needed.

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Home schooling don't know.... Secular parenting, that I know. Two daughters, both brought up with no religious crap at home but they were always told they could choose whatever the heck they wanted and we (parents) will not have a problen with it. My youngest at 12 engaged with a church just to follow a friend and dragged me into it. I played along until she understood by herself its all BS. Long story short, both turned out ok so far... No Gods and yet good values as a person

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Dude! I've been researching secular curriculum for years now. Let me pull up my bookmarks and get back to you.

Math:
[criticalthinking.com] (science and history seems spotty/basic)
[artofproblemsolving.com] (see beast academy for younger grades)
[khanacademy.org] (free and good for math, other subjects I'm not sure about)

Science:
[nextgenscience.org] (not curriculum, but a good set of standards to follow for the early grades; early grades tend to be more experimental and less academic and you will likely need to supplement)
[explorationeducation.com] (physical science, not bio or chem)
[pandiapress.com] (lower grades, history courses are suspect)
[bfsucommunity.com] (more academic, may need to supplement the experimental aspect)

Language Arts:
[goodreads.com]
[allaboutlearningpress.com] (see also their reading program)
[sequentialspelling.com]
[bravewriter.com]
[criticalthinking.com] (they also have a language arts program)
[lwtears.com]

This is just a small taste of my "homeschooling resources" bookmark folder. I don't have personal experience with all of these, of course, and I'm still looking for good high school courses in many of these subjects. Literature and history I haven't gotten anywhere with because I want curriculum that isn't so determinedly western-focused, but even secular stuff struggles with that.

If you're on facebook, join a secular homeschooling group for your area or a national/global one. They will have a lot of recommendations/reviews and be able to tell you if something is secular or not.

Just be aware that there can be a lot of woo and paranoia and white supremacy even among secular homeschoolers. Religious homeschoolers definitely don't own the market on cray-cray.

If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask. I was homeschooled in a religious environment and helping other homeschoolers to get a better education than I got is something I am very passionate about.

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Public libraries or the would-be public school may share some material. My children were in early elementary when I homeschooled for 3 years. ‘Costco’ and various book stores had grade related work books galore. I’d always expand on the subjects in some ‘real life’ way to enhance learning. Mine also enjoyed various learning programs on ‘the computer,’ there’s lots of stuff accessible online … there again, both local lib & sch dist may allow you access to some of their sites.. Make sure they learn to ‘keyboard’ correctly … returning to schools as an aid, it was atrocious watching students, even teachers ..hunt & peck ..though fast.

As for ‘group activities,’ I’d been active as a volunteer within their school and would have them attend a weekly ‘dance like’ period with their grades and friends in a gym class. Our school district encouraged us to participate as often as possible.

Whenever I read of any local ‘homeschooling groups,’ sure enough - religious based - and in science denial.. We’d explore ‘interpretive centers’ at state and federal parks, those were great - often times the only ones there, so doted on by knowledgeable staff! ...sent back A students when the time came..

Varn Level 8 May 22, 2018
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This is true. Creationist, science denial type crap.

I'm sure it must exist though.

Maybe through Canada or Europe?

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I have no info on that stuff, but having them watch "Cosmos", both versions, is a great way for them to understand science.
I loved both!

You might also want to go to the site for the National Academy of Science, to see if they've got any resources, or information.
Maybe see if there are any online STEM programs, too.

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