George Washington was born on February 22, 1732 to a wealthy family that owned a tobacco plantation in Virginia. George Washington, the first president of the United States, was homeschooled. So were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the third and fourth presidents of the United States. Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing, novelist Louisa May Alcott and inventor Alexander Graham Bell were also homeschooled, as were Laura Ingalls Wilder, Thomas Edison, Robert Frost, 32nd President Franklin D.
Roosevelt (in fact, 14 American presidents studied at home), scientists Edith and Agnes Claypole, and geneticist Francis Collins. The good news is that homeschooling allows parents to transmit their religious beliefs to their children. So what do we know about George Washington's childhood? We know that wealthy settlers educated their children in arithmetic, Latin, Greek, accounting and topography, and then sent them to England to finish school. To complement your study of the George Washington unit, you may want to integrate activities that make your homeschooled students interact with their learning.
A survey of 9369 homeschooled adults “who went to church when they were young” shows that 87% say they have “strong Christian beliefs.” It's their many stories and successes that inspire me in my own homeschooling and I love to pass on the knowledge I've gained from them to other homeschooling families. Homeschooling graduates excelled academically and socially in college, lending credit to the effectiveness of homeschooling. So it's no surprise that an increasing number of universities are looking for homeschooled graduates, including Ivy League schools such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Duke. In a worldly culture that is awash with materialism and debauchery, many parents homeschool primarily to transmit their faith and moral beliefs.
Of course, it would take more than just the success of a family to convince prospective homeschooling parents that they too could homeschool. I have two children and I love homeschooling them, regardless of the hardest parts (like building a good character). George Washington Smithsonian Resources (Y, M, O, T), Designed to improve history and social studies curricula, these activities and lesson plans will introduce your students to some of the events and topics that shaped George Washington's life. George Washington's Ferry Farm (Y, M, O, T), run by the George Washington Foundation, Ferry Farm, is well-known in George Washington's childhood home.
However, overall, homeschooling parents today are doing an excellent job of helping their children develop strong social skills. Presidents who studied at home include John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James Garfield, William, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, James Polk, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Washington. U.S. President George Washington (1732 - 179 (O), of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.
