Extra topics

[Winkie]

Help me compile a list of things that would get taught in school, outside of the 3 R's, art, music, etc. regular subjects. Things like:

Dental hygiene
Bicycle safety
???

[Mother of Sons]

Are you wanting things that you should teach or things that are taught in public school?

Fire safety
Phys ed.
dare (anti drug)
sex ed
manners
character
cooperation
money management
stranger awareness/good touch bad touch

[Fourormore]

Oooh ooh ooh! Don't forget:
Potty mouth 101
Playground bullying
Evolution
Atheism
Gnosticism
Conformity to the world

Seriously, though, most of the public school curriculum that is taught (outside of 3 R's) is not what you need for your child to be well educated. The only thing my kids sometimes "miss out" on is the distinguishing of certain holidays. The ps here devoted an entire week to study MLK jr. just before his birthday and it never occurred to me to do so. Then my kids were teased by a neighbor boy because they didn't know all the facts about King, his life, and his death.

[Winkie]

MOS, your list is the idea of what i'm looking for. i just said "in school" because that's where i remember learning those things.

[Moon]

Our planned "extras" this year are sign language and gardening. I say planned 'cause a ton comes up spontaneously. I think we'll run fire safety through again since dd is old enough to have it stick.

[Piper2]

When I was in the 6th grade, one of my classmates' father died suddenly of a heart attack. So we ended up learning about the American Heart Association (we also did the "Send a Mouse to College" thing for several years), which was fine. But we also learned what it meant to be totally "guilted" into giving more money to something than you really could or wanted to because the girl whose father died was one of the teacher's pets (no jealousy here -- it was just a simple fact), so if everybody didn't give a respectable amount of money to the Heart Association for our class' donation in the girl's father's name, we were made to feel bad. :/

I also remember dental hygiene (they gave you those red tablets), "prevent forest fires" (with a visit from Smokey the Bear), energy conservation (during the "energy crisis" in the mid 70's), telephone manners, and the "Look-it-up Club" (we never guess, we look it up -- I still do that, 30 years later ;)).