Homeschooling

We homeschool.

I know that homeschooling is a bit outside the norm, but it is becoming more and more mainstream everyday. Homeschooling is not for everyone and there are even occasional days I am not sure it is for me, but we trudge on. I take it day by day and as long as it seems to be working for both my children and myself I will continue. So, how did I come to the decision to homeschool? Well, I put my oldest son in public school for Kindergarten. That pretty much did it for me. For the entire year, our lives were ruled by his school schedule. I felt that every moment I had with him outside of school on weekdays was rushed. I rushed him to get up, get dressed, get his teeth brushed, and eat his breakfast, and then I rushed him out the door. At the end of the school day I rushed him through his homework, through dinner, through sports practices, through bathtime and then I rushed through a nighttime book so that he could fall asleep in time to wake and do it all over again. On top of all that, I was involved in the PTA, constantly doing fundraisers,(Can you say cookie dough?) and helping in his classroom 2-3 times per week, often for 2-3 hours at a time. I dragged poor Muffin Man along with me for all the frenzy. So what did we get out of the year? Well, obviously, Little Man got an education and I LOVED his teacher, but beyond that, the most notable things he gained were attitude and questionable vocabulary from other students. I gained a lot of stress in my life, and we lost out on enjoyable time to spend together. I had children to enjoy them not to spend every waking moment rushing them off to the next activity.

Today, our lives are mush more relaxed. The kids wake when they wake. We start the day with reading. I read out loud to them and they read to me. We then work on our written work, do experiments, look things up on the internet, etc. We are usually finished by around 12:00 or 1:00. At that point we are free to play games, go to the park, run errands, go shopping, or whatever else we decide to do for the day. We still have sports practices in the evening but I am no longer stressed out if the kids are up a bit too late. Life has slowed down for all of us. On top of that we have the added benefit of being able to make schedule changes as needed. My Honey travels quite a bit for work. When he is in town, he will often take a weekday off to make up for all the time he is away. We are able to rearrange our schedule to accomodate these days. If Dad is home on a Friday, we can always do that day's schoolwork on Saturday so that we can spend Friday with him. The boys are also able to work ahead on those subjects they excell in and get extra time if needed for other subjects. This is often not possible in public school.

Although I do use a well known curriculum (ABEKA) and I really love it, we are also able to add in our own activites that enhance the given lessons. For instance, in science we are currently learning about plants, chlorophyll, what plants need to grow, how we benefit from them and how all things that God made are interdependent on each other. We were discussing how birds help scatter seeds of plants and also eat many destructive insects and rodents that would otherwise destroy the plants. I just happened to have an owl pellet that I had purchased from a science supply company some time back. We spent an hour dissecting the owl pellet (The undigested remains of an owl's meal) and identifying the bones of the little critter that had been eaten. It was a vole. In the Fall, when we were learning about the 5 senses, we dissected a cow eyeball. VERY COOL! Now how many Kindergarteners and 2nd graders do you know who are doing that in public school?

Some people question me about the social implications of homeschooling. I can assure you that I thought long and hard about everything involved when I was making the decision to homeschool. I have read many studies and done my research. The fact of the matter is that homeschooled children are no less socialized than their public schooled peers and in fact are often better at socializing with age groups other than their own. We are members of the local Christian homeschooling group in our town. The group has over 100 students. We meet at the park for organized physical education, we have planned park days, play days, bowling days, swim days, and field trips. On top of that my boys are involved in seasonal sports and martial arts. We also have friends that we get together with on a regular basis and friends at church. We are hardly what you would call hermits.

So there you have it, my reasons for homeschooling. I am forever thankful that I have the choice to do so and I love the time I spend watching my boys learn and blossom. I will post a few pictures of some of the experiments that we are currently working on. Fun Stuff!