I'm excited and ready to embark on this new journey with my precious jewels! Homeschooling!
I'll be unenrolling the children after this school year at the latest, but I'm prayerfully hoping before Christmas break.
At this point, I'm leaning mostly towards the "unschooling" method, but I have a Bible study book I'm going to have us work through, a co-op to consider, probably in math we'll follow at least a workbook with supplemental exercises on the computer. I can't wait to explore History through field trips, classical literature, and documentaries! Next year I'm going to look into music lessons, and at some point I'd love to have us all learn a foreign language through Rosetta Stone or something. I believe this is called "Eclectic Homeschooling" which makes total sense if you know me at all!
I get tickled at the thought that this is actually going to happen! My first notions of homeschooling was a stereotype I had little respect for, and kids I thought were weird and out of touch with reality. Amazing how 15 years and 3 children will change your perspective, not to mention an growing knowledge and experience with the Lord! When I announce my intentions I keep expecting people to laugh, but mostly I have heard, "I can see you doing that." and "You would be great at that."
I think this is largely because I just LOVE my kids so stinkin' much, and I TRULY ENJOY spending time with them and raising them up! As far as book knowledge, I'm tragically ill-equipped. But a love for learning I do not lack!
Here's a list of a few other reasons I'm so sold on this wild and crazy new adventure:
1) My biggest goal: Provide the girls with a Biblical Foundation encouraging a growing knowledge and relationship with the Lord, and a Christian Worldview! I want to raise world changers, not channel changers!
2) My kids won't be held back by the limits that a public education, even at its best, is succumbed to. All my girls have remained at the top of their class, always making honor roll, and often find themselves bored waiting for their next assignment! Homeschooling means we can just keep going to their hearts content!
3) Individualized learning! One-on-one attention means my child won't be looked over because her teacher is one person stretched over 25-30 kids. I have studied my children since their births. I know how they tick, and I can customize a plan that will maximize their learning potential.
4) To foster a passion for learning! I hope to never stop growing as a person, and my prayer is that this will rub off, as it seems to already have, on my offspring! Lets grow, explore, ask questions, analyze, hypothesize, create, consider from many angles, and not be prone to the apathetic response "I just don't want to have to think about it."
5) Flexible schedule: when someone is sick, we can adjust w/o fear of missing lessons. when we want to go out of town or up to visit grandma's- no big! no tension as we rush through getting ready in the morning and out the door.
6) More controlled sphere of influence. God, in his great mercy, has largely shielded the girls from a lot of the perversion and ridiculousness that occurs right under their noses. This, to me, is miraculous and i praise Him for it, but time is nearing where their little ears are burning from whats going on around them. As my oldest faces junior high next year, my throat tightens. There is no need for such an unnecessary premature introduction to the disrespectful, oversexed, underestimated disadvantaged realities so many of our culture's poor children carry around. No sex ed, no evolution, no bomb threats. How's that for a mantra?
7) Less Useless Information! Woot!!! Less mindless memorization, more meaningful life-application! As useful as I've found the logarithms of calculus in my daily life (please read: THICK sarcasm), I just believe our energies would be better spent on more practical learning. Real life. And if I've done my job encouraging a passion for learning, and a particular child develops a passion for advanced mathematics in the meantime, then go, girl, go! But she will also know how to balance a checkbook and divide a recipe. She can memorize dates of famous wars, or she can learn the culture around the war, expolore through biographies of its contemporaries, experience reinactments, and weigh the costs in her own mind and heart.
8) No worries about the teachers! The girls have been fairly blessed, thus far, in their education, but each year, I hold my breath at open house, waiting for the poison apple that will frustrate my child's learning, and bring miserable stress and tension into their lives. Last year we had a teacher who didn't challenge, due to having a difficult class, her focus was on the other students who needed her extra attention, and my daughter struggled to thrive. I remember one child's kindergarten teacher, every single time I had an encounter with her, I remember walking away thinking, "You are a kindergarten teacher and I'm pretty sure you don't even LIKE children."
9) No uniforms!!!!!! Call me a non-conformist, but I hated this for the girls! I understand why, but I'm excited to put that money towards tasteful clothes they actually enjoy! And no more having to buy 800 expo markers or 6 boxes of crayons! No more RIDICULOUS fundraisers! And boring PTA meetings! From now on our PTA meetings will translate to Date Night with the husband!
10) More time!! Half the day is spent in lines, arms crossed, mouths shut. Waiting for the bathroom, waiting for lunch, waiting for their dinky 20 minute recess! Oh, the freedom!! No homework... err... sort of...
There are many more reasons, but those are a few to start with!
I know we'll enjoy it, I know we'll thrive, and I can't wait to say
"We homeschool, because home's cool!" :)
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