Blessed Discovery

Aug 29 2008

What is homeschooling anyway.. and WHY would you ever want to do that?

Published by ruthie at 3:47 pm under our day

I have had a busy couple of weeks.. we have had illness in the family, and general business that comes with fall and beginning a new school year.

As with any back to school week and the public and private school children headed off to school it is not surprising to me to have our outings to the grocery store, library or Walmart be “clouded” by glares and stares from the general public. Sometimes I wish I had a t-shirt that said “Yes, these are my kids, Yes we homeschool, Yes we actually learn things” or “Hi.. we dont bite.. we homeschool… got questions? We’ve got answers” or a shirt with check boxes that say “math (check) spelling (check) reading (check) science (check) history (check) manners (check) Bible (check) PE (check) Art (check) (dont worry we can do all this AND go to the grocery store :)”

But.. I dont have a shirt.. but I do have a blog.. so I have decided that this session would be an informational post on homeschooling and why we chose this for our family.

What is homeschooling? Well.. if you want to know what the web says about homeschooling you can look there… for our family homeschooling is a way of life. Put simply a homeschooling family is one that takes full responsiblity for their child(s) education at home. The parents are the primary teachers.

Why do people chose homeschooling? Choices to homeschool vary from family to family.

Some feel they can do a better job with academics than public or privite schools,
Some believe the public and private schools are too worldly and believe they foster a premature knowledge of worldly things.
Some cannot afford private Christian Schools but want a Christian Education for their children.
Some feel 7 to 8 hours a day in school is a waste of precious time and that education at home is more efficient, schooling younger children is done in some cases an hour a day.. the older the child, obviously the longer the “school” part of the day.

I could keep going… but for now.. why I believe homeschooling is best for our family… Heres a list of things I LOVE about homeschooling:

Relationships and Family. Being together everyday requires family members to learn to respect, love and appreciate each other even with our individual strengths and weaknesses. We are a team. Everything we do from school work to chores to playing .. we are a team.
We can chose the pace of our lives. We are not bound by school schedules and what extracurricular activities we do chose to participate in can be done in a way that keeps us close as a family instead of running 100 different directions.
We can chose what, how, and when we learn. Freedom to stay with Egyptian history, or use Pokemon Cards to teach science, or read Bible for an hour instead of our read aloud… we have freedom to choose.
We have the ability to turn every experience into a learning experience. Our home, neighborhood, city, state parks, and the world are our classroom, we dont have to leave home to learn and we can do that anytime anywhere.

There are various more reasons we homeschool. Mostly we homeschool because we choose to have a different lifestyle than most. I want my children to be children and not be stressed about TEKS or TAKS at a young age. There is a time and season for everything. There will be a time my children will be required to study and take the SAT or ACT there will be a time when they will be required to sit in a classroom for an hour or 2 or more. There will be a time when my children are met with the “ways of the world” (drugs, bad language, violence, and the pressures that so many seem to face) but the time is not when they are in elementary school. There will come a time when my children are grown and gone but I know that we, as a homeschooling family, are bound together with a love for each other that will last forever. Life has many choices, and there are so many options! I am thankful that there are many roads to travel to get to the vast beginning we call “Adulthood”.

We chose Homeschooling.

Life is too short to have regrets.

I would still like a t-shirt:)

Ok.. so now for a bit of fun..

This past week we had an informational meeting about coop, had a sick mom (yep me), enjoyed the beginnings of “The Magic City” by E. Nesbit, and continued the rest of our studies. The kids had time to play with thier friends, pretend, work in the yard and house, play with cool pokemon and legos that were given to them, enjoy video games, and lay quietly as thier Daddy finished “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. They also made insect traps, dug for hours in the dirt, collect rocks, made paper airplanes (getting their instructions from a local library book), enjoyed our library, read books for FUN!, drew, played with pokemon cards, made “water pokemon habitats” and got some creative play in with our tent they learned to put up in the back yard.