Why do I homeschool?

Why do I homeschool? 

This is a big question. It's a question I field every week, if not every day from someone in my life. At times, I field it from well meaning strangers, at other times I field it from friends or family. The neighbors have asked, the customers at our family business have asked, my parents and my in-laws have asked. I have asked myself countless times on those weeks where it seems that nothing is progressing and all I am doing is arguing with my kids. Strangely enough, my husband does not ask. He is completely sold on the concept and even though we've only made it 5 weeks into our history curriculum in 19 weeks of school, he's sure that our kids are doing great. And he's right, of course. And yet, I struggle with my answer, as many other homeschool mommas do, because I always feel like I could do better.

I will say first that we live in an excellent school district. My kids have had many teachers and counselors that have taught them well. Our decision to pull them out of school had very little to do with the school system/district/personnel/etc. It was an internal family decision that had to do with wanting more time with my kids.

Here's my list so far: 

I homeschool because:

1. I know my kids. 

• My son, the middle child, is filled with anxieties. Some of those anxieties are justified; he has a life-threatening food allergy and has to be wary of everything he eats. He has had teachers and other school personnel offer him foods that would kill him if he took them, from kindergarten on. He has a soft heart. When dealing with a bully in fourth grade, he told his dad, "Dad, I just can't say those things to him. He's my friend. It would hurt his feelings and I don't want him to feel as bad as I'm feeling." This was about the kid who had been relentlessly bullying him and turning other classmates against him for 3 months.
• My youngest daughter, the baby of three. She is smart, scary smart. We've made jokes about her taking over the world since before she could walk. In first grade, she came home one day and grabbed a book her brother was complaining about being hard to read (he was in fourth grade at the time). She opened the book and read the entire first chapter aloud, missing only two words: Massachusetts and Chatapiqua (or some equally difficult Native American originated city name). She was considered behind in reading according to her testing scores later that same week. 

2.    I work full-time and kind of odd hours. When the kids are in school, I barely get to do more
       than feed them and put them to bed. 

3.     I love seeing them learn and get excited by what they've found out. I love seeing

        the enthusiasm slowly creep back into their learning process as they figure out 

        the world is their classroom now. 

4.     Standardized testing gave my then-fourth grader an ulcer. You could walk into the 

        school and feel the tension in the building. The kids were stressed, the teachers

        were stressed, and it was hard to breathe the air in the building for that last 5 

        weeks of practice testing.

5.     I don't think the government and the school boards and the teacher's union have a

        better idea of how to deal with my children than I do. The bureaucracy should leave the
        teachers alone and let them do their job. I also don't think strangers, no

        matter how well intentioned and educated should spend more time with my 

        children than I do. 

6.     They are only small for a such a short time. I have a 23 year old and I missed so 

        much of her life by sending her to daycare and working full-time and later sending her

        to school. I don't want to make the same mistake for the younger two kids. 

        There will be plenty of time for them to experience the real world when they are    

        older and wiser and better equipped to handle it.

7.     Although we are not super religious, the right to call a party a "Christmas Party"

        as opposed to a "Winter Celebration" is important to me. I want to share the bible

        with my children as well as morality and our family beliefs. I want them to be able

        to share their belief in God and defend it in an intelligent and thought out way

        once they are out in the real world.

8.     I want them to see the merit of hard work and accomplishment as opposed to

        skirting by to do just enough because the teacher will probably bump them up 

        to a B because she knows their smart enough to get a B instead of the C- they

        earned. 

9.     I want to read fantastic books with my kids, traipse through the woods and draw

        pictures of butterflies and rocks, look at pond scum under a microscope, and take

        fantastic trips with my kids and call it schooling, because it is and they will learn

        so much more than just cracking open a text book for 6 hours a day!

10.   We get to call Disney World a field trip! What's not to love?

I guess these are the biggest reasons; these three wonderfully individualistic, bright, funny
and ridiculously good looking kids. Who wouldn't want to spend all their free time with this bunch?

Time4Learning

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as a homeschool curriculum, for afterschool enrichment and for summer skill sharpening. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning.

Tuesday, Nov 6th

This week, we're working on science to prepare for our trip to the beach. We're reading the following books:

• Take a Beach Walk
• One Small Square Coral Reefs
• One Small Square Seashore (I want to find this one)
• Encyclopedia of Animals
• World of Animals and God's Design
• Glow in the Dark Fish

We started by reading a section on oceans in the Encyclopedia of Animals and then read about the different types of worms: segmented, round and flat worms. They think parasitic worms are gross, but segmented and tube worms are pretty cool.

I'm hoping to mow through a three weeks of material this week so that we can have a good understanding of the ecosystem that is the beach. 

Here the kids are drawing giant tube worms that live around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. 

Image: Here

These are what we started with and you see what they are drawing. 

These are what we started with and you see what they are drawing. I love their creativity. We needed to accomplish a bit more than we did today, but they'll have Math and Language Arts at Granny's house. 

Photo by: Paul Sutherland, National Geographic

Emma did see these in the image list on Google and thought they were the coolest things (aside from a furry snail) that she'd ever seen. I think that is the origination of her spiral.

On the list for later this week: 

• Blog posts about Maine (from both kids) that we'll put on our Around the States blog
• Blog post from Emma about a topic of her choosing that she'll put on her blog, Emma's Learning Journey
• Blog post from Matthew about his latest Lego creations that he's worked so hard on these last few days. It will be posted on his blog, Matthew's Epic Journey Blog

Hopefully, we'll get it all done!

Make good choices ^_^

Treading Water

Some days, you wake up and feel invigorated and you accomplish everything on today's list, tomorrow's list and things you thought you'd have to pay someone else to day, right? Ok, me neither. Some days, you just want to sleep in. Unfortunately, I had a week of that last week. The kids managed to do nothing but language arts and math all week long last week. They did a bit of outside reading and they outlined their next blog post, but otherwise, nada...nil...bupkiss. I need a bit of motivation to get back on track, so I signed up to review products via my blog. Homeschooling stuff and other things I guess. I hope they approve me, I think it would add some spice to our schooling AND would keep me moving forward.

I'm going to say that Mommy just had a bad week last week and we're going to get our act back together right now, tomorrow. I hope so. We're going on vacation next week, so that's going to be less productive. We're doing some science and history while we're down there. We're calling it an educational field trip ^_^

Mark keeps telling me to relax and just keep plugging along, it will all work out fine. I take this schooling thing very seriously though. I'm already trying to figure out how we can use some of Matthew's middle school classes to take CLEP tests (I can't, btw). I know he's right, but I just have so much I want them to know, so many things I want to teach them. I feel like time is running out and I worry if I can get them prepared in time.

Big Picture Time: the most important thing I can teach them is that they are loved and wonderful and smart. All I need to impart is a love of learning and they'll teach themselves more than I ever could pour into their heads. I know this...in my head, maybe on one side of my head. The other side tells me that I'm going to fail them and they're going to only play video games and watch tv forever.

But no, this week will be better. I have it planned out. The kids are going to blog about the great state of Maine and finish up studying it this week. We're going to mail our pen pal's letters now that we've found her new address again (sorry Charlotte, that's my fault, I misplaced your envelope the last time), we're going to plow through science and study the beach and the ocean as habitats, plus we'll throw a bit of history in there.

Plus, we'll have to celebrate my oldest monkey's birthday, so birthday cards will have to be made and lovey birthday poems written. Good times!

With little power comes crushing responsibility...

Anyone else feel like they're about to pop a vessel this week? No, it's just me? Well, I'm glad it's not everyone, that would be a whole lotta negative energy!

I am feeling like a failure, a poor excuse of: a mom, a teacher, a worker bee, and a human being. I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and as much as I'd love to give it all over to God and stop worrying about it, the last time I did that, he didn't edit the order packs the way Paul likes them. So it's back to me then. I don't feel like we're doing as good a job at schooling as I should. We're covering about 1/2 a week in history and science every week...ok, perfectly honest, we're covering 1/2 a week in science ever 2-3 weeks. There just aren't enough hours in the day right now.

We're at critical mass with the point of sale system at the store. It's still running in DOS. Nothing runs DOS anymore and we have killed another computer this week. I don't know what we're going to do to replace it at the moment. I think it's time to have a serious discord on replacing the whole system. The thought of that makes my stomach turn over...twice.

Then there are these kids. All they do is bicker and fight. They won't split up and they won't get along. I'm not sure what to do, their attitudes are terrible. Course, it all flows from the fount, doesn't it? My attitude could certainly use improvement, Mark's too.

Maybe we just need a vacation.....beach, sand, no phone, a good book, maybe that would fix it.