Our Homeschooling Beginnings
Why homeschool?
My oldest little guy (he has an older brother, but we aren't homeschooling him since I'm just his step-mom) had been going to half days of school at the local public school, but he was home sick for a few days and it was nice to have him home! It was the type of sickness where he sounded awful and woke up through the night, but he acted all right during the day, so I'd plan on sending him the next day, but he had another bad night. This made it so he was all right during the day and it reminded me of the Summer and how we had table time, morning baskets and lots of outside time. I asked him if he'd be ok with homeschool, and at this point he was! I quickly found some online resources and we started a few days later. It wasn't long until I had "buyers remorse" because it was a few days before Valentines Day! I loved V-Day when I was little,and felt bad that he'd miss it, but it actually turned out better than school. I asked what another homeschooler was doing for that day, and we ended up going with a few families for a party. We had the kids decorate boxes then hand out valentines and they had a fun time. While that was fun, I have to say that our afternoon activities were even better. I had the kids make some homemade valentines and we took them to some older people in our area. What a better way to show love, than to give gifts from the heart to people who are a little lonely? It felt more authentic to me, and since then I haven't wanted to send him back. In August we did a program that was government regulated, and while it was a fun STEM school, it was just too much hassle to figure out what to do once a week in Logan with my two little kids while he spent the day in school. If it was in Brigham I'd probably do it again, but I think it's actually worked out better in the end. These are my reasons that we finally took the jump to homeschool, even though our first try at the first of the year didn't go well.
First of all, I decided what my goals are for my kids,and I realized with clarity that they wouldn't get that at the local school. It is just not set up to be done this way!
These ideas have come about after reading more of Charlotte Mason. I LOVE her ideas about outside learning, short lessons, and great uplifting people/art/stories studied. I also agree with many things in Thomas Jefferson (Leadership) Education (play for younger kids & difficult studies for older), and Dr. Kimber's teachings about education being about God, Family and Country.
My goals, I want my children to:
We went on a nature walk and I thought, "THIS is why I wanted to homeschool!" He wouldn't be able to go near water in school, let alone spend about an hour exploring ice and water in this way.
My oldest little guy (he has an older brother, but we aren't homeschooling him since I'm just his step-mom) had been going to half days of school at the local public school, but he was home sick for a few days and it was nice to have him home! It was the type of sickness where he sounded awful and woke up through the night, but he acted all right during the day, so I'd plan on sending him the next day, but he had another bad night. This made it so he was all right during the day and it reminded me of the Summer and how we had table time, morning baskets and lots of outside time. I asked him if he'd be ok with homeschool, and at this point he was! I quickly found some online resources and we started a few days later. It wasn't long until I had "buyers remorse" because it was a few days before Valentines Day! I loved V-Day when I was little,and felt bad that he'd miss it, but it actually turned out better than school. I asked what another homeschooler was doing for that day, and we ended up going with a few families for a party. We had the kids decorate boxes then hand out valentines and they had a fun time. While that was fun, I have to say that our afternoon activities were even better. I had the kids make some homemade valentines and we took them to some older people in our area. What a better way to show love, than to give gifts from the heart to people who are a little lonely? It felt more authentic to me, and since then I haven't wanted to send him back. In August we did a program that was government regulated, and while it was a fun STEM school, it was just too much hassle to figure out what to do once a week in Logan with my two little kids while he spent the day in school. If it was in Brigham I'd probably do it again, but I think it's actually worked out better in the end. These are my reasons that we finally took the jump to homeschool, even though our first try at the first of the year didn't go well.
First of all, I decided what my goals are for my kids,and I realized with clarity that they wouldn't get that at the local school. It is just not set up to be done this way!
These ideas have come about after reading more of Charlotte Mason. I LOVE her ideas about outside learning, short lessons, and great uplifting people/art/stories studied. I also agree with many things in Thomas Jefferson (Leadership) Education (play for younger kids & difficult studies for older), and Dr. Kimber's teachings about education being about God, Family and Country.
My goals, I want my children to:
- Spend at least 2 hours outside each day, a one hour nature walk/study and one hour of outdoor play. Miss Mason actually suggested more for little kids, but we're just leaving winter behind so we're starting small.
Nature Studies
Experimenting with tubes, water and mud
- Read great and noble things, learn of the beauty in art and music, learn of heroes and those who helped to change the world for the better.
Painting like Michelangelo
- Have time to play and create! We need creativity to deal with changes in life, and I don't think there's enough time for it in school.
Pop-up play creations
- I want them to have an understanding of the scriptures, be able to memorize poems and scriptures, and discuss spiritual things as an every day conversation.
I love the freedom to use curriculum with God included
- LOVE learning, not have a "hate of learning phase" that Mister 6 had after 6 months in Kindergarten.
- Have real relationships with people of all ages, not just with kids their specific age.
I'm sure there are more reasons, but that's what comes to mind at the moment. Now I ask you, can they get any of this at a public school? No, not that I've seen. There are definitely benefits of public school and there are lots of good teachers, but I think that these things outweigh those things for now. I don't plan on homeschooling forever, and I'm hoping that an amazing charter school that I found in Logan will soon be in Brigham, or a Kimber Academy (BFA when I went to it) will be started (by someone else, it's a lot of work!), but for now this is working for us.
Things I've learned in the month that we've homeschooled:
- Academics are the easy part, family work and unity are a lot harder to teach! Mister 4 had a really hard time adjusting to the changes of big brother being home more and was acting out like crazy, but it seems to be settling down now. We still need to work on being cheerful helpers and obedience as well.
- There are a lot of free curriculums and internet programs out there, and there are a lot of expensive programs! I find myself wanting all of it, but so far the free or cheap stuff has worked fine for us. I keep wishing for extensive/expensive curriculum, but so far simple things have been the best. Mister 7 likes Education.com & Kahn Academy for math, and I use the Good and The Beautiful Program's free 1st grade LA program for reading. We use the Exploring Nature With Children weekly topics for nature study (science), then do our Morning Baskets and Table Time for art study & memorizing, then we study one indigenous culture a week from the Forgotten Worlds book/CD, character development stories, and for this month a 30 day Easter Countdown with topics from "The Living Christ" to give some structure.
- The amount of options for homeschool can be overwhelming, so I'm glad I took the year to study and figure out more of what I want to do and the direction we want to take. If it was just suddenly pulling him from school last year when I was temped to do it, I don't think it would be going very well.
- Friends really can be any age! We are friendly visitors with our local senior center, and we've started visiting a sweet great grandma in our little town. My kids love going to Grandma O's and she loves having them come. She's unable to leave her house much so having visitors is always a treat for her, and my kiddos love her candy and cookies. We don't have any grandparents who live close by so this has been a blessing. One week I put off our visit, then regretted it because she had little baggies of candy laid out for the kids and had tried to call us but we don't have a listed number. Now we just surprise her and it's sweet.
- Listening to Audio Books is a great way to introduce classic or "living" books. We used to listen to the radio or something when driving around town, but now we're listening to books like The Chronicles of Narnia or Little House on the Prairie. We've had much better discussions since then, and Mister 7 sometimes says things like, "I can be patient like Almanzo was with the calves," without even having to start a lesson about character traits. They're great lesson books! The readers are also much better than I am at using different voices for characters while I usually use my boring reading voice.
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