A New Light

This past weekend I attended a barbecue and while there visited with a friend who has 5 children and her youngest is now in High School. She homeschooled for a while and then put them back in school. Through the years they were enrolled in public, charter and other types of schools. I thought she would be a good resource to bounce ideas off of.

She said something during our conversation that really got me thinking. I have been so stressed about curriculum and being able to figure out what to teach my children.

She said, "I am an idea person." This really made me think. It's great that she is an idea person, she can come up with lots of ideas and she loves it. I on the other hand love to copy, I may tweak it a bit, but I love to see what others do and just follow suit. And that is okay, because we are all so different and that is what makes the world a wonderful place. If we were all the same how boring would that be?

So, after she said these wonderful words, I got to thinking. Why do I want to homeschool my kids? Why did this idea start anyways? What is the purpose for taking them out of school?

My main purpose for keeping my kids home is that I want them close, I feel that they can do their best learning here at home where they feel safe, where they don't have to worry about other kids teasing, judging, being mean physically or emotionally. Now I know that this is part of growing up. And I am sure that they will get all of this at church, in the neighborhood or even with activities outside the home.

I have decided to either go with Connections Academy or K12. They are a public schools that come to your home virtually. They equip you with all of the supplies needed to teach classes at home on the computer. I know I was opposed to this before but, after thinking about who I am I feel this will be best for my kids. They will be home and will be taught and if I see they are struggling in something I will be able to bring it to the attention of the teachers and they will accommodate the child. At this point I feel this is the best option.

I will be making a decision between these two schools and after I will enroll D. If he does well, I will probably pull E out. E will be able to work more solo but I know that I will have to help D out more until he gets older. It feels good to have made this decision.

Discouragement

I am feeling discouraged, I am feeling like if I keep the kids home they will miss out on so much that I know I will not be able to provide.

But then I think of the attention they could get from me, attention that only I can give. For instance. D is having a really hard time with Math, spelling, reading. So, his teacher sent home a few worksheets for him to do at home that he wasn't able to finnish at school. I sat down with him and he tried to do the math problems with a number line, ya know where if you are adding then you count ahead and if you are subtracting then you count back. The poor kid just can't seem to understand it. He understands that you need to jump forward or backwards at the appropriate time, he just doesn't understand that you need to start counting on the next number. So, we have some cute bug clips that I pulled out for him to count. He did this and he didn't like it but it seemed that it started to click better in his brain.

You see he is a wiggly willy kind of guy and he needs to be able to touch and learn with that sense. When he is given a sheet of paper with 100 problems on it, it is so overwhelming that he just wants to cry and he did cry. So, I feel that as his Mom I would be able to see that it is just too much for him. Not that he shouldn't do 100 problems but he needs it broken up more. He can do a worksheet with maybe 10 or 15 problems and then maybe a game or activity that has him figure out math problems, and then he could even do math games on the computer. And in reality he could be doing more than 100 problems, but they are FUN!! And then once he gets the hang of math, then I could give him math sheets that have more math problems on them.

In all reality homeschooling sounds great, but I wonder if I will be able to keep up, I wonder if I will want to spend all the time needed to teach.

I need to pull myself out of this rut, I know I can do this. I feel that it is what my kids need, it just seems so overwhelming.