Officially coming out of the closet.
Last week my sister wife Nicole wrote an awesome post about homeschooling called Simply Schooling. I was hanging out on her couch the morning she posted it and I told her that she took the words write out of my mouth. I loved it. Read it here.
I'm sure most have figured out by now that we're planning on homeschooling. In person, we mention it pretty often, but we've never actually declared "we're a homeschooling family." So I guess this is our official coming out party.
We're homeschooling.
Or at least, I should say we're going to take it year by year, but starting with homeschooling.
It's funny, because awhile back, someone who doesn't know us as well as they think, mentioned to me that I was homeschooling because of Nicole.
Oddly, yes she is a part of one reason why I want to homeschool, but not the part that that person thought. I like having a mom with kids similar in age who is going through the same things I will be as a homeschooling mom. Plus, she's already a veteran of pre-school homeschooling, so I like the fact she goes first with everything and she's the one talking me off the ledge when I call and freak about the fact that Olivia still doesn't know her ABC's. True story.
However, homeschooling is not a totally new concept for us. Due to bullying issues, my Mom and John decided to pull my brother out of public schooling in middle school and home school him. They loved it, my brother loved it and started to excel in his new environment. I fell in love with it when I went up for his high school graduation and meet the kids he graduated and went to co-op with. I was impressed by these kids. I was impressed with their manners, their maturity, their accomplishments, where they were heading, and their views on the world. I was sold.
David however took a little longer to convince. After I spent a few years working behind the scenes for a local school system, he too was on board. In fact, there have been times over the years that I have questioned our decision to even try homeschooling and debated to go ahead and not even try, but he has remained steadfast in his opinion. He too started to see more and more of those homeschooled kids around us and was also impressed and wanted the same for our future children.
I could really go on for days about the reasons why we want to home school. If you really want to know them, stop by and we'll sit over several pots of coffee. If you want to know most of them, go read Nicole's post. Homeschooling is actually one of the things we bonded over when
our husbands first forced us to hang out! : )
We basically narrow it down to two reason though....we want the kids that homeschooling (9 times out of 10) produces and it fits our schedule.
I've mentioned a few times Dave's crazy schedule. He works six on, two off. So his schedule basically changes every week. We're not a 9 to 5 Monday thru Friday, Saturday and Sundays off family. Odds are, we'll never be. Homeschooling will allow for us to keep some type of family life for our kids. With the schedule Dave works, if we were to send the kids to school, they would never get much time with him, only a few hours in the evenings when they get home from school. There would hardly be any fun weekend adventures for our kids with dad. With homeschooling, we can fit our school schedule to Dave's and almost have somewhat of a normal family life. With Olivia still being so young, its been easy to do that so far.
We know that families have to deal with crazy schedules all the time (Dave did with his mom when growing up), but since I'm already home all day, we have the opportunity to make it work for us.
To not confuse anyone, we have decided to send our preschool age kids to preschool. Olivia will actually be starting in the next couple of weeks. We've heard of a few other home school families that do this and think it will work best for us. Especially since we're probably going to start homeschooling much earlier than we thought. Our preschoolers will go for just two days a week for half a day and by the time they move up to five days a week (usually at four around here), then we'll pull them out and start homeschooling them officially. It gives them some time outside the home and me some time to focus solely on the older kids (another fact about our possible future kids....one is school age).
We've also done lots of reading and research on adoption and homeschooling lately. I've come across several who say that adopted kids coming from traumatic situations do extremely well in the homeschooling environment. For many different reasons, the one on one works well for those kids and they usually excel. Every child our caseworker has sent us info on, they have all had one thing in common...they've all been delayed. We feel like homeschooling will be the best route since they will have so much one on one time and we can go at their pace and level. They will still get any help they need such as speech therapy or anything else like that we cannot necessarily do ourselves. We actually had one caseworker contact us about a specific group just because they had heard we were planning on homeschooling and thought it was best for the kids in her care.
About a month ago, I started working with Olivia with basic stuff. We're basically still "playing" but we play with our educational toys in our school room. I'm not forcing anything on her yet, she is currently enjoying playing with play-do, counting bears, matching games, and of course, coloring. In the homeschooling world, "waiting" is the big push and now that I have a child of my own, I see what they're talking about. She's not ready for anything more at the moment and we're going at her pace. It's amazing to me how much she's learned in the last month since we started. I won't lie, I was excited when my mom and John came down last month and Olivia took my mom's hand, dragged her to our school room, and said "school."
So, this is a new journey we're about to start on and just like the adoption, I'm scared to death and excited all at the same time. It's all so overwhelming when I actually sit to think about it.
I need lots of prayers.
I'm sure most have figured out by now that we're planning on homeschooling. In person, we mention it pretty often, but we've never actually declared "we're a homeschooling family." So I guess this is our official coming out party.
We're homeschooling.
Or at least, I should say we're going to take it year by year, but starting with homeschooling.
It's funny, because awhile back, someone who doesn't know us as well as they think, mentioned to me that I was homeschooling because of Nicole.
Oddly, yes she is a part of one reason why I want to homeschool, but not the part that that person thought. I like having a mom with kids similar in age who is going through the same things I will be as a homeschooling mom. Plus, she's already a veteran of pre-school homeschooling, so I like the fact she goes first with everything and she's the one talking me off the ledge when I call and freak about the fact that Olivia still doesn't know her ABC's. True story.
However, homeschooling is not a totally new concept for us. Due to bullying issues, my Mom and John decided to pull my brother out of public schooling in middle school and home school him. They loved it, my brother loved it and started to excel in his new environment. I fell in love with it when I went up for his high school graduation and meet the kids he graduated and went to co-op with. I was impressed by these kids. I was impressed with their manners, their maturity, their accomplishments, where they were heading, and their views on the world. I was sold.
David however took a little longer to convince. After I spent a few years working behind the scenes for a local school system, he too was on board. In fact, there have been times over the years that I have questioned our decision to even try homeschooling and debated to go ahead and not even try, but he has remained steadfast in his opinion. He too started to see more and more of those homeschooled kids around us and was also impressed and wanted the same for our future children.
I could really go on for days about the reasons why we want to home school. If you really want to know them, stop by and we'll sit over several pots of coffee. If you want to know most of them, go read Nicole's post. Homeschooling is actually one of the things we bonded over when
our husbands first forced us to hang out! : )
We basically narrow it down to two reason though....we want the kids that homeschooling (9 times out of 10) produces and it fits our schedule.
I've mentioned a few times Dave's crazy schedule. He works six on, two off. So his schedule basically changes every week. We're not a 9 to 5 Monday thru Friday, Saturday and Sundays off family. Odds are, we'll never be. Homeschooling will allow for us to keep some type of family life for our kids. With the schedule Dave works, if we were to send the kids to school, they would never get much time with him, only a few hours in the evenings when they get home from school. There would hardly be any fun weekend adventures for our kids with dad. With homeschooling, we can fit our school schedule to Dave's and almost have somewhat of a normal family life. With Olivia still being so young, its been easy to do that so far.
We know that families have to deal with crazy schedules all the time (Dave did with his mom when growing up), but since I'm already home all day, we have the opportunity to make it work for us.
To not confuse anyone, we have decided to send our preschool age kids to preschool. Olivia will actually be starting in the next couple of weeks. We've heard of a few other home school families that do this and think it will work best for us. Especially since we're probably going to start homeschooling much earlier than we thought. Our preschoolers will go for just two days a week for half a day and by the time they move up to five days a week (usually at four around here), then we'll pull them out and start homeschooling them officially. It gives them some time outside the home and me some time to focus solely on the older kids (another fact about our possible future kids....one is school age).
We've also done lots of reading and research on adoption and homeschooling lately. I've come across several who say that adopted kids coming from traumatic situations do extremely well in the homeschooling environment. For many different reasons, the one on one works well for those kids and they usually excel. Every child our caseworker has sent us info on, they have all had one thing in common...they've all been delayed. We feel like homeschooling will be the best route since they will have so much one on one time and we can go at their pace and level. They will still get any help they need such as speech therapy or anything else like that we cannot necessarily do ourselves. We actually had one caseworker contact us about a specific group just because they had heard we were planning on homeschooling and thought it was best for the kids in her care.
About a month ago, I started working with Olivia with basic stuff. We're basically still "playing" but we play with our educational toys in our school room. I'm not forcing anything on her yet, she is currently enjoying playing with play-do, counting bears, matching games, and of course, coloring. In the homeschooling world, "waiting" is the big push and now that I have a child of my own, I see what they're talking about. She's not ready for anything more at the moment and we're going at her pace. It's amazing to me how much she's learned in the last month since we started. I won't lie, I was excited when my mom and John came down last month and Olivia took my mom's hand, dragged her to our school room, and said "school."
So, this is a new journey we're about to start on and just like the adoption, I'm scared to death and excited all at the same time. It's all so overwhelming when I actually sit to think about it.
I need lots of prayers.
Comments
so excited to read all about your homeschooling,yay!