A Whole New Vision

I have struggled with confidence in my ability to homeschool. My oldest son is in 3rd grade at a public school.  During his K, 1st, and 2nd school years, he was homeschooled and in public school. I would start out homeschooling and then freak out that I wasn't doing a good enough job, or I had a hard day and just gave up.  This year I decided to just put them (my son and daughter in K) in public school, they keep begging to homeschool.

I've done a lot of thinking over the last few months and I realized what the issue was. I was trying to force a style of homeschooling that doesn't work for us. I was trying to mimic the public school classroom...it wasn't working. Our life needs to reflect education. I need to immerse them in a life style of continuous education. There shouldn't be a line between home life and education. Education should be a part of life, not separate.

I'm not sure that I could choose just one style of homeschooling for us. We will be learning through living books, not textbooks. We follow more of a Charlotte Mason/Classical style of homeschooling but we will also add in a technological spin. We are techie nerds and technology is a huge part of this world we now live in.

I've learned that homeschooling is what we make it. It isn't about learning exactly what someone else is learning, at the exact same age they are learning it. It's about teaching the children to have the know how to get the information they need. A person who knows how to educate themselves, instead of relying on other people to feed them information, will have a deeper understanding of the world around them. We've decided that for our family, it will be through home education.

The kids are very excited for their last day of public school on December 14th. They are excited to be able to pursue their interests without having to figure out how many hours of homework they have that night. They are excited to be able to participate in activities around the city during the day. We are all excited for this shift in out lives.