Home Education Week - Better Late Than Never

This should have been the easiest post for Home Education Week, but I kept stopping and starting and editing and deleting. So I just set it aside until I had a clear vision of what I wanted to say.

And it came to me as a knock on the front door. A young woman stopped by our house because we put an old weight bench on the end of our driveway, and she wanted to know if she could have it. It seems that one of her sons has been granted a great honor that involves going overseas, and they are raising money for it by recycling metal. Well, my DH has been scrapping for going on 10 years, so I gave her his business card and told her that if her son needs any pointers, my DH would be glad to help. (Don’t you just love volunteering your spouse? :D) So as we were chatting, I brought up homeschooling, and lo and behold- she homeschools through the state’s cyberschooling program. We were off to the races, jabbering 90 miles a minute about how and why and wherefore. She is a bit unsatisfied with the cyberschooling, however, as it is burdensome to attempt to use public education methodologies in the home and be bound to the school calendar. I was able to tell her a little bit of what I do to avoid burnout- by having a relaxed, tailor made-for-our-family educational environment. This appealed to her, so I gave her my mobile number so that she could call if she wanted to talk more about how to create a home education method that better suits her family and their needs.

In talking with her, I found myself verbalizing exactly what my goals and plans are for school- to give my kids all the opportunities possible so that they can engage their abilities and interests, to help them become people of good character, and to have a lovingly bonded family.

How we go about this looks different from year to year. Kids grow and change. We are learning all the time how to not only do things better, but to do better things (thanks, Mr. Millman). This is the element that has changed the most in our homeschool. When I began, I lacked confidence, and since school had been a less-than-pleasant experience for me, I was having trouble finding a way to make school a joy for my son. An ingrained workaholic, school was textbooks and workbooks and read-the-chapter-answer-the-questions, and occasionally draw a picture or go to the zoo. My own deschooling over the years taught me that I could make learning a pleasure, and discovery exciting. So instead of the standard literature books with two chapters of Huckleberry Finn, we read the whole book. Science is alive with experimentation and history is thrilling with insights into how things were that resulted in how things are. There is time for music and art as the mood of creativity strikes and must be obeyed. We can find ways to use our gifts to give, and to address issues of spirituality, morality and ethics in a manner that is appropriate for the maturity and understanding of our kids is one of the best reasons to home educate, in my opinion.

So there it is- home education for us isn’t a rejection of a system so much as it is an embracing of a lifestyle. Our future is in the Lord’s hands, and we are looking forward to what He has in store for us.

BTW- the school/family room floor is finished, but we have to wait a week to put rugs and furniture on it. Not too shabby for a floor made up of several different sizes and kinds of wood, eh?