Once upon a time, I thought homeschooling was weird (and homebirthing, and cloth diapering, and breastfeeding past 12 months old... there's a pattern here!). But several years ago, I found out that one of my favorite college professors and his wife homeschooled their kids, and they seemed like relatively normal people. I became curious, and began looking into it a little more, and what I learned really intrigued me. Elijah was about 3 years old then. That summer I homeschooled him. He was developmentally delayed and we made a huge amount of progress in just a couple months. It was awesome.
After that, though, while I was still interested in homeschooling, I struggled to get much of anywhere with it. Plus Elijah really enjoyed preschool, so we decided to keep him in it. When the time came for him to start kindergarten, I was very pregnant with our second child and knew my limitations well enough to know that homeschooling just wouldn't be a good idea for me that year, so off to kindergarten he went, while I reminded myself that I would reevaluate our schooling decisions each year. First grade rolled around, and he had enjoyed kindergarten, and I still didn't feel up to the task of homeschooling, so he returned to the elementary school for another year.
But during first grade, something changed. It's not that our school experience has been bad; he's learning, making friends, and overall doing quite well. But the public school model of education simply doesn't match up with our beliefs and goals regarding our children's education at this time. There are other things too, which I'll tell you about in the next post. But the point of this post is to say that after years of being interested in homeschooling but not being ready yet for one reason or another, I'm ready now. We've decided to bring Elijah home for second grade. I'm excited to start the journey, and a little nervous too, but I think that's normal. Elijah is also excited. I think this is going to be a great fit for our family. And I promise I won't start wearing denim jumpers or have fifteen more babies. That's just a stereotype, friends. ;-)
Before Amanda was born, a missionary friend said she had to homeschool her children when in Africa. I said, "I could never do that." She said you will be surprised what you can do when God calls you to do it.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, we homeschooled four and a half years and loved it! God only called us for a season on that - - not the whole 12 years. I was totally amazed how easy it was to have our Christian values incorporated into every subject every day. It was awesome and also helped us grow spiritually.
Thanks for sharing your experience! It's always encouraging to hear from people who've been there.
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