Why Homeschool?

Let me preface this post with the line that I end up telling every parent I meet, "Never say never!"  After raising two children to the ages of 25 and 23 I have learned that "never say never" should probably be tattooed on the back of every parent's hand.

It is our intent, as of today, this very minute, to homeschool our girls who are 5, 4 and 3.  I may post in two weeks how much Sydney is enjoying public school but that's not what we have planned.  I have several friends who planned on homeschooling but they have all decided to send their children to some form of public or private school.  I support them 100%.  I did that with my older kids and did a celebration dance when they went.  I never cried or felt sad.  They did ok and made friends and except for one HORRIBLE year for John we all did fine.  They both graduated high school.  Frances is a senior at NC State majoring in something like Business Management with an emphasis on Human Resources and a minor in Accounting (I don't think I am too far off on that).   John is the Executive Sous Chef at the Raleigh Country Club.  Not bad for a 23 year old who never stepped into a classroom (and probably won't again) after his last day of high school.  He's a natural and doing what he loves.  Frances and John were the ones who first mention homeschooling.  They said, "Mom school has changed a lot.  We think you should consider homeschooling."  Sydney was about a year old and I just kind of laughed.  The more I thought about it and the more I heard about schools these days, the more we thought we might consider doing it.  Don't get me wrong, there are days that I think Residential Preschool should be offered to all families.  However, it was just YESTERDAY that Frances was 5 and John was 3.  They grow so fast and then it's done.  I feel like I missed out on so much of their lives because they were in school 8 hours a day learning how to succeed at taking standardized tests.  Then we had HOURS of homework each night that would frustrate all of us.   We could take the time we would spend on homework, add a little more to it and be done with our school work for the day.  We could learn somewhere other than seated in an air conditioned classroom with MAYBE 30 minutes of physical activity a day.  We can take trips without worrying about missing school.  We can do "class" whenever we want.  The girls can learn so much from each other too as we are already seeing.  Hopefully it will be a little easier since they are close in age and they can work on a lot of the same things.  Sydney will be starting "kindergarten" this year.  I looked up what the Standard Course of Study is for NC Public Schools.  She can do most of the stuff listed so I asked her what she wanted to learn.  She said she wants to learn to read so that's what we'll focus on.  We do lots of hands on things with just "worksheets" for handwriting and some phonics.  I'm totally inflexible about those two things and they will learn to write properly and they will be able to sound out words.  Other than that, we will follow their lead on what they want to learn while making sure we are covering the basics that they will need.  As they get older, we may switch to a more curriculum based learning but now I am just pulling ideas from different sources.  It really helps that Tim is totally on board with the whole homeschooling idea.  It just seems natural for us.  I love hearing him reading to the girls, helping them with their handwriting and showing them a love of learning.  He's more likely than I am to pick up the scary bugs for them to look at, touch, etc.  It works for us.....right now.  Will we do it forever?  I don't know but it's the plan.  I know...."never say never"!