Friday, January 27, 2012

Why do you Homeschool?

It seems that it was so long ago, the life we had before we homeschooled! When we first had children, I was the typical American Mom, ready to send my children off to school, not really thinking about any other option of education, or even feeling like there needed to be another option. After all, I went to both private school and public school both.

However, the Lord had other plans. We were gifted with a son who has epilepsy and autism and has global delays. So early on, the specialist recommended that we go to the local school district to address the delays we were seeing. This was my oldest child, I had no other experience to draw from, so off to the local school district with my precious baby boy at the age of 3.

So my son was in the public school system from the age of 3 until the age of 7. During the early years, it was very good for him. However, the more I learned about my son's abilities and disabilities I requested more services for him, and backed up those requests with specialists at the meetings. However, what I continued to come up against that last year or so in school, was the school district would refuse to pay for any of the services that I knew my son needed.  While we had an excellent teacher that last year in school, the prospects for his next year, were quite bleak.

Simultaneously, my husband was taking college courses at the local community college, and he was seeing the product of the local public schools. And what he was witnessing, is not what we wanted for our kids.

When combining both sets of these circumstances, we decided to homeschool.  When we started homeschooling, our children were 8, 6, 5, 4 and 1 year old.   Here is a photo from our early years......
Aren't they cute??

What we found when we started homeschooling, is that it was a perfect for our family. We are a very hands on family, we went on many field trips, and our homeschool days were filled with crafts, experiments and living books! We loved it! And still do! 


While the reason we began homeschooling was definitely a means to the end, our reason for homeschooling, while those original reasons are still there, we are also homeschooling, because it is our way of honoring the Lord in our home. 

The parent child relationship is a very unique. We know the needs of our children, better than anyone else, which helps us structure a learning environment that optimizes our children's strengths while helping them to overcome the areas of struggle. 

We are also able to help them learn how to live out the Christian life. They can watch us and learn how we have an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father, we can provide them with a fully Christian Education without the outside influence of the world.  Now you would be able to do this to some extent if you had your children in a Christian School, however, I want to have the responsibility of raising my children up for the Lord. 

Before you become worried that my children are overly sheltered and are not allowed to experience life.. you should  know that we are members of a fairly large church, with an vibrant children's and youth program, and we are members of a local homeschool group. And this year.. our 12th year of homeschooling, we have decided to homeschool through a private school, that has a homeschool 'leg'. This has allowed my high school students to play high school sports.  

Here are some photos to help you see, the dynamic exciting life my children have expierenced, because we homeschool, not in spite of homeschooling! 










1 comment:

  1. Yes, it is hard for me to remember when we didn't home school or think that it was a good idea. I am enjoying your blog.

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