Or Whatever!! Homeschooling- Why School at Home?

There are several different titles to refer to when you decide to teach your children at home. Some people say homeschool because they follow a set curriculum, maybe from the public school system, have set hours for "school," and do most things like a public school would, only they do it at home. Others unschool, where it is more child-led, meaning they teach/learn more in the way of what interests the child most. There are even relaxed, eclectic, deschoolers and I'm sure there are others that I'm not familiar with. But the most important thing is that we all decided to teach our children at home in whatever way we feel is best for whatever reasons.

I think we fit in the relaxed homeschoolers/unschoolers the best although we sometimes cross over into the other classifications, too. We don't follow set curriculum and we rarely work out of a book. We are more spontaneous and hands on when it comes to learning. We just think it makes more sense for us to play "store" to learn about money instead of labeling or counting money pictures in a book.

We like to see first hand when the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis or watch our garden and flowerbed growing new life from the seeds that we planted.

We don't always have perfect days, matter of fact, we rarely have a perfect day. We do have goods days, many more good days compared to when they were in the public school system.

We can teach our children about what's important to us, not what's important to the school board. They also learn life, real life, not what someone thinks life should be about, but real life. Yes, we do teach them the basics; reading, spelling, math, etc. At home, they get to learn something that's even more important than all of that- God and God's love for all of us.

These are just some of our reasons Why we school at home.

The following stories are taken from different message boards that I am a member of. I have been given permission to print these so please do not copy any of them.

Why school at home??

My Journey to Unschooling

Journey . . . something that suggests moving from one place to another. That certainly describes our experience with home education. We have not always been in this place of unschooling, living and learning. This is the story of how we got here.

As it seems we question everything to do with the status quo now, it is remarkable that thirteen years ago, we put our oldest child, Amber, on a bus and sent her off to school because that's just what you did when your child was five years old. It was during that year, though several amazing incidents, that God convicted our hearts about homeschooling. We went to our first homeschool conference in spring of 1990. The only vendors there were Abeka, Bob Jones, Christian Liberty, Konos and Lifetime Books and Gifts. We naively purchased ABEKA and began homeschooling in the Fall of 1990. The next ten years or so were filled with various school at home programs . . .Abeka, Konos, Unit Studies and Sonlight.

Of course there was a pattern to our schooling. I had a baby about every 18 - 20 months during those years. I would get pregnant, be very tired and sick. The children would pursue their own interests with my direction from the couch. We read tons of books together and watched a lot of cool things on TV and had great discussions. The children learned how to cook, how to maintain the house and how to do laundry. The baby would be born and a couple months later, I would panic that we had not done any schoolwork. Off to the book fair to stock up on curriculum, bring it home, hit the books. Slowly we would get bored with that and start drifting back into our comfortable style of living and learning. Then, I would be pregnant again and the whole cycle would start over.

I never could seem to be totally at peace with unschooling during that time. I carried guilt that we weren't "doing school". Their academic growth was narrowly defined in my mind as working through textbooks, completing workbooks and taking tests. Not to mention that I had no real understanding of unschooling and didn't believe that a Christian could be an unschooler. It was ten years of inward turmoil.

When my Amber turned fourteen and was considered in highschool, I became determined that we needed to get serious about credits. So we began to tackle the subjects that she would need to graduate, according to the state. For the most part, Amber went with the flow. I gave the assignments and she did the work. However, Algebra was a nightmare. We cried, we screamed, we threw books. But she had to have Algebra, right?

Let me take a slight turn to tell you some other things that were going on at the same time. In 2001, we were really being challenged about our parenting practices. You see, basically, we had parented in fear. Fear of failure, fear of our children making wrong choices, fear of the opinions of others. Having a lot of children turns the eyes of people on you and we were determined to look like the perfect Christian homeschool family. Legalism ruled in our home. That year we began to reap what we had sown. The harvest was just what we were trying to avoid . . . rebellion, anger, deception.

It was during that year, that we realized that what we had been doing was not working. We began to question everything and we cried out to the Lord for His guidance. God began an amazing work in our lives. He began to teach my husband and me about grace and mercy. We were heartbroken but determined to rebuild the relationships with our children. I can testify to His faithfulness in restoring relationships. His grace and mercy are abundant!

In March of 2001, while I was still pondering what all of this meant. I went to a homeschool conference. I was saddened to see that almost every speaker advocated a strict school at home program and encouraged a very legalistic parenting philosophy. All that had brought us was sorrow. While standing in the booth of Lifetime Books and Gifts, near tears, I was approached by Tina Farewell, the owner of Lifetime. She asked if she could help me and I answered in tears that I just didn't know. She spent quite a while talking to me. I don't remember a lot of what she said but one thing stuck with me and started me onto the path of unschooling. She revealed that her eighteen-year-old daughter had not taken Algebra. She said, "I determined that my relationship with Elizabeth was more important than algebra. She can take algebra anytime but if I ruin our relationship now it may never be restored." Wow! I was stunned! For the first time, I realized that I had to step out of the box.

You know what the box is: the box that says each of our children has to take subjects A, B, C, D, etc. And they have only twelve years to complete those subjects. I realized that the only reason that algebra was an issue was that someone in some office somewhere decided that to be well educated my children had to take algebra in the ninth grade. (Feel free to substitute any subject for algebra). The fact is that whoever that was didn't know my child at all. But the Creator of the universe knows my children! He created my children for a unique purpose and He has equipped them for that purpose. I realized that I had to step into agreement with the Lord about the destiny of my children.

I came home from that conference and guess what Amber was doing? ALGEBRA! I asked her why she was doing it, and she replied, "because you said that I had to." I told her then that I was lifting that requirement. If Algebra were a part of the plan for her life, God would let us know.

I was scared to death!!! This was really radical. My heart was leading me and telling me that this was the right thing, but I had to convince my mind.

I spent many months researching unschooling and the history of our education system. To make a long story short, after finding out what the purposes of our education system are, I knew that I could not replicate that in our home any longer. It was a long time before I would publicly admit that I am an unschooler. My previous misconceptions and judgments limited my ability to do that. But I stand proudly today to say that we are Christian Unschoolers, living a life totally devoted to the will of God and his purposes for our life.

It has been a remarkable journey. It's amazing that when we started out, the plan was to teach our children. We have ended up being taught many things. I am grateful for God's love, grace and mercy that travel with us. The best part? We haven't arrived yet . . . the journey continues.

I think that we decided to homeschool for several reasons. The pros outweighed the cons by a ton. We were concerned about safety. We were concerned about social issues. We like to be together as a family. We want them to have the best education possible, and even though we do not have teaching degrees, we felt that we could learn along with them. We want to teach them our values and teach them respect for the value of others. I.E. we want to teach them creation vs. evolution and that it is their decision to choose which one they feel is right, not evolution is the only thing, or creation is the only thing, or that this scientist, or president, or church leader, or teacher, or PARENT knows what is best and so that is what they should believe. We want them to have the freedom to learn and explore on their own and in their own way.

When my kids wake up in the morning and find an injured spider, we do science. When a friend of theirs is "pantsing" the other children at get togethers, needless to say, we talk about social and biblical issues the next day.

I know my kids, I'm with them while they are learning. When we are out and about, I know what things in the real world will tie in to their book learning and have the most impact. I know when they are behind, when they need a break, when they need more. NOBODY else in the world can do that. We want them to be able to learn at their own pace, and homeschooling enables them to do that.

Our schedule consists of breakfast (we usually have bible discussions during breakfast time) and then we all "get ready for our day" This consists of getting dressed and doing some menial chores. Then we head downstairs where we always do reading and math. The kids start off at desks. (We have two desks, and three kids, the baby sits with big sister of choice until she gets bored, and drives them crazy, then she sits on my hip, or plays in the playroom.) We usually move from the desks after reading is done. We are very hands on math. We play outside, and there is just always a question. Although I am the type that likes structure, they always have questions that need to be answered, so rather than coming up with too many science ideas right now, I usually just follow their lead and we learn about bugs (especially bugs right now...ick) and leaves and health and nutrition.... I would have to say the same is true for most other subjects. We decide as a group what we want to know about and it's been very rewarding. I don't know that this will always work for us, but I have to say that all of us are very happy with it right now and it is working so I'm not going to fix it until it breaks.

This was a really long story!! I'm sorry, but I think that I have had to convince myself and others so many times that homeschooling is a good thing, and why that I have a very passionate response to that question now!! :) Scary isn't it???

I forgot to add those days where we bum around in sweats all day and clean like mad while the kids watch cartoons until their little brains are practically mush. Or when the baby just won't mellow so we all watch cartoons until we're zombies. But those days are a given, so I didn't think that I had to add them in. :)

My decision about homeschooling was prompted by my daughter's ADHD, but I think that is a blessing in that I have come to see so much value in homeschooling for her and the family. Here's my story.

I was in the military for a few years. During that time, I was injured in my foot, while planning to go on to Officer training. It was a bit depressing that I left with a disability that I still have today. It limits my employment potential. However, within a few months of having left the military, my daughter's IEP that she was under in her school started getting adjusted.

My wife's brother has ADD, and I think that might have added to something on my side of the family, as I have migraine headaches and symptoms of temporal lobe ADD. I didn't know it till I read the symptoms from Dr. Amen's book. In any case, I think my daughter inherited it from us both and ended up really having it bad. One psychologist that observed her said she was the clearest case of ADHD that she had seen.

Getting back to the school. Katie (my daughter) is very pleasant and extremely excited about everything with a million questions. That is great for her learning; however, her teachers at school only saw it as a problem for maintaining classroom order. After being put in T-1 for a year (transition between Kind and 1st grade...put there for social reasons not academic), she finally moved up into 1st grade. Her teachers called a few meetings with us to finally announce (without seeing a problem in it) that she should spend most of her day in special ed classes.

I mentioned how smart she was, and they agreed. They only felt it would be best for everyone if she learned there. I mentioned how she might get a social label from the other students, and they looked as if they had not even considered that. That started me questioning if they were looking out for her best interests or their own.

After considering homeschooling and reading about it for a few more weeks, I told the school that I was bringing her home for homeschooling. They seemed pleased to not have to deal with the situation, and I knew Katie would have a better self-image, as it was already starting to turn negative.

I was right. Within weeks, she was much happier and learning fast, without having the school class limitations put on her.

She is doing second grade curriculum now (one year later) and will start 3rd grade curriculum in January. I am not pushing her. She is full of endless questions and curiosities and is driving me to try to keep up with her.

I hope this has helped someone out there, and I would like to have more social connections with other homeschoolers. I have the local group here, but I just moved for my wife's job (she is a store manager for Hastings) and the community is new. I love having friends and have much less than I'd like.

Check out Ken's book

777 Things You Can Do in Heaven

Back To Homeschooling