The Decision to Homeschool

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Welcome!  I wrote this post back in July of 2008 and it seems to have taken on a life of its own.  If you’re here from Homeschool Diner or Family Times Magazine, welcome and thank you for visiting!  I hope you’ll take some time to look around and see if there’s anything else here that might be of interest to you. Not only do I blog about homeschooling, but also cooking, trying to make family dinners that are nutritious, delicious and definitely do-able as well as technology, my life, reviews and sometimes a give away. Subscribe to my feed, or check out a sample of everything I do around here. And if you have a blog or website, make sure you leave me a comment and I promise I’ll return the favor!

There are so many things to consider when you’re deciding whether or not homeschooling is right for your family.  There are also as many opinions as to what you need to consider as there are… well, you know the old saying.   When we started homeschooling, we were a little under the gun to make a decision – so I really didn’t have the time to think about how it was going to go; it was pretty much just trial by fire.  I humbly submit the following questions to anyone who is weighing their schooling options and considering the homeschool route.

Do you have the time? This is not something that can be done in 20 minutes a day.  It’s a time commitment of the greatest magnitude.  When the children are younger it involves teaching them to read, to spell, to count, to add, subtract, etc.   When they’re older, they can do a lot of their schoolwork without your constant supervision, but more advanced concepts take more time.  And the problem with being your child’s teacher is that you need to know the material most of the time too! Which brings us to the next questions:

Do you love to learn?
Are you a good reader?
One of the most common threads that I’ve found in homeschooling families that I admire and try to emulate is the love of learning in the parent(s). Clearly a teacher who struggles to work up the enthusiasm for learning has a much harder task ahead of them than one who would be broadening their horizons through learning even if they didn’t have a child (or a pack of children) counting on them for it.  Also, there is a lot of reading involved in this journey.  It definitely helps if you’re predisposed to dissecting large amounts of information.  Is it absolutely necessary?  No, maybe not.  But it will sure make it more palatable.

Do you have a fair amount of patience or do you have a hard time holding your temper? Are you good at explaining things over and over and over and over and over and over and over without losing your cool if need be? Sometimes a concept will be hard for the child to grasp and you’ll need to go over it many, many times.  Can you do that without showing your impatience?  None of us are perfect and of course there will be times that you lose patience, but that has to be the exception and not the rule.  A time out goes a long way for you and for your child.  You never want the child to be anxious about learning new things due to your impatience.  (on occasion I have abandoned the entire day of schooling and taken the kids to the movies or lunch or whatever just because we needed the break from it – and when you’re homeschooling, you’re free to do that! Or you can take them bowling and call it P.E!)

Are you willing to sacrifice? Homeschooling definitely requires sacrifice.  One way or another, whether it be financial as in a two income household going to one income, or emotional, as in you don’t get the alone time you were anticipating as the children got older.  There is a tremendous amount of sacrifice.  There is though, as far as I’m concerned, a much larger amount of reward.

Is your spouse or partner on board with this? Being solely responsible for the education of your child is an awesome responsibility.  It’s a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice.  At the end of the day, if your partner is belittling your decisions, or questioning every aspect of your day, looking for something to criticize, you will be miserable. Just as if you worked at a more traditional job, you need the sanctuary of home and family to rest and rejuvenate for the next day.  Your partner probably expects this of you when they’re done with whatever their workday brings and likewise you need to be able to rely on them as well.  My suggestion would be to present evidence of successful homeschooling to your partner, to calmly explain your feelings to them and open a dialogue.  If they just can’t see their way to exploring this with you, maybe you should put your plans to pull the children out of traditional school on the back burner.  Try some extra curricular homeschool activities on weekends or during the summer or holiday breaks.  Maybe the evidence of child and whole family enrichment will be enough to convince him or her that this journey is worth a try.

So, if you’ve weighed the pros and cons and have decided to move forward, here are a few links that have been helpful to me:

• Beverly Hernandez does a great job at About.com’s Homeschooling section.
• Anne Zeise totally rocks – there’s a plethora of information at her “A to Z Home’s Cool”
• Math U See – is the curriculum that we use and I swear it saved my sanity.
• The most important website for homeschooling is definitely your local library’s. Get everyone library cards and pin numbers so that you can make lists of the books you want or need and request them so that you don’t spend hours and hours wandering through the library trying to figure out what you want – although sometimes we do that just for fun.

Those are just a couple of links to get started.  Use Google and search for homeschool.  Or go to Yahoo Groups and search homeschool and your state or city.  You’ll find other people who homeschool and by and large I have found the online homeschool community to be gracious and kind and super supportive of families just starting out.  With so many resources literally right at your fingertips, you can make this an exciting adventure for all of you.  With a little bit of planning and an open mind you can make this the ride of your life.  Good luck!

Like this post?  You can easily read the rest of my posts about homeschooling here.

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