Someone on reddit linked to your blog in an adoption post and it is great to see a young homeschooling family! My 3 siblings and I are the product of homeschooling and I love seeing how current homeschool-ers have embraced the lifestyle. You seem to have a similar age range and the same approach to teaching that my mom did, and we all turned out fine! Even the Dyslexic one who couldn’t really read until he was 8 or the extremely socially anxious one that fit every stereotypical socially-awkward stereotype for home-school-er’s until High School (Spoiler: It’s me and I eventually moved halfway around the world, have friends, regularly give talks to groups of strangers, and “surprise” people with the fact I was home-schooled)! I was especially pleased to see you utilize technology to expand your curriculum.

I’m now 25 and in grad school for Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford. If my mother had sent me to the inner-city, Midwestern public school available to me I doubt I would be in a tech-oriented field. Computers were toys or precious machines to be coddled and not broken to my peers. In contrast, my parents let us muck about in old DOS based systems and let us roam around the internet largely un-monitored (I do not recommend this anymore, the internet is a much larger and scarier place now). basically, they encouraged us to learn about anything that we showed an interest in. Nothing was off limits and even though money was often tight and they couldn’t afford to finance the latest hobby or interest, they would pull every book on the subject from the local library system for us and if we persisted in our interest did everything they could to give us the resources we needed to excel.

The best thing my mother did was as we grew to be teenager should let us plan our own school year and be involved in selecting the textbooks and subjects taught. The only rule was that we had to meet minimum state requirements for high-school by the time we graduated and for standard subjects we were encouraged to stick to some tried-and-true curriculum (So, for example, English just couldn’t be “I read these books!” we had to pick modules like “Shakespearean Literature” or “Technical Writing” and use standard textbooks). If we wanted a non-standard course on things such as History of Punk (best class ever), Japanese Culture, or The Science of Cooking and Baking (one brother became a chef), we would have to research appropriate texts to read, determine how we should be graded (I always pushed for oral reports because I was a chatter-box), and then had to give an argument for why a particular subject was worthy of study and show how it benefited either or educational or personal goals. It really helped me take ownership of my education. Even when a course we designed was “declined,” we had already done the work to begin to learn about it, so often we just carried on. The best courses was the “Compassion and Critical Thinking” credit my brother created and we all took based on Christian/Religious reading, volunteer work, and an examination of historical or current stories concerning issues of oppression, poverty, and inequality. It tied in to so many subjects that it ended being incorporated into nearly every course in some way; From economics, politics and philosophy to science (relating to ethics and modeling epidemics in math) and Home-Ec (cooking for homeless people). I hope you’ll consider introducing some non-standard courses as your children get older and form concrete interests.

I hope that your children learn to love learning. Even more so, I hope they grow to respect that, rather than just teaching them “stuff”, you are teaching them to be learners. Most importantly, I hope on days where kids start to wear you down and it may seem like too much work, too much time, too much money, or just too much, that you can know it’s worth it. Someday your kids will truly appreciate that you taught them how to learn and that you’ll gain a special bond with your kids that lasts far beyond the school years because of it. Even if you don’t stick with home-schooling long term, I’m sure your kids will thank you for this experience and be enriched because of it! Best of Luck!

Amy,
I’m so excited you’re listening to that still, small voice even though it terrifies you 🙂 I know you’ll be blessed in whatever God calls your family to. I have a preschool curriculum I’m writing. Let me know if you want to preview a week. Warning that it make put you over the edge excited about homeschooling though 🙂

Melissa

Our favorite part is having so much flexibility with our schedule. My hubby’s job is a rotating shift with a week off each month, so we plan all of our field study trips during that week. Not to mention discounts on traveling during the “off” season…hehe!

Deut. 6:4-7 commands parents to teach them from when they get up to when they lie down! So for us there is no other choice.

Very happy for your family and many blessings!