Information, Books and Web Sites
and when he is old, he will not depart from it. --Proverbs 22:6
Many parents are turning to homeschooling for their children.
And believe me, if I can do it, so can you. If you are interested
in learning more about homeschooling and how to get started,
here is a list of books that you can probably get at your local library.
- A Survivor's Guide to Homeschooling, Luanne Shackelford & Susan White
- The How & Why of Home Schooling, Ray E. Ballman
- Anyone Can Homeschool, Terry Dorian & Zan Peters Tyler
- Teaching Children, A Curriculum Guide, Diane Lopez
- For the Children's Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (*Highly Recommend)
- The Way Home, Mary Pride
- All The Way Home, Mary Pride
- The Big Book of Home Learning, Vol. I-IV, Mary Pride
- Beyond Survival, A Guide to Abundant-Life Homeschooling, Diana Waring
My homeschooling adventure began six years ago. This is my sixth year teaching my two daughters, ages 11 and 8. I started when my oldest daughter was to begin first grade.
My original reasons for homeschooling are far from the reasons why I continue to do it today. I began homeschooling because I didn't feel right about sending my daughter off to school all day while I was at home. If I was going to be a stay-at-home mom, I wanted to stay home "to be with my children." Homeschooling has been wonderful for us and our family relationships. I enjoy spending time with my daughters and I know they are close because they spend so much time with each other. They don't get along ALL the time and have the typical sibling clashes, but we use those times to especially focus on character training and looking at their own actions, not the other's.
For me, I look at homeschooling my children as a "season". I want to be the one to raise them, I want to be the main influence in their life (not their peers) and I want to be the one that chooses what they learn and when. Only I can tailor my child's education to their own personal needs and interests.
As I said, my original reasons for homeschooling have changed over the past six years. I originally began to homeschool because I wanted to share in my children's day and I wanted to have control over what they were learning. I also wanted to pass along my values and religious beliefs to them and, in my opinion, they were not going to get this moral training/education in the public school system. In the beginning, our homeschool resembled a "school". But over the past couple of years, we have begun to look less like a "school" and more like a family living, loving and learning together.
I began homeschooling with a set curriculum. There are many wonderful curriculums available to homeschooling families and they are especially good for beginning homeschoolers who are not yet confident in their teaching abilities and what direction to take. I gained so much confidence that first year in my abilities and my children's abilities. Over the course of time, though, I have begun to move away from set curriculums and more towards a natural learning approach, not only for my children, but also for myself. I have begun to love learning again and this is what I want to pass along to my children, a love of learning.
I can see my children's own personal areas of interests blossoming, I see them growing up before my eyes and becoming more self-confident and responsible and I know that they enjoy learning for the sake of "knowing", simply because they want to know. How many times a day do you hear, "Mom, what's this mean?" or "Mom, where does this or that live?" I love to hear my children asking questions. It shows they have a healthy thirst for knowledge and they want to learn. Too often we stomp out that burning desire to learn with boring fill-in-the blank questions and pointless tests. I would rather see my children draw a picture and write a story about what they learned so that it will become "their own" knowledge.
For more on this approach of learning, please visit the web site below featuring articles by Marilyn Howshall. Her writings will make you think and challenge you to look at your child's education the way God intended it to be.
I have also put together a page of links to many homeschooling web sites. These web sites are vendor/catalog sites selling homeschool curriculums, homeschooling magazines, educational sites and other family web pages about homeschooling.
Click here for my Homeschooling Links Page
Our homeschool continues to change from year to year. Our schedule is never the same as the previous year because there are different subjects and areas of interest to pursue and my children's needs change from year to year. That is what I love about homeschooling, the flexibility (not to mention the uninterrupted hours with my girls).
I felt called by God to homeschool my children and it was the best thing that ever happened to us. There are difficult days, days where everything goes wrong and our basic routine is thrown right out the window, but that's okay. I take those days in stride and rest in the knowledge that tomorrow is another day to be blessed and try again.
If you are a homeschooling family, God bless you. If you are not a homeschooling family, God bless you. *smile* Homeschoolers are not perfect and our children are not perfect. After all, God is not even done with me yet, let alone my young children, so we are all still learning in this beautiful world so lovingly created by our Heavenly Father.
God bless you and your family.
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