Homeschooling

Erik and I made the very weighty decision to homeschool Xander this year. I have always wanted to. What brought us to this decision now, on top of having all the resources we need to do so, we also want to have more family flexibility. If (or when) Erik needs to go away to work on another contract, we can sometimes accompany him. It opens up broader horizons for Erik's work opportunities. His emphasis is on providing well for our family and not necessarily "career growth." But homeschooling means we don't have to worry about what time of year it is if we need to go somewhere else and we don't have to worry about the quality of the nearest school if we move.

Xander at first said he wanted to stay home for school. (He gets lots of play time during the summer and not so much during the school year.) Then he said he wanted to try first grade at the school first. Unfortunately, this is not his decision, and we didn't want to switch approaches mid-year if possible. We have not sat him down to tell him our final decision yet, although we have been discussing things that can happen in homeschooling. For example, on the district's first day of school, we can attend the area homeschool group's Not Back to School party at a large pool.

I am loving the idea of having all choices open for education, field trips, traveling, etc. It is daunting to think of all the things he might miss: (possibly) more people to invite to his birthday parties, Valentine's Day class parties, group P.E., group recess, teachers who are not his mom, and on and on. But we will be able to do scores more field trips with him than the school does and we will bring him to park and playground meet-ups as often as possible. We plan on another structured group as well - we're not sure which one yet. We've thought about scouts, chess groups, YMCA sports, martial arts, and more.

After I called the school to inform them (and they were friendly and fabulous as usual), I cried. I prayed that I would not ever shortchange my kids and that I would be the best I could be for their sakes. I am a product of traditional schooling and I do love the fall start-up-school routine and the structure of brick-and-mortar schools. Plus we all love our local elementary school even if we see some drawbacks. However, my memories of every single year of public school are mixed, positive with negative. I don't think I learned as much as I could have. Sports were very important to me. These days it is very easy to get kids involved with sports even when they are homeschooled. I hope that when the kids are high school age they will be allowed to play on the public school teams if they choose to. Who knows? We may not be homeschooling then.

Those public school drawbacks I mentioned? These are the ones I can think of:

• almost no flexibility for students taking time off school
• Xander has to get up way too early for good functioning - he ends up being way more cheerful and cooperative during summer and school vacations due to more sleep and less constant stimulation
• some not-so-great peer influences, though we didn't have any major problems
• one field trip per year
• art, music, and theater arts were only one semester each

I have many specific ideas for structure and curriculum. What we are also trying to focus on right now is getting social opportunities lined up. Those are very important to Xander and to us. It seems like everything we do as a family and almost everything we do during leisure time is educational, so although I want structure, we are not so worried about getting the academics covered.

We are pondering the best way to present this decision to Xander. One thing we know is that it has to be presented as Mom and Dad's decision which is a done deal. There will be perks for him, I think. Just one example is that I think we can do academics in three hours a day, which leaves the whole afternoon open.

So that's our latest big deal. There are lots of big decisions happening right now. I'll talk about others in another post.

I am excited to homeschool and I believe Xander will thrive. He can go back to public school next year very easily at this age, if we really don't think it went well after this year.