Looking Forward
What are your goals for home education? What do you hope to instill in your children? Are you planning any changes to how you educate your children?
This is the last installment for Home Education Week 2008. Before I begin, I wanted to say how grateful I am to all of you who have visited my blog this week and left a comment. It has been very encouraging.
Many thanks to Dana for hosting this event. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the posts of other participants and getting to know other homeschooling mothers. It was a real treat!
Now on to today’s post....
Our Goals of Home Education (and what we want to instill in our children):
My husband and I want our children to be truth seekers. We want them to know how to think critically, how to figure things out. Our hope is that they will not swallow the lies of the world, but look at life through God’s lense.
To help achieve this we want to give them a strong Biblical foundation rather than the unbiblical one they would receive in public school.
We hope to instill in them a love of learning. If a child desires to learn and knows how...they have most of what they need right there.
We want to prepare them for real life. Many who are misinformed about homeschooling think this is not possible with homeschooling. But I beg to differ...
When I moved out of my parents home, at 18 years old, I didn’t know how to balance a checkbook, clean, cook, or run a home. I learned (and am still learning) through trial and error, reading and asking questions. I hope to prepare my daughter in such a way that when she leaves home she will know these things.
All I could cook was scrambled eggs in the microwave and shortbread biscuits (cookies) - she already knows quite a bit more than that and she is 6 years old. My hope is that she will be a God-fearing, confident young women who knows how to do things necessary for every day life and beyond. Because she is home with me all day, we have the time to do such things, and that right there is one of the greatest blessings of homeschooling.
We want to develop a strong family bond.
I heard someone ( I think it was Lorrie Flem) say that parents have the opportunity to raise their future best friends. How we train our children shapes who they will be. For example, if we don’t teach them how to work hard, they will most likely have a weak work ethic as an adult. If we allow them to be disrespectful, they will probably be a disrespectful adult who has a had time keeping a job or a friend.
We are striving to train our children to be good citizens, loving people, helpful people, people we would want to know. Please note that I say “striving”. We are not experts, and get things wrong OFTEN! I don’t want to come across as a know-it-all, because I most certainly do not know it all.
There are many other goals, but I think many of them can fit into the above categories (if they don’t, this post is going to get very long).
Future Changes in how we Home Educate:
Right now we are trying to implement a Charlotte Mason style education. I think we will always have some of this method in our home. But they may be some changes....
I don’t know what the changes will be yet...I am leaning toward doing more unit studies. Spriitbee certainly peaked my interest in Konos curriculum.
Perhaps as my confidence grows as a mother and home educator, I will feel less like I need help from curriculum. Time will tell.
One of the greatest changes I need to make is to set aside a chunk of planning and preparation time each week. I can only imagine what a great benefit this would be to our home and school.
That’s all from me today ( I think I’m coming down with something and my brain is a little foggy...)
Visit Principled Discovery to see what others are looking forward to. |
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