The pencils are sharp, the curriculum is in place (mostly) and I am actually feeling optimistic about the school year. It must be nearing September.

Thousands of families are starting another year of home schooling and if the Christian Home Educators of Colorado conference in June was any indication, the curriculum options for home educating children have increased significantly. Step aside, Charlotte Mason and Saxon. Move over, Bob Jones. Make way for the hundreds of curricula seeking a family willing to try them.

In addition, there are sports programs, music enrichment classes, special courses, field trips, tutors, support groups, conferences, books and magazines, and all designed with the home educating family in mind. There are programs out there for basketball, soccer, baseball, music, dance, gymnastics, creative writing and scripture memorization. Before we know it, another calendar is crammed to the bursting point.

While we were at the conference this summer, my young son decided to try out his grandparents' treadmill. Everything was fine until he tried adjusting it to get it to slow down a little. In a few short seconds, my son's short legs were struggling to keep up with the belt that was speeding wildly out of control. He called out for help but before anyone could get there, he stumbled and the treadmill spit him off into a bookshelf. My son emerged scraped and bruised, but not broken.

A friend of mine told me the other day that to her, "home schooling means 'slow down'." It means having control over what your family does every day. Yet more and more parents' pound their feet onward to the next activity in a wild effort to take advantage of each opportunity to educate their children.

Some of the most valuable lessons of home schooling don't come in a curriculum. My wife and I learned early on that pushing a schedule becomes counter-productive if you lose sight of the objective of why you home school in the first place. In the future, I'll go into this in detail and give some practical steps on what we can do to further that objective.

• Send to a Friend!