Last week I met a woman in a survey group who slipped me a note asking if she could contact me about homeschooling.  She has 2 young boys, and is considering taking on this adventure.  I gave her my e-mail address, and she sent me some questions that she had.  I know nothing more about her except that she also often buys bagged salads for her family.  (The group was being asked about Dole Salads.)  I decided that although my response to her was quite lengthy I would post it on here. 

Here were her questions:

1) Why do you homeschool? Religious Beliefs, Concerns for public school, Ease of having children home...
2) What curriculum do you use?
3) What age do you start homeschooling?
4) What do you do for gym and extracurricular activities?

Here was my long-winded response:

My husband and I are Christians.  We both know that homeschooling is something that God desires for our family.  I say that we both know because not all couples agree on the issue, and this makes the homeschool experience even more difficult.  When we have hard days (and they do come) I can fall back on 2 things: 1) If God desires it for me, then He will provide the strength to accomplish it.  2) Because my husband supports my efforts, he is often the source of strength that God provided.  He will often take over teaching when my daughter and I don't seem to be communicating properly.  He can be much more effective with her at times. 

I also am not happy with the public school system.  I think they would do my children an injustice.  I truly feel that they are teaching socialism, and training them how to follow that system.  I feel that the school system would be teaching my kids how to waste time (i.e. line up, bathroom break for everyone – whether you have to go or not, etc.).  I hate that if my child didn’t understand something the class (or teacher) wouldn’t wait for him.  I hate that if my child does understand something she couldn’t move on to the next “chapter.”  I hate that there’s a 30:1 ratio (or worse).  I said public school system, but all of this is true in a private school as well.  I don’t want my children exposed to other children’s problems.  The last time I was in our local elementary school building I heard the school counselor talking to a teacher about how a little girl was very obviously being abused at home.  Our little neighbor boy is beat up every day for his lunch money.  We don’t live in a bad area!  My kids don’t need that stress.

Finally, I love my kids!  I love their personalities.  I adore their imaginations.  I think they are really cool kids.  I like being around them.  I like playing with them and teaching them.  I have many friends who can’t wait for their kids to go off to school.  They hate the summer break.  I have never felt that way.  In fact, we don’t quit learning in the summer.  This year we did a “unit study” on bees.  In the spring my kids decided they were scared of bees, so we decided to learn about them.  By the end of the summer we were amazed by the little creatures.  Instead of running from them my kids were looking for them.  (If they're not fuzzy, they're not bees!)  We would watch them on the flowers – how they used their legs, how hard they would work, how many flowers they visited.  We now appreciate our honey (we buy local honey now because it helps reduce allergies – learned that this year!).  And we are careful not to kill bees (One bee makes about 1/8 teaspoon of honey.)  We need all the bees we can keep if we want to keep eating honey. 

I love the freedom homeschooling allows our family.  We’ve been to Gettysburg to learn more about our country.  That was one huge field trip!  We make life our school.  My daughter wrote about our experience.  My sons drew about it.  My daughter learned how to scrapbook with the pictures we took there.  They figured out on a map where we were compared to where we live.  The boys counted things.  My daughter also worked on subtraction.  How many men gave up their lives for our country?  We climbed hills.  We discovered different animals that live in PA compared to our state.  We heard music from that time period.  We looked at artwork.  We visited the National Cemetery.  We read the Gettysburg Address.  We did all of this as a family.  We covered every single school subject, and never sat at a desk.  That’s how we like to learn, and how we learn best.  But my daughter also loves worksheets, so I’d give her a few to do – for the fun of it.  Yes, she thinks learning is fun!  Imagine that!  J

We began homeschooling when my daughter was around 2.  http://www.brightervision.com/ was so fun for us.  We really enjoyed what they sent us.  We also used http://www.letteroftheweek.com/index.html .  This is such a fun, well-put-together learning curriculum.  And, of course, free is great! 

When my daughter was in Kindergarten 2 years ago I followed a curriculum by Ann Ward called Learning at Home.  I took out of it what I wanted to.  I skipped the parts she didn’t need work on.  We enjoyed it.  A friend of mine tried it the same year and abandoned it rather quickly.  It didn’t suit her.  She went to Abeka and loved it.  She still uses it.  It's fun to find what suits your family.  Since then we’ve been very eclectic.  I beat myself up my daughter’s first grade year.  I purchased Sonlight’s curriculum – used.  My daughter didn’t like it – the reading seemed beyond her.  She could read the words, but not comprehend the stories.  That frustrated her.  I thought it was terrible that we were changing in the middle of the year.  My husband reminded me that that was one of the beauties of homeschooling.  We got to fit school around our children.  That changed my perspective tremendously.  I decided to keep that curriculum even though I wasn’t using it for her.  She’s the oldest of 5 children.  Who knows what the other kids will need to use?

Currently we are using http://www.sonlight.com/ .  We did take a break, though, because my daughter is into horses.  A friend is giving her riding lessons.  We decided to study horses.  So, our history, reading, language arts, science, and handwriting are all based around horses.  (When I said “unit study” earlier this is what I meant by that.)  Sonlight covers our language arts, history, reading, and Bible.  We use library books for science (we like experiments!).  I like http://www.hwtears.com/ for handwriting.  I love http://www.mathusee.com/ for math, and can’t say enough about it!  I really like http://www.drawyourworld.com/ for art, and we also experience a lot of art appreciation.  I was a Music Ed. Major in college, so music comes easily to us.  For younger kids PE is fairly simple.  My kids love getting out one of Daddy’s 4x4’s and learning to balance.  My 4-yr-old has recently learned to hop on one foot all through the house.  Jump rope, relay races (with no winner, just learning teamwork), animal walks (I never knew a 3-yr-old could actually project himself on the floor like a snake!), Simon Says, Twister (with a twist – you have to jump or hop to the color), Dancing to Music (We’ve made up quite a few good moves, and I’m glad we don’t have close neighbors because the kids like to do this one out on the deck!), trampoline jumping (for literally hours!), kicking balls back and forth, racing the dog, throwing balls (or even big stones – my husband competes in Scottish Highland Games).  I used to worry about PE.  But I’ve learned that if you don’t use the television or video games as a babysitter the kids will develop their own imaginations, and love using their bodies.  (This is not to say that I haven’t done this before.  After my third child I was so sleep deprived that I would turn on PBS in the morning.  They would watch while I slept.  My daughter would wake me up every half hour to tell me what was coming on next.)  I’ve never seen my kids spend more than 5 minutes willingly on the couch unless they were listening to stories, asleep or sick.  My daughter has taken dance through a community center.  We’ve done gymnastics through a homeschool group.  The YMCA has homeschool gym classes.  And, of course, there are community sports teams if you want to go that route.

Most people who think they couldn’t do it don’t realize what a joy it really is.  I adore the “aha!” moment on my kid’s faces when they understand something.  And I love teaching my kids how to research when they ask me a question I don’t know the answer to.

I actually went on longer, but cut out some of it for here.  I would love to know if anyone else has anything they would have added.