Homeschool – Fillingquiver

You can do it!

As the school season gets rolling here I’ve answered a lot of questions about homeschooling. Yes, I school our boys at home, the oldest 4 anyway…Zeb doesn’t know his ABCs yet at 4 months but we’re working on it. (Oh how I wish there was a sarcasm font!)

It seems like lots of people are intrigued by the idea and maybe even toy with it for a time but it often seems as though the conversation ends with the other parent saying one of two things…either she says “I don’t think I could do it, I’m not smart enough!” or “There’s no way I could homeschool…I couldn’t stand my kids for that long!” So here’s what my response is (at least in my head anyway)…
First: We homeschool not to keep the bad influences out or to make our kids academically superior or because we’re afraid of the “real world”. We homeschool because we view it as less about education (although very important) and more about discipleship. We are called to disciple our children at all times and quite frankly when we send them to public school we are allowing someone else to do it. They are often taught values and beliefs that are contrary to our beliefs and the values we believe are important for them to understand before setting off in the “real world” (even in a small school).
Second: I love it. It’s hard absolutely. There are days when I seriously think they might be better off on the big yellow bus going to school because we get frustrated. But the truth is, I know they wouldn’t be. We might have rough days, but the freedom homeschool offers is that we can modify our day, our lesson plans and our teaching methods to meet the needs of each child. Not only that but if all else fails I’ll outsource to dad or someone else who might have a different perspective. Unfortunately, in many public classrooms they just move on because our teachers have a classroom full of children and can’t individualize the education being delivered. (Not because they don’t want to, but because when teaching 35 other children it’s difficult to stop and make it work for one or two).

So back to my response:
Some day I’m going to flippantly say “Well I can tell that you obviously had someone else teach her to walk/talk/think/eat because look at that execution! I mean there is no way a plain old parent could teach their child to walk with such grace!” Okay not really, but seriously…you’ve taught your child so MANY things in the first few years of life why would you ever think you couldn’t teach him? I mean who better to teach your little one than you? You know how this kid thinks better than anyone. You know that he has a particular affinity for the color blue and that he really likes dinosaurs and has memorized most of their names. So why not use those dinosaurs to teach counting, math, science, spelling or English? When my second son was learning his addition facts we were having a miserable time, and I mean miserable! I would write 3+5 = ? Over and over again, and no matter how many times we “built” it with legos, used fingers, toes or whatever he would struggle to grasp the concept of any addition problem. Finally exasperated I sent him to run outside. He has always been very active and we both needed a break, so I asked him to go run a couple laps around our backyard and off he went singing the whole way around the yard. As he was wrapping it up, I asked him to pick up 3 rocks as quick as he could and put them in a circle I drew on the porch. He dropped three rocks in the circle and I asked him to pick up 5 more and put them in a second circle I drew. As he put them down I said “Now quick! How many rocks do you have?” Without missing a beat he said “8”. So I wrote the numbers above the circles. It was a huge breakthrough for us! I could tailor learning to fit what he needed at that moment. For the record, he no longer has to run laps to add but we used a similar concept to subtraction and multiplication.

I have a confession to make…I am miserable at English, Grammar to be specific. I kind of hated it in school. A lot. We didn’t diagram sentences until Junior High and I hated every single minute and once you get past the adjective/adverb territory and in to prepositions…I feel totally lost and my guts wrench. This last year we did a program called Shurley English with the boys, it involved diagramming sentences and parts of speech past adjectives. I.Was.Terrified. to teach it to them. I mean, what if I seriously messed up? And I can’t remember squat from when I was in school. So you know what? I learned it all over again with them. I stayed a day ahead with lessons so I was prepared but we did it together. The beauty of the program itself is that it has the little jingles to help remember parts of speech, it has question and answer flows to learn how to diagram sentences and it makes total sense! Where was this stuff when I was 12?
Some parents think they have to have a Master’s degree in everything to be able to teach their children. First grade teachers are super smart, without a doubt, but few of them have a master’s degree in calculus, literature, history and science. It’s called knowing where to look up the answers and being willing to learn together. So no, I’m not the smartest person around but am I qualified to teach my children? Absolutely! And so are you! And really, when they get old enough for the subjects I know nothing about like say calculus…technology is awesome and they can learn it through a correspondence or online course.

My children do benefit from being accountable to others who may teach them throughout the year, they learn that someone else has expectations too and not just mom. For example, we have a wonderful gal from our church who teaches them art during the week. They have learned that she expects them to sit still and listen too. She gives them instruction and they’re expected to follow those instructions and complete the task. They learn accountability to others. When we lived in Colorado we had a group of homeschool families who got together once or twice a month. The kids might prepare a project to present to the group, write a paper or report to share with someone else. One year I taught a science unit on the human body. I went once a week and taught about a different body system, we did experiments and dissected stuff…it was awesome! I was able to use my in depth knowledge as a nurse and experience to teach the whole group. Another mom put together a music program, while another provided math tutoring. We worked together to give our children the best learning experiences possible. We are still a bit of an oddity here so there aren’t as many homeschooling families, but there are still those experiences out there.

My response to the second statement “I couldn’t stand my kids all day!” is one that gets under my skin more than others. First, they’re your kids! If you can’t stand them then it’s probably a parenting issue. And secondly, if you can’t stand them how do you expect a complete stranger to? I mean really, if your child is so irritating that even you…the one who is supposed to love them unconditionally and all, doesn’t want to be around them…there is more than schooling at issue there and perhaps you should spend some more time around them…training them perhaps and learning to love them.

I do think it’s possible for most parents to homeschool their children. I realize that not every parent feels that conviction (and I don’t expect them to). But don’t NOT homeschool because you don’t think you can, it is possible and YOU CAN DO IT! (Is that grammatically correct? We haven’t made it to that lesson yet…)

Family Vision — Homeschooling

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

⁴ “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! ⁵ You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. ⁶ These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. ⁷You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

We absolutely believe that the best place to teach our children is at home. We are to love the Lord our God with all that we have, we are to teach our children the commandments which God has given us in His holy word. We are to teach them when we sit, walk, lie down and when we rise up. For our family, we believe that the only way we can teach our children diligently is to teach them at home. We believe it’s difficult to do those things if we send our children out of our home to be educated by someone else 8 hours a day.

Before I get too deep into this discussion, I have to first say we come from a family of public educators. In our family, you’re either a nurse or an educator and we have lots of both. Secondly, my husband and I were public schooled and thirdly I think public teachers have very difficult jobs. My goal is not to tell someone why we’re right and they’re wrong in their educational choices, but to tell you why it’s so important to us that it’s become part of our family vision statement.

If our most important goal is that our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren for many generations come to know God, then we should be teaching them as such. My husband and I went to a small public school in Kansas. We were both raised in the church and we went to school with most of the same kids in our youth group, yet the 2 environments were not in unison. We were taught ideas, theories and standards in public school that were contrary to the Christian faith ideas we were being taught at home, Sunday morning and Wednesday night. We were tested and drilled on those ideas, they were presented as fact and were treated as such. When the issue of faith was brought up with was quickly quelled with “separation of church and state” talk or the “I have to teach this to you” argument and it wasn’t discussed. There was no place for reconciliation, no place for harmony.

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When our oldest was ready for kindergarten we sent him to a small Christian school that used to operate in our church. It closed half way through the year and we brought him home to learn. We had read the statistics about how homeschoolers did better on tests and academically than their public schooled counterparts. There are several studies from independent sources that support this, and we thought “well that’s good enough for us”. However, through God’s grace He began to show us that homeschooling is more than just teaching our children at home, but it’s an opportunity for discipleship with our children. It’s an opportunity to come along side them and learn together as a family, teach them our family values and give them the best start possible both academically and spiritually.

Discipleship is modeling and teaching Christians, and our children, the precepts of the Bible; mainly prayer, doctrine, Christian living, and worship. We build these concepts into our daily education with our children. We spend time with them discussing how the principles we’re learning in school apply to biblical principles in life. We integrate it into our studies, our lives and our home.

Proverbs 22:6 says “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” It comes down to goals for your children. What are your goals for when they are old? What kinds of things are you and do you want to train them to do and be? Because what you teach them now will stick around, it will be what they carry with them later. And children will believe what they hear the most often and the loudest. For many those are the messages they get when they’re sitting in a classroom, for some it is the message they receive at home during the school day and for others it’s the message they get watching TV. I assure you though, that they are getting a message.

If you count up the time that is spent in school, let’s say 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 30 weeks a year = 1200 hours of instruction in the public school system per year. Take those 1200 hours x 13 years of school (k-12) means that children are spending just under 16,000 hours under the instruction of someone else (teachers, coaches and peers) other than their parents. That’s 16,000 hours over the course of 18 years that we’re missing the opportunity to disciple them.

If we continue to look at how the rest of the 16 hours a day is spent. The average school aged child gets 9 hours of sleep a day. So now we’re down to 7 hours for the remainder of our time with our children. The average child has between 5 and 7 hours of screen time (computer, TV, phone etc). So that leave about 2 hours per day that the average parent would have to disciple their child if they’re sending them to public school, if that child doesn’t participate in outside activities such as music lessons or sports. It’s difficult to overcome the messages our children are getting with only 2 hours or less a day to disciple our children.

It comes back to what we feel God has called us as parent to teach our children. We have a very serious responsibility to educate the children God has blessed us with. Educating your children is the most important thing you will ever do as a parent. I would encourage you to ask yourself and pray about the following questions:

What are the most important things that you want your children to learn? How do you go about teaching those things? Are you willing to trust that someone else will want your children to learn those same lessons?

No more pencils…no more books…

We are officially done with school for this year! Gabe came down the stairs this morning and said “Mom! Do you know what the best part of today is going to be…No school!” So true son. So true.
But you know…eventhough we didn’t officially have school today, we did a lot of learning. We had a life skills day.
I have had a growing mountain of laundry on my back porch this week. I don’t know why, but it’s seemed just about impossible to get caught up. So we spent our morning sorting, folding and hanging up laundry. We learned several important lessons…1. It’s much easier to hang up shirts if you put the hanger through the neck hole rather than the arm hole. 2. Baby brothers crawling into the laundry basket are cute the first time they do it, but the cuteness wears off each time we have to drag him out. 3. He’s even less cute when he comes along and wipes all the newly folded laundry off the table before we have a chance to put it up. 4. Little boys giggle when they have to touch underwear. 5. 2 year olds giggle when they put underwear on their heads. 6. After said 2 year wears the undies on his head, it’s hard for mommy to get anyone back on track.
So we moved on to sweeping the floor in the kitchen. 1. Yes the floor needs to be swept after each meal. If mom can feel stuff sticking to her feet…it needs swept. 2. Babies are not part of the dirt needing to be swept on the floor. 3. Do not let the baby chew on the bottom of the broom. It’s gross. 4. Either sweep the floor before the laundry basket gets pushed across the floor, or push the basket first. Don’t do them both at the same time. It makes a mess and causes fights. 5. Let the 2 year old help. Even if it means we have to do it again. We’re training him too.
We also hung out laundry this morning…we only learned one major lesson (well mommy really learned it). Don’t set the laundry basket down where ants are trying to build a home. It makes them angry. Pay attention. Although the baby thinks it’s funny when mommy dances around trying to stomp on the ants biting her toes.
We had a great day. And the boys learned something even if we didn’t have school.