Almost since my son was born I've played with the idea of homeschooling. I have always hated public schools and every year it gets worse. Between the government, lessening of family values, violence/bullying and the lack of one on one help available to students it just gets worse.
At 4 I decided to enroll him (Cayden) into our headstart program. I'm glad I did, I think he benefited from the social and instructional interactions. I was still playing with the idea of homeschooling but at this point was leaning toward public school simply because I did not think I could homeschool him successfully. I didn't believe I had the patience and was worried that it would harm our mother/son relationship. Cade and I are very close. I'm a single (and rather over-protective) mom. I think he was almost 4 before I finally had to leave him with a friend to be babysat so that I could meet at an appointment. Before that the only time he was away from me was a few hours with his dad here and there. I love our closeness and was afraid to jeopardize that.
So we registered for kindergarten and he started last fall. He seemed to be doing well. Of course he's an intelligent child ;-) but he's never liked writing and drawing/coloring. I found myself having to put in extra time working with him on writing. Not only were we working well together, but he started to excel again. I started wondering once again if I could successfully teach my own child. I mean, if I am going to need to reteach him at home, why not just do it all to begin with?
Flexible schedule, control over what and how he is taught, him being able to learn in whatever style he learns best instead of being a drone and expected to learn a certain way and only that way, the list just gets bigger and bigger. Once again I felt that pull to homeschool. Now, I know a handful of people that have homeschooled, my own niece graduated homeschool, so it wasn't a totally foreign subject to me, but I had a lot of questions. I called upon one of our old family friends that successfully homeschooled her twins right through graduation. By the time I left her house I was pretty sure that this is what I wanted to do. This is what both my son and I needed.
Let me tell you a little about my son. He is truly an awesome kid. Loving, sensitive, funny and usually just a pleasure to be around. (Like every kid, he has his moments, but they are few are far between. lol) He doesn't ever throw a fit about going to school, has never cried to stay home, but he isn't crazy about going. Even though he usually gets between 9-10 hours of sleep a night it is a chore to get him up in the morning. (He comes by it naturally. I have NEVER been a morning person. My internal clock prefers nights to days, that's just always how it's been, even when I had to work the dreaded 6am start time.) I get to hear 'I don't want to go to school, I'll be tired.'
I sat him down and had a discussion about homeschooling with him, what it entailed and the fact he wouldn't be seeing his classmates. The fact that it wasn't just staying at home playing, that he still had to sit down- do book work and all that schooling entails. At the end I asked him if he still was interested and he was determined he wanted to be homeschooled.
So I made up my mind and started my research. I have to honestly say the book I found the most helpful was 'Homeschooling for Dummies'. Trying to figure out New York State laws have been a bit frustrating, but luckily, I know I have a few people I can reach out to for help with the IHIP if I need it.
The next question was curriculum and teaching style. I don't want to 'school at home' I want to homeschool. I want him to learn by living. And we need to do it on a rather tight budget. One thing I learned already is if you are willing to utilize your library and have a support group, homeschooling can be done rather inexpensively. I decided I wanted to try the 'Learn at Home' all in one curriculum. For the most part the reviews I've read are pretty good and it has all the required subjects. (Of course supplemental material will be needed.)
Today I made the decision to order the kindergarten level of the curriculum (I bought it cheap on ebay used condition) and depending on whether I think I can make the curriculum work for the last 3 months we may start after Easter vacation. I'm thinking this will be the best way to determine if homeschooling is going to be a good fit and whether the curriculum is going to work for us. So now, the adventure begins...
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