The house is quiet...the kiddos are napping. I'm taking a break from writing code for the programming class I'm taking. That's why I haven't blogged in a while. It seems that when I have time to get on the computer, there is always work to be done!
We are finally all well! For about three weeks at least on of us had a cold..that includes me. I thought moms were immune to sickness. At least my mom was! It was a rough cold season for all of us, except Kayleigh. I guess she got it all out of her system last year ( she ended up with pneumonia last January). I contracted two different colds this year and that's two more that normal. William has been sick since about the beginning of December, but he's finally getting better. He had two bloody noses last week, so the doctor put him on a stronger antibiotic and that seems to have taken care of everything. I'm hoping he is like Kayleigh and just has one bad year!
On to other happenings!
Since Kayleigh was born I have been throwing around the idea of homeschooling my children. At first I thought I would just do it until about 4th grade, but I think I am now leaning towards going through middle school. It's a little bit of selfishness on my part...I want to have more time with my children. Five years just doesn't seem long enough! Plus, I want to be the one who sees them light up at understanding something for the first time, or share in their excitement about a favorite subject. Maybe I'm romanticizing the experience a little. And maybe, once I start I'll realize I only want to do it for a little while. It's bit scary to think I'll be the one responsible for teaching them...there's a lot out there to learn. I'm finding out, however, there is so much support out there for homeschooling parents. Kayleigh still has over two years before she would start kindergarten, so there's lots of time for research! Although I think I am leaning towards the classical style of homeschooling.
3 comments:
It's a good thing to be thinking through now instead of two years from now so you can have some time to do what's the most loving thing for you children regarding education. I know plenty of parents who waited WAY too late to start thinking about it.
You might know that we did two weeks of public kindergarten before we were sure that homeschooling was right for us. The biggest thing was that at 5, we felt like we should still be the most influential people in his life. With a full day K program, we weren't. His teachers and classmates spent more time with him than we did. I've seen parents lose all authority with their children in K. One friend's daughter argued with her for hours that Leprachauns do exist because her K teacher said so and she simply didn't believe her mom when she said otherwise :(.
We use the classical approach, with one exception: we decided not to teach history from the beginning and started instead with American history. The article that lead to this decision can be found at www.bfbooks.com ("when to teach early history" or something like that). You've probably already found the Well Trained Mind, but if you haven't, it's a great resource for classical education. We'll be using their language arts book next year. Good luck!!
Maintaining our influence in their lives is one of the main values driving me to homeschool.
Right now I'm looking at Sonlight Curriculum for history and literature until they are in 3rd and 5th grade. After that I think Tapestry of Grace is next on my list. I was going to use The Story of the World by Susan Baur, but I wanted a Christian based history program. There's a curriculum fair in Arlington in May, so I plan to look at a bunch of stuff there!
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