Homeschooling Update

It's been a little while since I did a homeschooling update, and since there have been some pretty substantial changes (well, one major one, anyway) it seems high time.

Since the beginning of the month my son has, more or less, been attending the local public school.  It's come as no less of a shock to me than to anyone else, really.  The reasons are many and varied, but the biggest one was that we've always said that we would give him the best education for HIM, and that in fact his education was not for us in any way, but for his benefit, and stemming from that we would re-evaluate our decision to home school him each year and decide whether that was the best decision for him and his own personal educational journey each time.  We had a great year at home and I do truly believe that it was the best education for him this year, but for several reasons David and I had begun wondering if next year should be in the public school system.  We decided to enroll him in school for the last month in order to get a better feeling for what was involved and how the system worked and if the boy thrived or not and just get more information all 'round to make our decision for next year.

There are some incredible benefits to homeschooling, and I'm learning that there are some very real benefits to public school as well.  Probably the biggest one is simply that that's where all the kids are, which should have been more obvious to me before but there you are.  My son is so, so, social and just wants to be with others so much of the time that it's been a challenge for me to figure out how to accommodate this need.  I've tried integrating into the homeschooling community, but with the exception of a few playdates and one field trip I've found it hard - we live quite far away from the central hub of homeschooling families.  The boy is my oldest child, so I'm in uncharted waters when it comes to kindergarten-aged friendships and how they work and how to foster them.  Our church is too small for a children's ministry so we send our son on Tuesday nights to another church in a different town to attend a children's Bible club, but friendships haven't seemed to stem from that.  He also attends a vacation Bible school in the summer at the same church.  It's just all been a bit of a shock to me, how hard it is to find another child for my child to play with.  So for that reason I will say that public school has been a relief.

David and I have agreed not to make any final decisions about school until the end of the month, but I think we can safely say we've enjoyed the experiment, but we're getting a little tired of it.  Public school is a lot of work!  There are constant reams of paper coming home and you have to plan your entire day around the time you drop the child off and pick them up.  The spontaneity is absolutely at an all time low in the house.  To go grocery shopping (which is an hour away) I either have to excuse the boy from school, or make this mad dash in between the time I drop him off and pick him up and hope the school doesn't call or the car doesn't break down and so forth.  Clara and Lillian both miss their brother and now THEY have no one to play with either.  He's so tired when he comes home, and crabby, and we all seem to get sick a lot more as well and he's eating less at his lunchtime.  I have to be on the ball with lunches now as never before because he can't just have some reheated leftover shepherd's pie like he would if he was home; he needs an actual packed (peanut free) lunch.

There are pluses and minuses, as I knew there would be and I was prepared for it.  Actually, I was prepared for a lot worse so I've been pleasantly surprised.  And the downsides are almost all about us, as a family, not about the school.  The school does its job well and orderly, but we may not fit into their mold as nicely as others do, I don't know.  Maybe we've been marching to our own drum for too long.

I have continued to look at homeschooling options for the fall on the chance that we decide to opt out of school for another year.  This past month has been such an eye-opener for me in terms of curriculum choices; I think I finally understand where a lot of my frustration with schooling was coming from - I didn't need to do less, I needed to do MORE!  I was so influenced by the gentle Charlotte Mason style approach to early learning that I ignored my own desire for structure and checklists - I realize now that I need to figure out a way to teach that also honours my teaching style, not just my children's learning style.  I've made some tentative curriculum choices for next year in case we need them, and they are all quite a bit more structured than anything we used this past year.  I've also been listening to what my son talks about all the time regarding school - mostly this seems to be playing outside and using the computers.  If that's what he likes, then that's what we'll do, too.  If we keep homeschooling we'll have a dedicated educational game time on the computer and we're going to have to get everyone outside more somehow, even with the whining toddler and the baby who puts everything in her mouth and can't go on the ground.  We'll figure it out.

Ultimately, that's the thing, isn't it?  You figure it out as you go along.  You have your children's best interests at heart, you use your adult mind to work around the problems and come up with solutions, you take suggestions from the troops, and you keep on.