Never Say Never...

Hey, Y'all! I thought I'd share on the blog a little about how I ended up homeschooling my kindergartener. And, hopefully, will continue to be able to homeschool for the foreseeable future. I mean, I was a public school teacher. I was a product of public school. I liked school as a kid. My mother, my aunt and my grandmother were public school teachers. What is wrong with public school? And I always thought the only people who homeschooled their kids were wackadoos. Oh boy! How I realize now that was completely wrong! I believed all the stereotypes and myths about homeschooling. It was my own ignorance. I just didn't understand. A few of my experiences with homeschooling did not help. Growing up in my small town, I didn't really know anyone who homeschooled. As a teacher, the few times over the years that I received a new student in my class that was homeschooled they were usually fairly behind academically. One year during a conversation with a parent over her child's frustration with math, the mother said that she didn't like math, so they didn't spend very much time on it. Aw man! For sure, it CAN be done badly, but it doesn't have to be that way. 

So...back when A was a baby, I was perusing Pinterest during a middle of the night nursing session. I came across a blog post that caught my attention. The title was something about 10 being the magic number . The magic number to what I wondered. I read the blog post and was hooked. The blog was Catholic All Year. She had only been blogging for a year, and I started back at the beginning and read every post and continue to do so. She homeschools. She writes about lots of interesting things, AND she writes about homeschooling. I liked her family life. I still never thought I'd do it though, but I think that's when the seed was planted. 

Since then I've read lots of blog posts from a variety of bloggers that have been successful homeschoolers, this book and this book, and I currently listen to a podcast about reading aloud to your kids that I LOVE. 

I know not everyone is able to homeschool or even wants to, but I think God was working on me. I couldn't completely get it out of my mind, and we had tons of conversations about the exciting possibilities. And together we decided this is what was best for our family. In fact, here are 100 reasons why it is good for families. So far, we are really happy with our decision to do it. It seems our kids are pretty happy too.