{"id":52,"date":"2010-03-28T03:33:42","date_gmt":"2010-03-28T03:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/?page_id=52"},"modified":"2011-10-28T07:11:38","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T14:11:38","slug":"home-education","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/?page_id=52","title":{"rendered":"Home Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Educate our Kids at Home?<\/h1>\n

(Or, “Why on earth are you STILL doing that<\/em>?!”)<\/h3>\n

It all started the summer our oldest was\u00a05.\u00a0 His friends’ parents were all lined up to jockey for position in the top kindergartens in the community we\u00a0lived in.\u00a0 They were chatting about how this school offered full days or day care options,\u00a0how another popular school offered exceptional art and music, or how\u00a0yet another one would allow their child to learn the most about their faith and culture.\u00a0 But try as I might, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we hadn’t found the right thing for James yet.<\/p>\n

Somehow God began reminding me of a girl I went to school with in early elementary.\u00a0 Her parents were practicing\u00a0 Jeh*vah’s W*tness,\u00a0and I am not sure if that contributed to their pulling her out of our small town public school or if there was another reason, but they had chosen to homeschool her.\u00a0 Another family that we knew (the aunt and uncle of my best friend) had chosen to homeschool all along and after babysitting for them a couple of times with my friend, I remember thinking that these kids had something about them that was really attractive.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At the time that we were researching schools,\u00a0our pastor’s wife had invited me over to try and answer some of the many questions I would ask her after\u00a0church\u00a0(I know\u00a0\u00a0I must have driven her a little crazy with my neurotic hounding!).\u00a0 <\/em>I came away with such a deep sense of peace.\u00a0 I could<\/em> relinquish the fear of failure and my desire to blend in with my peers.\u00a0 My son would turn out alright!<\/p>\n

Now came the tough part.\u00a0\u00a0 I had to get Stephen on board.<\/p>\n

I’ve learned a lot since those days.\u00a0 I now realize that the best way to get into God’s will and to follow through with where he is leading me, is to truly let.Him.do.the.leading!\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 That’s it.\u00a0 However, as I say, I hadn’t quite figured that out yet.<\/p>\n

I came home from my visit with our pastor’s wife armed with a cassette tape of a talk given by Chris Klicka of the H*S*L*D*A and a determination that this was the way that our son should be educated.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, Stephen wasn’t half as startled as I had expected.\u00a0 He was tired that night, but he listened to the tape and then he heard me rattle off everything I’d learned.<\/p>\n

The clincher was when we began talking about the fact that homeschooling would give us a continuation of that much loved interaction with our son even through his early learning.<\/p>\n

We didn’t know how long we’d continue with our little experiment, but we knew enough to give it a try!<\/p>\n

Each fall family and friends and the general public in whichever community we happened to be residing in, would ask us, “Are you going to continue homeschooling this year?”\u00a0 It was usually asked with much tact, but I could tell that there were concerns.\u00a0 How could it possibly be good for our son and then our daughter, and now our sons and daughters, to be sequestered away from the norm, from other children, from the schools?<\/p>\n

And each year we prayed.\u00a0 And each year He answered.<\/p>\n

A few Septembers back though, I read something that challenged me more deeply in this area.<\/p>\n

Every year I would wrap up our checklists and our required learning outcomes for the year, as outlined by our province.\u00a0 I would stress and fight and stew and worry and by the end of it you could stick a fork in me – I was D.O.N.E.<\/p>\n

Can you say “burn out”?<\/p>\n

Anyway, through what I read (and boy do I wish I had known what a significance it would have on my life – I should have saved it!), I was made aware of the fact that what we were doing was not living by faith.\u00a0 Not even by half.\u00a0 Instead, every year, with many nerves, I would set off on our journey to educate our children, “Just one more year and then we’ll see…”.\u00a0 When really, He had done all the calling that He needed to!\u00a0 And rather than living like Gideon and throwing out that fleece again and again, I needed to keep on in what He has called me to and persevere in it!\u00a0 “Running the race”, as Paul called it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Suddenly that huge burden was lifted from my shoulders.\u00a0 I could finally rest<\/em> in His plan for each of my kids.<\/p>\n

For us, that looks like this.<\/p>\n

We pulled our kids out of the government supervised edcuation system (in our province we have a type of public school at home \/ distance ed \/online program that allows parents to be the child’s instructor while still remaining accountable to the government).\u00a0 Instead, we have chosen to accept full legal responsibility for our chidren’s education by registering our intent to do so with the Ministry of Education here in our province.<\/p>\n

We began praying for and over our kids in a new way.\u00a0 Each of our kids have unique learning needs and it was incredibly overwhelming to supervise and administer therapies and still be able to check off requirement lists from the Ministry of Education.\u00a0 We\u00a0began to trust that God knew what they needed to know before they became adults in their own right and that that might look different for each one of them.\u00a0 Suddenly it wasn’t just about curricula any more.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0finally when we had a sense of what each child was about again (That’s what summer time\u00a0is\u00a0really<\/em> all about\u00a0for me.), we took a look at where they had left off in their traditional book work and we moved on from there.<\/p>\n

And that’s it!<\/p>\n

Does my Type A, box checker self\u00a0love this new way of thinking?\u00a0 No. Do I sometimes call up a loved one and gripe and complain about how the whole bunch of them are driving me crazy?\u00a0\u00a0Oh yeah.\u00a0 Is it worth it for the sense of peace that\u00a0comes from knowing we are doing what He wants for\u00a0us and for our kids?\u00a0 Absolutely.<\/p>\n

And I guess that is how I want to close this long\u00a0introduction to our journey with homeschooling.\u00a0 I don’t believe that God has a mandate for every child to come home for their education. It’s not that cut and dried.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0do however\u00a0think that those of us who love and serve Him need to give\u00a0Him the opportunity to speak into our lives\u00a0about the way that we will educate our kids.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0promise, no matter the answer, the peace will be worth it!<\/p>\n

And now for something that made me chuckle..<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Educate our Kids at Home? (Or, “Why on earth are you STILL doing that?!”) It all started the summer our oldest was\u00a05.\u00a0 His friends’ parents were all lined up to jockey for position in the top kindergartens in the community we\u00a0lived in.\u00a0 They were chatting about how this school offered full days or day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}