Sometimes you just have to quit researching, close your eyes, and jump in!
In this past week we made two education decision leaps--one being to homeschool the kids this fall, and the other being for me to finally pick a major and college, and get the ball rolling on my own education! I know, I'm crazy, right? I'm going to be a student, and teach my kids too?
Luckily it'll just be pre-K (or K-4) for them, and I'm pretty sure I can handle that. They're in the last year they can do at their church preschool, but with a late fall birthday they miss the state's age cutoff for kindergarten, so I've got kind of a "filler" year to launch the great homeschool experiment.
Why homeschool?
Our other options are the local elementary school (about 25 minutes away) or a private church school (about 40-45 minutes away). Ironically, we just went through a weeklong teacher walkout, and although our elementary district is the best in the county, a friend whose older child went there said even they had issues with overcrowding and constantly changing priorities. Mainly, our own research on Common Core turned us off on it. Plus the school bus doesn't go past our house until 4:30 PM, because we're way out at the edge of the county line, so the idea of the kiddos getting up at the crack of dawn and spending 3 hours a day on a bus, on top of the time they spend at school, isn't appealing. Especially on days like this one...
To get an idea of how the wind is blowing, look at the bird feeders
Nixing the private school came down to the cost (not sustainable long term on our current income) and the fact they have no bus service, so that's ~3 hours a day I'd spend on the road shuttling them back and forth. And that school uses the same curriculum (A Beka Book) that I experienced in private high school, and maybe it was just my particular school maxing it out, but the homework load was freaking crippling!! And I've also heard the homework complaints from my friends whose kids are in the public schools.
I mean, I might as well homeschool to begin with, considering either way I'd be doing it with their homework anyway, and cut out all the transportation and classroom time. Plus, the overall flexibility is probably the most appealing factor, since all our family lives elsewhere and we like to travel.
I was homeschooled myself from 5th-7th grade and well remember getting my schoolwork done within a couple hours and having the rest of the day free to play. We'd be sledding down the hill behind our house when the school bus rolled along. It was glorious!
Ha, I hung onto my favorite books from my homeschool days. My siblings got use out of them too.
As for me, I've got a GI Bill to take advantage of, and have long wanted to get a "more useful" degree with it. I got my BA in History before I joined the military, and other than earning some partial scholarships, I paid for the whole thing myself by working while going to school. (No better way to appreciate your schooling and put a lot of effort into it, than to write that tuition check yourself out of your own checking account that you spent hours behind a customer service desk to accumulate, lol.) I also had a very particular job in mind when I ultimately chose History, which didn't pan out...no matter, the military was a great experience instead. But now I'm looking for something with a wider range of job opportunities.
Earning my next education experience :)
I'm circling back around to what I picked to study in my first year of college: writing. I've applied to a college with a solid online degree program and intend to go for Communications with a concentration in Professional Writing. I love professional/business writing and editing. In the military, whenever I read government publications, I'd be noting how they could have been written better to be more understandable :)))
Steemit has been a huge factor in making that decision, because it's simply gotten me into writing again! The more I do it, the more I've been enjoying it!
That's the latest news! All I have to do now is complete the application process for my school, and decide which curriculum to use for my kiddos. I lean toward A Beka because it's a known quantity, though I've seen folks recommend going with a different curriculum for just the math. As a student, I did hate how A Beka taught math. Anybody using Bob Jones or Sonlight (or anything else comparable) that would care to weigh in with their experience?