Up until very recently, I had always envisioned sending my kids off to school when they reached the appropriate age. When I was younger, I assumed I would send them to the nearest public school. As I grew older and become more involved in the church, I assumed I would send them to the nearest parochial school. So, how did we end up here: homeschooling?
When Princess was six month old, I was working nearly full-time outside of the home. The cost of child care was a serious burden on our budget, and I hated being away from the kids for most of the day. The opportunity arose for me to work second shift. It seemed like a pretty good solution: lower daycare costs and more time at home with the kids.
But what about learning? Banana Bear was just about preschool age, and you see, back then I thought someone else would do a better job teaching my kids than I could....I made the decision that we would try to "homeschool" preschool. I did my best to set up a "preschool" for our then-two-and-a-half-year old. We did calendar time, learned about sizes and patterns, learned our letters and worked on cutting and gluing. My husband joked that I was "taking this homeschooling thing pretty seriously." Honestly, I just wanted to make sure that she stayed on track with what other kids her age were doing! I felt like she was at a disadvantage because she wasn't at daycare/preschool learning all day.
And then I witnessed something amazing: She was learning! A LOT! I still figured she'd go to kindergarten just like every other kid, but I began to feel comfortable with the idea that she could learn plenty at home. When the time came for four-year-old kindergarten, we enrolled Banana Bear in the public school 4K program. We figured that she would still have mornings to do Bible learning at home, and when kindergarten rolled around, we would send her to one of the area parochial schools.
During that 4K year, I quit my job to stay at home with our newly expanded family. It was such a blessing! As we started researching parochial schools in the area, we realized that our reduced income would not easily support tuition. But I figured, we would really pinch our pennies and we'd make it work. Also during this time, there were things Banana Bear's 4K class were doing that made me uneasy, things that didn't mesh with our value system. My husband and I really started to consider that public school would not be an option for Banana Bear or any of the kids. So that left us with parochial school. But the more we examined our budget, the more realized that it was going to be a real stretch to pull of the tuition. What were we going to do?
Pray. I prayed for God to guide us, to help us find the way to provide a Christian education to our kids. One night my husband called me on his way home from work and we were discussing Banana Bears education options, and he said to me, "What about homeschooling?" My jaw hit the floor! It was an answer that I had never considered. I mean homeschooling preschool is one thing, but now we were talking about "real" school!
After many weeks of prayer and consideration, we came to realize that homeschool was what we were called to do. We will be taking this year-by-year. The time might come when homeschooling isn't for us, but for this year, this kindergarten year, we are going to give it a whirl!
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