Telling the girls...

Jason and I had been planning on keeping homeschooling a secret from the girls until after school let out for the summer. For obvious reasons of course, Kenzie’s friends are all pumped and excited about starting junior high, and Chloe has a hard time keeping quiet about things. :) I had told the girls that this summer we were going to work a little on math facts. This is something that Kenzie struggles with, and originally it was going to be my ‘test run’ for homeschooling. See if I felt ‘qualified’ or not. I mentioned earlier the trip to the library. I checked my books out, answering any questions of curiosity the girls had with the answer that I wanted to read about homeschooling, because we were going to do this math study in the summer. That worked for Kenzie. She has the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” feeling about anything that might make her nervous. Chloe on the other hand, she kept pressing me about these books.

First she said, “Mom! You have these books on homeschooling, now you can homeschool us!” In true heart-felt excitement that pleased me tremendously! Kenzie just smiled and gave a nervous laugh. I just kind of passed off the comment and again, talked about the summer. A couple days pass, and Chloe once again raises a question. “Are you reading these books because you want to be a teacher at school then?” Hmmm…. She's starting to get more direct! I am starting to realize that my inquisitive little 7 year old is not only making her older sister nervous, but me as well!

Then the evening came, exactly one week ago today. We were all sitting in the living room, silently reading to ourselves and the topic of homeschooling is brought up by Chloe once again. She is pressing me to please consider homeschooling. I decided that I might as well let the cat out of the bag, she is raising too many questions not to give a forthright answer!

For the next hour or so the girls and I talked about my desire to homeschool, and that I was planning on doing so at the start of the next school year. I told them why I felt this was the best choice for the whole family. All the great things we were going to get to do and learn together. The flexibility this offers them with their learning and how much fun we were going to have. I also calmed their nerves, telling them we were going to be part of a group with other homeschoolers. That most of them would have sports teams, and other activities they do frequently throughout the month. That they were still going to be able to see their neighborhood friends, and that they were going to keep plenty busy.

Chloe was easy. She was so pumped and excited. Now, she is the one that is going to be the biggest handful for me, but she’s so bright, I look forward to all the things we will discover together.

I spent some time with Kenzie alone. I asked her if she had any questions or concerns. She was a little sad of course that she would be missing her friends during the day. But she was excited about homeschooling and looking forward to it. We talked about the fact that half of her friends wouldn’t even be attending her Jr high anyway (they split our elementary school in half and send part of them downtown) and either way, she was attending a completely different school then where she is going now. She agreed.

After a couple days, Kenzie started telling me how much she was looking forward to homeschooling. She likes all the things I share with her, the things we can do and the things that will be so much different than public school. This of course gets her more and more excited.

A week later (today), it’s normal conversation around our house. I share with the girls the things we will be studying and get their input. Chloe has already prompted me to print off some of her cursive worksheets so she could start learning cursive and practice on her little dry erase board I got her to make it more enjoyable for extra practice. She spent two hours doing that this evening! It makes me smile, she is so anxious to learn and get started. She glances through our Africa book and asks me why we can’t ‘practice’ doing school during spring break. (Today!) During your spring break?!? WOW!!! :)

I feel very encouraged with the way my daughters handled this news. I am blessed that my 13 year old has the personality and heart that she does, she’s becoming a very beautiful young lady, inside and out! Chloe, I am encouraged that she is always so anxious and loves to learn about anything and everything. She is always asking questions and keeping me busy. (Not always a good thing!) Anyway, we’re progressing!

Catching up!

I haven’t updated this blog for a while! So much time went by there where I didn’t really feel like I had anything to add. Now, I feel behind and like I have so much to say! :)

I feel like I am making some real progress in my homeschooling choices!

A few weekends ago my hubby and I traveled up to the Detroit area and attended our first homeschool convention! I was anxious to have him sit in on some of the workshops and hear stories other than those I tell him that I read about online. We both very much enjoyed it. We didn’t stay for many speakers. We sat in on their “beginning homeschooling” session. It was great to not only get such wonderful encouragement, but also to see all those homeschoolers! Drawing 8 to 900 people a year, shows me that I am not even close to being alone in this decision! I came away from that experience energized and excited to get started! But still thinking, how in the world do I make all these huge decisions!?!??

Later that week, after returning home I made a much needed trip to the library to get my hands on some books. Since then I have finished 3 titles. (The whole reason why I haven’t had time to catch up on my blog!) The first book I read was “100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum” by Cathy Duffy. I LOVED reading through this book! I was really feeling overwhelmed by ALL the options out there concerning curriculum. Having her share so much information about learning styles, methods, and finally book choices to match those styles I was feeling pretty good! I again spent lots of time online looking up choices and companies that I felt interested in. Narrowing things down and seeing what other people had to say. AND PRAYING!!! I couldn’t imagine making these kinds of decisions on my own! I learned a long time ago to ask God for guidance the FIRST time around, saves me a lot of backtracking and regrouping in the long run! :)

I really feel like I’ve come up with most of the curriculum I’m going to be using to start the school year off. That gives me a big sigh of relief! I feel like a large part of the burden has been taken from my shoulders.

The second book I read was “The Homeschooling Handbook”, by Mary Griffith. This was a good book too. It covers a lot of things I’ve read online and some things mentioned in the first book. But I have found that repetitious reading the past few weeks really helps things sink in to my feeble brain and make it stick.

My third read was “Homeschooling the Teen Years”, by Cafi Cohen. I enjoyed reading other peoples letters that were in this book, as well as all the encouragement of sticking to schooling at home during these years. I had been really nervous at the thought before, being as I am pulling my 13 year old out of 7th grade this upcoming school year. Turns out the more I hear other families’ successes and methods, the more confident I become.

I ended up buying “100 Top Picks” online, I found that this is a great reference book, and there was so much I wanted to be able to mark and highlight as I read through it the first time! I am glad to have my own copy now that will surely help me over the next few years!

All that leads up to this past weekend. I convinced my hubby that we really needed to go to our conference here in Indiana. He agreed, after being in MI and hearing all their laws and things, we knew this would be beneficial for us on the home front.

Once again I was blown away! I couldn’t believe the size of this place, it was incredible! Since we had to pay a pretty penny on this trip, we stayed for more workshops than we previously attended. They were all wonderful, and once again I was greatly encouraged to be around so many homeschooling parents (and children)! It’s not nearly as uncommon as I would have once thought. We were able to meet our regional representatives here in Elkhart County. That was great too, I now have someone I can email and correspond with, knowing she can help me get fitted in a group that will meet my family’s needs.

I also bought my first little set of curricula while I was there! I had been struggling to come up with a unit study for the girls that I could tie History into. I decided on KONOS in a bag, Africa 9-18 week study. This really excited me, finding a shorter unit study that I could do with both my soon to be 8 and 13 year old daughters. We have strong family heritage ties in Africa, my husbands grandmother was born in Nigeria, on the mission field. She’s written a book on the life of her parents there, and told the girls so many stories. So this is going to be a key element in making the study enjoyable and come to life for us. I thought it was a great place to start! I was anxious to buy this book so I could look through and decide what elements I would plan on using.

So as I sit here now, I am feeling pretty good! I have a few books I have picked up, have a general plan of the direction I am going to start. Have confidence in the simplicity of pulling the girls out of school, exc. I am anxious to make the next step, getting in contact and finding a group to get involved with. Having personal relationships with other homeschoolers will make this seem much more normal to me I am sure!