Homeschooling!

It's been almost two months since I started homeschooling Ethan so I thought that it was about time for me to blog about it! I intended to blog right away, but I really have been busy teaching... which is a good thing for Ethan, but not so good for all of you who are wondering if we've dropped off the face of the planet. The answer is yes!

So you may be wondering, why homeschooling? Well, it was not what Jim and I grew up with so it was something that we were both very hesitant to consider. We also had seen many abuses of homeschooling, and we vowed that if we were to homeschool, it would be because we thought it was the best option for our kids, both developmentally and academically. So we originally decided to send Ethan to public school. He enjoyed it and he did very well, but the material they were learning in class was material that he had learned almost two years ago. We saw a lot of quantity of work, but didn't feel like he was learning anything new. As time went on, I became more uneasy about him being at the public school, and I began to see that if were to homeschool him for kindergarten, we would have a great opportunity to teach him more formally about foundational Biblical truths. So after much prayer and conversation, we decided to homeschool him for this year. Our plan at present is not to homeschool him the whole way through school, but to commit to it for this year and then see where the Lord leads, though our current intentions are to place him back in public school.

How is Ethan adjusting, you may ask? He has flourished at home. Because he is able to go at his own pace, he has been able to learn a lot of material very quickly. After some conversations with several moms, I was able to find a curriculum that is academically challenging for him, and he loves it! Probably the biggest change in him that I have seen is in his ability and willingness to read. He knew a lot of words before, but he didn't like to read because I probably pushed him to read things that were too hard for him to read easily so it wasn't fun. The readers that I purchased with the curriculum are exactly at his level and progress in difficulty at a comfortable pace.

Another big concern we had with homeschooling was how it would affect the other two.  I have to say that  Micah and Verity have adjusted very well, far better than I even anticipated.  Now don't get me wrong, it is not easy to take care of all three of the monkeys at once, and our school schedule has to be VERY flexible (you just never know when you're going to have to change an emergency diaper :-), but overall, I have been pleasantly surprised with how well that has gone.  The house on the other hand... well, maybe we just won't go there ;-).

So we will see how the year progresses, but so far it has been fun to have Ethan at home, neat to see him memorize Bible verses and learn about different cultures, and precious to watch him learn about the wonderful world that God made!

Here is Ethan with the weather vane we made when we were learning about wind.  Believe it or not, it was quite accurate.  The picture above is of a Viking longhouse that Ethan and Jim made out of Cranium fort pieces (we were learning about the Vikings that week).