Homeschooling

We were first introduced to the idea of home education when my husband and I were engaged to be married. It was something we thought about and discussed briefly from time to time but by the time our first child was about 2 years old we began to think seriously about it. By the time she was 4 we had made a definite decision to teach her at home.

She was beginning to read, loved books, had an incredible vocabulary, memory, and attention span, and wanted to learn to play the piano. As her parents we wanted the best for her and we knew we would be 'qualified' to teach her because we loved her and knew her so well.

The idea of sending her into an institutional setting for several hours a day, five days a week, to be taught by someone we didn't really know, someone who also had to care for twenty or thirty other children at the same time, and at the end of the day, no matter how good a teacher, someone who could go home and forget about her, just didn't make sense to us.
 

I'd  had what I would call a mediocre education for most of the time I'd attended school, except for one year in 4th Grade when I had a teacher who had really cared about me. I think she did more for me in one year than all the other teachers I'd had put together. I figured if one teacher in one year had encouraged and motivated me as she had done, how much more I could do with my own children over a number of years!

I regularly get asked if I have a teaching background when people know that I'm teaching my own children. I never finished my own schooling but our three eldest have each gone through to university despite my lack of qualifications. I reckon if you can read and write and you care, you are competent to teach.

 So 19 years of homeschooling later I'm writing this post. I still feel the same way. Our children are all quite different in personality and ability. Our first could read fluently at 4 years of age, four of them were about 5 or 6 years of age, one was 7 years old and one was barely reading at 10 and didn't really read well until his early teens. I've had my convictions tested and tried. I've had to learn to adjust, pray for wisdom along the way and call on the grace of God.

" Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth and fit them forusefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners,arts and science is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties."

Noah Webster, 1828.