By Candice Dugger
In a world with so much access to data how is it possible we feel more and more lost on what to do when big decisions need to be made. We are taught to believe the educators know best and that we are not equipped to educate our children. The fears of how I can educated my child when I’m not qualified to teach can be a over whelming fear. I remember being so worried I would mess things up and my kid would not be able to go to college. Looking back I can not laugh at how silly my fears were.
When you first start looking at options it may feel like drinking water out of a fire hose. The beauty of homeschooling is that there are multiple options to meet your child needs. As we get started down this journey I want to impress upon you as your looking at options I recommend for you to find a program that works for not only your child but one that will fit the primary homeschool parents style as well.
I’m an extraverted person by nature. I love being with friends, getting together with the girls to catch up, a night on the town with my hubby, and going to a class. My previous career lead me to being social and out all the time. When I first started homeschooling, I did not take my personality and needs into account. As a mom this tends to happen a lot to me but with homeschooling at first I only focused on one side. I focused ONLY on my child’s needs. How he learned what he needed to succeed. We started off with him and I around the kitchen table for the first several months. I picked an online free program that was not government backed and written for a Christian audience. Personally, at that time I was so done with public school I would not even consider a program like k-12 free online public school at home. They had failed my kid academically how was that just at home going to help.
This first program gave me the flexibility to figure out what he knew and did not know without investing into curriculum upfront. He was able to slow down when he needed and fly through quickly on material he had already covered remembered from public school. We throughout quizzes and testing at the time and focused on real learning. I wanted him to start training his brain to retain information of long periods of time. Not cram for test a then throw out the information. I wanted him to learn to question what he was learning. Not take what was being told as law. Realize that our history and science books are filled with people opinions and many things taught are not fact, but ideology. Even though you are taught that they are facts. Our first memory of this was when he studies the founding of our country and the declaration of independence.
When my son found out that the document was actually signed on July 2 1776 he was floored. He could not believe his whole education it was taught as July 4th and that’s it no deeper discussion. To many people think what’s the big deal yeah Thomas Jefferson’s poetic Declaration of Independence was drafted and signed by most of July 2nd but was not adopted till July 4th when the president of the congress and its secretary Charles Thomspon immediately signed and dispatched it. This was great academically and we got a lot done. But, I knew something was missing. I started to look around at options and enrolled my son in my local community bible study homeschool group, flag football team and found a wilderness survival class that meet weekly for 2 hrs.
We started attending those enrichment classes and slowly I started finding so many other options that we could explore. We got invited to a middle school boys meet up and went to hang out with new friends each Friday. We would go ice skating, mini golf, bowling, laser tag, rock climbing, trampoline jump, park meet ups. Since many places offered homeschool hours we could go when no one else was using facilities and take advantage of great prices and learn from other families in our community These outings and classes were a very important part for us to add to our homeschool days. They were a essential part of me starting to find my tribe of others to walk this journey with us.
Take the time upfront to take your needs and your family needs into consideration. There is a lot of flexibility and hundreds of programs to choose from.