Homeschooling is for Weirdos

It's nothing more than a coincidence that the first blog post is about homeschooling.  This is not a homeschooling blog.  It's probably more of a personal and family journal, an attempt to do my part in recording the history of this family.  But it's also a place for me to share my thoughts on various topics that affect me, or affect my family. 

We (re)started homeschooling our children today.  Really, we only have one school aged child (first grade).  We have a preschooler who attends an in home preschool two houses down our street.  He thinks he is being homeschooled too.  And so does the two year old.  Each has a desk set up with appropriate tools to use.  But really, the curriculum is geared toward the first grader.

We actually have homeschooled already.  Grant, our first grader, was homeschooled for kindergarten.  We enrolled him for about a half week and found it to not meet our needs, or his.  We took him out and homeschooled him. 

We enrolled him this year in first grade because we just felt we couldn't "handle it".  We had just had our fourth child (yes, we have four children under 7) and felt that sending Grant to "regular" school was the right thing to do.

Until it wasn't.

We pull him out of school Friday for so many reasons.  The main reason NOT being that he wasn't excelling academically or that he had bad behavior in school.  He was and he didn't.  In fact, he enjoyed school. 

The problem was that he wasn't eating.  Really.  Grant wasn't eating more than a bite or two of his lunch and then might snack on a cheez-it or two.  His behavior after school, during that oh so precious time between coming home and going to bed was awful.  He couldn't function after starving himself and going through a grueling almost eight hour day (including travel). 

We had to ask ourselves, "why are we doing this?" This is not an adult, teenager, or even preteen.  This is a small child.  Our child. 

So, we put aside the quasi-embarrassment of changing our  minds again and pulled him out.  This morning was great.  He had breakfast with his family.  His mom was prepared with his math and writing assignments.  The other two children "worked" at their stations.  Mom took all four to the library and to run errands.  When they return, some reading and religious education will take place.  He'll be done by 2 and have read more than most his peers will in a week.  He'll have eaten a complete meal for breakfast and lunch.  He'll have played sufficiently.  And when his peers get off from school, he'll play and socialize with them.

For now, this is an excellent environment for him to grow and learn.

We're pretty happy and will share our adventures, mostly with ourselves, on this blog.