My Journey Into Homeschooling

This wonderful guest post comes to us from fellow home educator Laurie.  Miro and I skipped the transition period from public school to homeschooler, since we had planned on traveling for one year.  Intuitively I knew travel would be a sufficient education (and still do) but what of the families who take it one step at a time. Laurie shares a candid look how a family process these changes and the thoughts surrounding them.    Laurie blogs at www.inspiringnhkids.com, where she takes each day as a great opportunity to share with her kids, her love of learning. We hope you enjoy this guest post:

The decision to homeschool is a really complicated and emotional issue, if the child is already in school.

Kevin and I talked about homechooling never, until Ethan was in second grade. By that time, we had moved to a new school district, knew the principals and superintendent well and Kevin had been on the school board for 2 years. So, we basically felt like there was no other choice, public school was not working for Ethan and Jason was finishing up Kindergarten and since he was already reading Harry Potter, we were worried about him being challenged in 1st grade.

Kevin knew one other doctor who homeschooled, so he set up a time for us to go over their house and meet their children. Also, known as the are these children normal test. The mom and kids were perfectly nice and reassuring, showed up their portfolio of yearly accomplishments, which convinced Kevin, that it was just another educational path.

So, after we left the house, we decided to go for it.

Taking a child out school to be homeschooled is a huge decision and plan that the entire family has to be apart of. The entire process is a shock to the child, you are taking away an idea, principal and structure, It is shock to the homeschooling parent, because the first week, is like this is going to be great, then you start ordering stuff from the internet, and then you realize, I’m going responsible for math, reading, phonics, geography, science, writing, etc., seriously that is a lot of work.

We tried to do a test run at homeshooling though the first summer before our homeschooling year would begin. I did a few pages of math and reading with the boys, for a few days and then Ethan said is this what homeschooling would be like? (I’m not sure if he heard my husband or I discuss it, or saw my various books on homeschooling, or just asked) So, we admitted to him and Jason that we were thinking about it, he was like that sounds good, but what about my friends.

It took a while for Ethan to “forget his friends,” but it happened the first fall we were homechooling, he clicked with a boy at NERF Club and they quickly became inseparable.

Everyone says that you should deschool for a while, I’m not sure why. In our case, Ethan was so far behind, he was so eager to start learning, Jason has always been an eager learner.