I'm loving doing Home school with Haley. She gets to travel, be at home with her parents or be here with us and never miss a day of school. I get to learn stuff and help her learn stuff and she gets to graduate early and get on with her life. Awesome.
I really did want to home school Colin. My husband and I agreed - a public school education is not what we wanted for our kids, for many reasons. One reason being that I believe home schooling can provide a far superior education, lead by the interest of the child and tapping their willingness to learn, rather than being in a forced educational situation. You know - the way most of us went through school. Shut up, sit there, do as you're told. Both my husband and I were high IQ kids who hated regular school with a passion but excelled in the arts, when put into advanced programs or in situations where we could work at our own pace.
By the time I graduated from public High School in California, the place had been modified to include a 12 foot iron fence around the entire campus, metal detectors at the entrances and an armed security guard. It was sort of like graduating from a prison. So it was home school or private school for our family, unless we just couldn't afford private school or for one of us to stay home. Colin has turned out - so far - to be a kid who does the crazy dance if he doesn't get to hang out with other little kids all day, so yay, we're paying for a private kindergarten so that our kid spends his time away from home in an environment that is in pretty close agreement with the way we want our kid to be handled, taught and corrected-- with lots of care and attention to Colin as his very own person, with very individual needs. That crap costs money, though.
I'd still like to home school him, when he's a bit older and doesn't require almost constant running around, building stuff, moving stuff, swinging, sliding, swimming, jumping, and chasing. He's learning a whole lot in between all that at school, and I'm pretty happy with it. He's proud of his work and what he's learning. Today, out of the blue, while sitting on the toilet he told me, "Mom - A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y!"
Hooray, vowels! I swear, peer pressure is the only thing that entices him to sit still, ever. The day may never come when he'll want to sit down at home for more than 10 minutes at a time, but hey, if it does I'm ready.
Haley has been the model home school kid, though. She was going to a private school for the last few years, but not doing very well, moving at a snail's pace. Her mom yanked her out and sent her to home school with some friends for a while, and she finished more than a grade in a brief time. Smart little shit that she is. Turns out that less social distraction was exactly what she needed. She's not anti-social by any means. Today at the supermarket, she decided that for her research project of the day she was going to walk around and talk to strangers, asking them what they liked about school. And then she did it, while I watched in awe.
This summer, she started a new home school curriculum, where she can get school credit for lots of the things she already does - babysitting, volunteering, crafting, her Etsy shop, religious studies, etc. She can get her basic education in while studying things she's interested in. The speed she goes through grade levels depends entirely on how hard she works and she can possibly graduate by the time she's 16, fully prepared to be productive in the field of her interest. I wish I'd had this option when I was biding my time through high school, picking the lint out of my bellybutton and waiting for the bell to ring.
She's been here, working away on her schooling for a couple of months now and it is awesome having her. So nice to have the company while I slave away at this here computer. And frankly, having to stop and help with researching things and going to the library and finding definitions and keeping her on schedule... is a welcome distraction.
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