Homeschooling

Why home school?  I've wanted to home school my children for as long as I can remember.  I've been asked a few times about my reasons for homeschooling so here they are.

I love the idea of teaching them and learning with them daily.  We have so much fun together and I love having them with me.

I believe God gave me these blessings to raise in his way and I'm going to do the best job that I can.  I believe teaching my boys about God is most important and public schools do not do that.  Honestly, it's not their job nor do I want it to be.

I believe that family is important.  Call me over protective, I don't care.  I want to have the most influence over them at this young age.  They are young and I want to protect them and keep them innocent for as long as possible.

I believe that no one wants my children to succeed more than me.  I know I will do everything I can to ensure that they do succeed.  Can I possibly teach them everything?  No, but there are lot's of resources in our community and opportunities available to them that they would not have in public school.

I want them to be able to study those things that they are passionate about. I love that Carson is excited about learning.

These are just some of the many reasons homeschooling is the right decision for us.

Homeschooling update

We've been officially doing school for 6 weeks.  It's going great!  It has been hard some days figuring out how to get things done with a 2 1/2 year old and a 9 month old.  I've had to relax and take it day by day.  Some days we get all or our work done in the morning and some days we have to wait until nap time.  Camron likes to do "cool" too so I try to include him in as much fun stuff as I can.

Brandon and I went to the Master's co-op parent orientation tonight.  Carson will be going to co-op classes once a week on Friday mornings from 8:30-12.  He will be taking a Bible class, Handwriting class, PE class and a phonics/reading class.  I will be working in the nursery/preschool room while he has classes.  We went to a back to school picnic out at Tannehill State Park last week and he met some of the other children that will be in his room.  I think he is going to have fun.

Our Homeschool adventure

We started a very laid back preschool at home this year. I am really laid back about structured learning with young kids because I want my boys to be kids for as long as possible. I want them to explore things and figure things out on their own and just have fun. Carson would start Kindergarten this next school year and I honestly can't imagine my child having to be in school 8 hours at 5 years old. Sometimes I feel like this world is so "hurry up and grow up" that it bothers me.
I had planned on really waiting until Carson was closer to 6 before we started any "schooling" but he asked me to teach him to read. My boys love books and Carson has many of his favorite books memorized and will read them to me. He seems to be pushing me much more than I want him too but he is an eager little one so I'm following his lead. I'm a little OCD when it comes to organizing so of course I had to sit down and get a game plan in place. I'm one of those people that makes lists of my list :) It's a horrible habit! I had several weeks of stuff planned out for us just to see how it goes. It was fun stuff and we were using the "workbox" system.
I've made plans and guess what? We are not following them, LOL. We have been doing some reading lessons and they take 5-10 minutes. If we do other stuff it's strictly because he is asking. I have ordered a few things for him and will plan out some stuff for kindergarten but plan on following his lead with it. We will mainly focus on reading, writing and math.
A typical day around here looks like this

 and this

 and a lot of this :)