Why we homeschool (or still homeschool)

So, I am repeatedly asked if we will continue to homeschool our kids all the way through high school. Now that our oldest is in his first year of high school, I suppose you would think that would be a resounding, automatic, yes! But, it isn’t really. It is something I think about, pray about and consider often. And some days I even ask myself why, oh why am I doing this? So, I thought I would pause during today’s routine and jot down a few of the many answers so that I may, on a bad day, return to these words and again test them out.
Honestly, I originally homeschooled because we couldn’t afford private school. No kidding. My husband was making somewhere in the range of $24,000/year and I stayed home with my kids and we were already a family of four with hopes to grow larger. At the time, we could barely afford two day a week private preschool at $50/month after rent, food, gas etc. When I looked at the private tuition costs of area schools, it was overwhelmingly beyond our budget. That was over 10 years ago in 1997/1998.
As the kids grew, the income did too but so did our family size and by then we were already hooked on the homeschool lifestyle. We were able to spend the best hours of the day with our kids, watch them learn and grow and best of all we could teach them anything and everything about God and this big, beautiful world He made. We found every subject seemed to come back around to Him and His ways. I also found the kids had opportunity to ask all kinds of questions about everything and I was the one who had the privilege of answering their questions, wiping away their tears and of learning about cool stuff.
Thus, we’ve found that I have opportunity to really know my kids and to be around them a lot, which is usually, an enjoyable experience. And I have found that, like most things, you learn more from the teaching than they do from being taught. God is usually at work changing me just as much as He is at work changing them. And the longer I do this, the more I learn that I am truly much more of a facilitator than a teacher. I can facilitate their learning by laying before them a plethora of rich and wonderful resources by experts in every field but ultimately it is really up to them on whether they decide to “learn” it or not.
Now we have four children, ages 3 to 14, which means we have four distinct developmental levels of learning going on simultaneously each day. This is the first year of high school but it is also the first year I am facilitating preschool to high school as well! I must admit, that most days my feet hit the ground running and I am still stretched and often overwhelmed. And on especially hectic days I wonder if I should be walking this path. But somewhere somehow I think God hears my humble, “please help, LORD,” and He is pleased to provide a way as we seek to know Him and the mystery of His ways.

Not your typical Home School Mom

Well, for starters, I don’t wear a denim jumper; in fact, I don’t own a denim jumper. And on top of that I don’t even like to wear a skirt or dress. I’m definitely a pants-wearing kind of girl. And I don’t dress my children in matching clothes, even for family portraits.
Secondly, I am no Betty Crocker. Sure, I cook dinner for my family on a regular basis, but maybe cook is too strong a word. I serve them dinner most evenings of the week, but that doesn’t mean I actually cook what I serve. I have learned much about cooking, in my 15 years of marriage and I will continue to learn, mostly from my gourmet-loving husband. He is the true cook of the family. It’s just that his day job interferes with his hobby of cooking.
And lastly, I am definitely an upper-middle-class, college-educated person who lives in a city. We don’t own any livestock, don’t live on acreage, don’t sew our own clothes, don’t bake our own bread and don’t plan to anytime soon. (Though we do LOVE fresh-baked bread) While this is certainly the statistical norm of the American, homeschool, Mom, it certainly isn’t the stereotypical one.
My latest hobbies are photography, reading and now writing along with snow skiing, camping and occasional scrapbooking; Although, it is difficult to accomplish much of anything toward a hobby during most school days.