We are a homeschool family!!!!!!

     It was a cold Monday morning.  We are back to the normal homeschool schedule today, even with it being Martin Luther King Jr. day.  We chose a long time ago that we would still do homeschool on holidays like MLK day and Presidents Day.  When I was in school we never got these day off. , we were in school in these holidays to learn about why we honor these men.  So that is just what we do, we learn about these men that had and continue to have an impact on our country.

     Life as a homeschool family is not all that different than families that send their children off to public or privet school. Yet, at the same time it is completely different.  Let me explain what I mean. 

     How is homeschooling the same?  Like other families we care about our children's education.  Like other families we do what we feel is best for our kids education.  Our children learn math, science, history, language arts, and many other subjects. We have expectations for our children with school work, as well as other things. Our children do extra curricular actives.  Homeschool kids make friends and are very well rounded.

     So now you ask ok so how are homeschooling different?  Well we do school really anywhere we choose. What I mean by that is some homeschool families have a dedicated room in their home, others meet around the dinning room table, and still others choose a wide variety of places to hold lessons.  In our home we have a dedicated room, it was our living room. We have a table for the kids to do their work, bookshelves and some over sized chairs to have the kids hand out a read.  There are days like today that we also all sit around our dinning room table.  Our dinning room is right off of the classroom area so it has easy access to every thing we need.  Still there are other days that the local zoo, museum, park, store, or restaurant is our classroom.  We are free to take more "field trips".  Part of the freedom to homeschool is that it looks differently for every family. It will be hard to find an exact match.  Even if families are using the same curriculum it will look different.

     This school year I am teaching 4 kids, all in different grades.  I have a high school student that is a junior.  He does his work on the computer with a program called Switched on Schoolhouse.  His studies are basically independent. I have an 8th grader that does most of his school work on his own.  He still needs reminding about getting things completed. This  a new thing for him with school, up until this fall he did not need much reminding.  I also have a 6th grader, he is very good at math.  We work with struggles in English. Last but not least my 3rd grader.  She loves doing her math, but is not so keen on reading.  We are working very hard on her reading skills.  So as you can see yes homeschool kids also have struggles with school work.

     The point is that our family has chosen homeschool as the right option for our family.  It may not be for everyone, and that is ok.  I am just hoping that you can get a felling for what one homeschool family does in life.