I used to share a lot more about homeschooling here, but it’s been a while. It’s such a big part of our life that I really want to start sharing again. I’ve decided to start at the beginning. I think it’s always interesting to see how other people started homeschooling and helps you understand different choices they make.

One of the first questions people usually ask is, Have you always homeschooled? My short answer is No. In fact I was looking forward to getting my alone time when the kids went off to school. When we started thinking about school options Abigail was 3, Lydia was 17 months, and Joel was due in 2 months. I knew life was going to get more hectic, so I sent my 3-year-old to preschool. I’m not sure it was the best decision, but having 3 kids, 3 and under, with me 24/7 was a little daunting.

Abigail was eager to learn, so we started by sending her to a every other day, half day, christian preschool. She loved it. We loved it. She had a great teacher. She learned her numbers, letters and their sounds, and made friends. She even got to be in a class with her cousin. She came home having learned all kinds of cute songs and Bible verses.

The next year we looked at our options again. Jonathan was very interested in homeschooling, having seen many youths in our community that were homeschooled and the great family dynamics that they had. He wanted that for our family too. I didn’t have that connection that he had. The only thing I knew about homeschoolers were the ones I grew up with and it really didn’t have an impact that interested me. I knew it would be a lot of extra work, knowing I had a 4-year-old, 2-year-old, and 10 month old. I wanted to follow his leading, so we looked into it some more.

We started talking to some other homeschooling families and really liked what we saw. We decided that since our oldest was only 4 we could take a little dip into it and see how it went.

I decided to start with Abeka curriculum because that’s mostly what I had learned from in my christian schools growing up, so I was somewhat familiar with it. I decided to get the box kit for K-4 because I had to make sure I had everything, right? (I think that a homeschool mom, that I had talked with, had told me to stick to basics and just read a lot and teach her numbers and letters. That didn’t sound like school to me, so I went my own way, which I now regret.)

Doing the kit was totally overwhelming to me, besides the fact that I had 2 little ones to care for. I was trying to teach a 4-year-old in a formal classroom style. It didn’t work. Looking back now, I think if I would have taken a less formal homeschooling approach it would have gone a lot better for us. I was totally stressed and overwhelmed.

I decided homeschooling just wasn’t for us. To be continued…