After deciding not to send Deegan off to preschool and a lot of praying and researching, Adam and I decided a little over a year ago that we were going to try homeschooling and see how it goes, so I decided to start in January of this year. We felt really strongly that this was what was right for us. Deegan turned 5 at the end of December and he was anxious to learn. He asked, when he was 3, for homework to do (I think he had seen it on TV) and we bought him a preschool workbook at Walmart to satisfy that. He knew a lot about letter names and sounds and was just excited to start school, so I decided to run with it and try a "pre-kindergarten" type thing to see if homeschooling was going to be good for us. I figured that I'd have a good 6 months to see how he does before I needed to decide if he was going to go to public school or not this Fall. I spent hours and hours and hours researching everything and more about homeschooling and it is very overwhelming! There are SO many types of curriculum and ways of approaching homeschooling that it's hard to narrow down if you don't know where to start. I found the online Homeschool group on BabyCenter.com to be so very helpful in answering any and all questions with sincerity and honesty. A friend of my sister's also homeschools her kids, so I asked her for recommendations and she gave me a great list of books to use for 1st grade. A lot of people who homeschool for Kindergarten just kind of "wing it" or let their kids learn through play and different types of games and activities, and I thought that would be a good idea for us too. I got Deegan the Kindergarten workbook at Walmart and the Bob Books on Amazon and we set to work. I had him sit down and do usually 2 pages in his workbook each day and then we'd read together, 4 days/week, but he always wanted to do more. He FLEW through that book and by the middle of March he was bored with the few activities that were left. He had started reading the Bob books and I used getting new books as an incentive to get through those, so he learned them quickly too. I worried a little bit that he was going to miss something, but there was no slowing him down! In March, people had been commenting that he was reading and doing math on a first grade level, so I decided to go ahead and order the books that my friend had recommended and see how he did. I had decided that it wouldn't hurt to move ahead and I certainly didn't want to make him just stop and wait until Fall, so we just went with it. He is about half way through those books now. We stopped in June when Griffin was at Primary Children's and decided we'll pick up again when school starts in a couple of weeks. He is reading way above his age level and rarely needs help sounding out words he's not familiar with. It comes so naturally to him! Griffin has started learning his letter sounds and numbers too by listening in on Deegan's lessons.
I didn't ever have an "aha" moment when I realized that we were definitely sticking with it, it just happened and we LOVE it! The big concern I hear (and that I had too) is of course about socializing, but in reality, it's a non-issue. In Cache Valley, we have a homeschool group that gets together for all kinds of group learning and play and is just available for support too. There are field trips planned atleast monthly and usually more often. There is a big homeschool graduation ceremony every year if people want to participate in that, as well as formal dances and other types of high school activities. They've formed groups for things like Biology, Karate, Gymnastics, Nature studies, etc. as well as lots of play type groups for the younger kids and mom meet up groups. Since my kids are still little enough, we haven't joined much of the activities yet because I just don't see that being an issue yet, but the play that Deegan was involved in back in April was suggested by fellow homeschoolers and we had a lot of fun with it. As far as learning the rules of being part of a society, the benefits of homeschooling are that there is plenty of time to be part of the world around us! As my kids get older, I plan on doing a lot of service work and volunteering with them and of course involving them in other groups and co-ops. We will re-address homeschooling periodically to see if we still feel like it's right, but for now we have no regrets and plan to continue as long as we can!
