Why do we homeschool?

  We feel very thankful and blessed to be able to homeschool! For us, we can't even really imagine doing anything different but here are some of the reasons why we homeschool:

1. God gave us our children to train and teach. I feel it is my responsibility before God to take care of the gift that He has given us the best that we can. If we didn't homeschool them we would have significantly less time to train and teach them.

2. The things that I read and hear about the public school system tells me that often the books/curriculum used in the public school is not from a Biblical viewpoint (I am putting that very mildly!), and will even teach them things contrary to what the Bible teaches. When children are young they are very impressionable and I don't care to have them have to deal with falsehoods all alone.

3. We want to shelter our children. I know in many circles that is considered a bad thing but it is still true that we want to shelter ours. I am personally very thankful for a heavenly Father who shelters me and I believe that He gave my children to me so that I can shelter them too. Of course our children do have to grow up and learn to face problems and difficulties and learn too that their is evil in the world. All of our children are learning those lessons but they can do it with their parents standing behind them supporting them and being aware of what is going on.

An un-typical school day. Instead of being around the table as normal we "played" school.

4. We wanted to give our children the best chance to excel academically. All studies that I am aware of that compare children from a public school versus homeschool show that homeschool students (on average) do significantly better. That, by the way, is not because we have better teachers, but there are many different reasons that children can learn better in the home setting.

5. We want good socialization for our children. We are concerned about them being in large groups of children that we know nothing about (and realizing that large groups of children is not necessarily conducive to learning good behavior) and would prefer to encourage their friendships with people of all ages who will help them to grow to be good upstanding adults.

Enjoying some music together at the start of our school day.

6. We want our children to be able to have a very broad education. In the public school they tend to focus on Math and Reading/Language (and how to take a test). I know that they do other things as well but those are what are tested on and from my understanding schools will often teach to the test. We teach those things as well but we can also focus on many other different areas - such as Bible study, music, art, life skills, learning about the natural world, working on their character, and much more. The beauty of homeschooling is being able to look for the talents and interests God has given them and encouraging them in those areas. That doesn't mean we ignore other areas but just that we let them work on the others a little more. We can tailor make our education for each child. The picture at the top of this post showing Aaron with a chick made me think about this. Aaron absolutely loves animal farming and so this is becoming part of his homeschool education. The experience that he has in this area will quite likely be more useful to him in the future than the leaning of parts of speech (though we will work on that too).

Megan learning a life skill nice and young.

Megan and a friend at our homeschool co-op

7. Learning can be a fun family affair. We love doing a lot of our learning together (though Ken has to miss out quite a lot since he needs to be at work providing for us). I do a lot of reading out loud to the kids and we also enjoy a lot of hands on learning. Doing things together really helps to strengthen our family bond. Even our homeschool co-op helps with having fun learning for all of us together.

Mara and cousins (also homeschooled) on some cool rocks.

8. We have a flexible schedule. This fall when Ken needed to travel for his business even though it was during school time we were able to go along and enjoy time with my sister and her family. While there we went on a neat "field trip" and saw some caves and a bunch of sandstone with my sister and crew. Also on that trip our family was able to take in a very neat museum and learn some history about James J. Hill, life in Victorian times and also some things about the early railroad industry. Flexibility can be very nice! (This just one of the many examples I could give on this subject.)

 

The kids at the HUGE James J. Hill house.

9. To be perfectly honest, another reason that we homeschool is that homeschooling is normal for us. Both Ken and I were homeschoolers. Our parents were some of that pioneers of the homeschooling movement. I was first homeschooled in 1984 (1st grade) and Ken started the year before that. I am very thankful to have been blessed in that way.

 

Much learning is self motivate such as trying to make and cook on a homemade "stove".

 10. It is fun! Of course there are stressful and difficult times but overall I am very blessed. We can truly enjoy our time together and learning in most cases is truly a blast! I hope our children can also love learning!

The boys and a homemade math game.

I am writing this at night when my brain doesn't always work the best and I am sure I have missed some of the reasons we homeschool or maybe not explained things real well. But feel free to ask any questions and I would love to hear from others that homeschool and why they do.