Well, about a year and a half ago, I was watching a reality show about a homeschool family. They were being questioned about why they schooled their children this way and then came the inevitable question "Don't you ever worry that you are not preparing your children for 'real life' by homeschooling them?"
The precious mom gently spoke about how she would tend to a new seedling. She explained that if she had a new, baby plant she would never consider planting it outside in the flower bed. She would never put it out there and 'wish it luck' against the storms that would come. No. She would keep that seedling in the window sill of her kitchen so that she could tend to it daily and make sure it was getting the proper amount of water and sunlight until it had a STRONG ROOT SYSTEM. Then and only then would she transplant it outside knowing with full confidence that it's roots would be strong enough to withstand any storm that came it's way.
That hit me like a ton of bricks! I have always struggled with what to tell people when they question me (or I feel like criticized me) for home schooling. and then I read Sarah's blog and I though that is exactly how we feel! we only have these few short precious years to instill our values and beliefs into our children and to protect them while we can. So why not do everything in our power to make sure they have strong roots in their Faith and at the same time a great education!
We home school using the ABEKA program from Pensacola Christian Academy and we use the Video teacher. Which is great! Stormy watches a real teacher with real kids in the class room. She does everything they get to do in the class room only here at home. We schooled her this way for K4 and K5. next year she will start 1st grade and we are looking forward to it! Next year we will be part of a home schooling group under a cover school. That will open up a lot more opportunities for Stormy with group outings and activities!
We try to do our school day as if she were going to a real school everyday. We get up, eat breakfast adn get dressed for school then head to our "school room" and get busy on the days work. We usually try to start by 8 or 8:30 am and finish up by lunch for K5. Next year will be different since it will be a full day for 1st grade and not a half day.
At the end of the year this year, we threw Stormy a little graduation and party! We didn't want her to feel like she had missed out on anything that a kid going to "real" school would get to do. We even had "spirit week" with a different theme for everyday the last week of school. It
has been a long year but a fun one! And we hope to continue down this path of homeschooling. Here are some pics from our year. The first ones are from Stormy's first day of School!
These pictures were taken on a field trip
to the Fire Department, where my brother
is a full time Fire Fighter! He gave us a VIP tour of everything.
School had a few theme days in the curriculum as well. the picture below is Stormy on "Western Day" Standing by the tv so we could see her video Teacher Mrs. Bere.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Our last week of School was "Spirit Week" We kicked it of with "Dr. Seuss" breakfast of Green Eggs and Ham and then Crazy Hair day For Monday!
Friday we had a hard time coming up with a theme for so we just said lets have a
Face painting day!
The rest of the pics are from Stormy's Graduation. the pics on the window were facing out but due to rain we ended up having everything inside so I had to turn them all around but I never took another pic after I did.
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