Choosing to Homeschool Our Daughter

After much thought, and a sudden realization that we may not be able to afford private school next year, we are choosing to homeschool our daughter.

At first, when Emma was still a baby, we spoke about putting her in a private school when the time came, agreeing that public school was out of the question. Not that all public schools are bad, but the ones near where we live are honestly quite awful.

To give you an idea, in the middle school I was unfortunate enough to attend (before my parents were able to enroll me in a private high school), kids as young as 12 were smoking pot. Oh, yeah, and the dead body of a murdered guy was found on the school grounds one morning by a student. Yeah, not pretty.

Anyway, as Emma reached her 4th birthday we began talking about what we can do with her schooling, so I started researching. Somehow, I stumbled upon homeschooling and although I never thought about it before, it really made sense the more I thought about it.

Not only would I be able to keep Emma out of the public schools here, but I would be able to give her an education tailored to her. The more I see how my daughter plays, the more I realize how much she learns on her own. I can see she is not the type that would benefit from a classroom environment. Actually, I think most kids don’t learn to their full potential in a school setting.

Homeschooling will be a great way to keep Emma’s curiosity alive and prevent her willingness to learn from fading. Often, by the time many kids reach middle school, they are bored with education and are not interested in being forced to learn. I think with homeschooling, even I will be learning many things that I never did in school myself and it will be fun, instead of a forced activity.

I am still researching the best method and what type of curriculum I will use. However, I am leaning a lot towards unschooling, and will probably begin by approaching an eclectic style, using mostly unschooling with some unit studies, and workbooks added to the mix. We will see how it goes, and adjust it accordingly as we proceed with it.

We decided from the beginning to skip preschool regardless of going to regular school or not, so I will use this year to get some practice on the homeschooling front and get ready for Kindergarten next year. I love that we will have the ability to be flexible with our days and won’t be tied down by regular school’s vacation schedules.

It’s bad enough to have to rely on my husband’s crazy business schedule, which goes up and down all year. So, it will be nice to just take off and go see family at any time of year when time allows us and we don’t have to depend on a school schedule as well. Plus, we can take the time off and make up for it later, or simply keep doing our homeschooling activities while we are on vacation.

With our unpredictable lifestyle, which consists of lots of last minute decisions and unplanned activities on a day’s notice, I choosing to homeschool is the only way to go. I am very excited about it and look forward to a lifetime of fun education.

Do you homeschool, or have thought about it? Let me know by dropping a comment below!