I’m going to start this post by talking about public schools.
In public school:
People are often concerned that there aren’t enough school hours in the year.
Standardized tests are an accepted (if not loved) way of making sure everybody is keeping up.
A teacher to student ratio of 1:20 is fantastic!
If you’re lucky, there are programs set up for older kids to mentor the younger kids. (This is great training for the older kids and increases one on one time for the little kids)
Communication between teacher and parents is important, so that parents know how their children are doing and how they can support their kids.
Field trips are great ways to learn and better understand that learning applies to real life.
Unfortunately, classes like music, home economics, woodshop, art, etc. are often cut when budgets get tight and only core curriculum is constantly maintained.
Bullying can be a problem.
It’s a great place to make friends.
I could go on, but I need to get to the self-encouraging bit now. Because… because “people” with their looks, comments and doubt have almost convinced me that I can’t homeschool with four kids. That I won’t be able to give them enough attention. That I’ll need to do things perfect-o in order to keep up. Well, let me tell myself that…
In homeschool:
You have as many hours in the year as you need.
You can do standard tests, but you know how your kids are doing without them.
Heck, a teacher to student ration of 1:10 would still be even more awesome than a formal school’s setting. With me at 1:4… I CAN totally do this!
Why is it that people say that older kids helping younger kids is stealing their childhood? Because at home, I still consider it great training and good help for the little one.
You always know how your kid(s) are doing.
Field trips happen whenever you make them happen. Scheduling conflicts are non-existent. (Oh, how I love being a stay at home mom!)
I can teach elementary music myself and find a community area for further music. Home economics has already begun. And all that extra-curricular stuff is just piled everywhere in my home!
I am allowed to spank any of my children who bully.
It’s a great place to make friends for life. Siblings are not un-cool. Oh, and because I’m not the only stay at home homeschooling mom in the world… there are kids to play with during the week.
I can do this!
I can do this!
I can do this!
AHHHHH I can’t do this!
(Goes back to ignoring organizing school until my start date in January is closer)
YES! You CAN do it! With God all is possible! 🙂 you have been doing great until now, so have no doubt you can do it further! 🙂 God bless you on your journey! 😉
Here’s a recent news article I found encouraging. Ha, who’d would have thunk that character might be important? 😉 And what might an ideal environment for teaching character look like? Perhaps a family living a real life in a real world?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/11/22/f-how-children-succeed-paul-tough.html
You can totally do it!!
Don’t pay any attention to people who try to make you feel bad or overwhelmed like its impossible with 4 children…God doesn’t usually give a huge surplus, but He DOES give you the grace and ability for what is right in front of you , one day at a time.
I definitely have a lot of days where I get overwhelmed or feel like the kids are missing out because there is only one me and 4 of them. But there are always going to be pros and cons to any big decision we make…and I STILL think the pros will overall outweigh the cons. You’ll be amazed, as the kids get older, how many times you will end up having an amazing heart – to – heart conversation or learning moment that you could never have “scheduled” in the evening after a long day of school and a day of work. Its the little things…the little moments together that add up to a very bonded relationship with your kids. Not to mention the relationships they will have with eachother because of the time they are allowed to be together.
Its going to be great! Not all the time, but in the long run 🙂
I can tell by reading here and by the kind of mom you seem to be that you are going to do just fine. You just need to not be too hard on yourself when things are difficult…at least that’s what my husband always says to me 😉
Oh, I could blab about homeschooling a long time, so I’ll try to keep this condensed, but here’s some other encouraging thoughts that another mom shared with me. Well, it’s a summary of an article that I can’t find at the moment. The author was a homeschooling veteran, and she talked about all the pressure to find the perfect homeschooling curriculum/methods. I mean, that’s one of the good things about HS right? You can customize your children’s education to their individual temperaments, skills, needs, love languages, intelligences… And you can search about any subject and find hundreds of people telling you the perfect way to teach it and you (or maybe just I) start to feel like if I don’t pick the perfect whatever, my kids are never going to learn anything. Her advice – just pick something. It doesn’t really matter if it’s the best curriculum ever or the most entertaining. It just needs to get the job done. Then when you’re done your “school”, your kids will likely still have many more hours of free time than public school kids and they can initiate their own creative, learning experiences in that time. You don’t have to control everything. You don’t have to make school fun unlike in public school, where things have to be made more fun because the kids are there for so long.
So maybe that’s just a slacker’s philosophy of education, but I sure found it reassuring. 🙂
Rah rah rah — you can do it, you can DOoooo it, you CAN do it! Rah rah rah, shish-ka-bob!
hehehe
I hope you get it all figured out before it’s my turn, because, you know, I depend on you for these kind of things…
…
no pressure.
😀
*spokenlikeatruelittlesister*
Love you! You’re doing great and will continue to, I really believe that!
Melissa
I love this. That is all. 🙂
You are right. Your ratio of 1:4 is totally unrealistic.
You need to have 3 more children.
That is when homeschooling gets fun!
Quit sitting there laughing and go have more kids already!
slacker
Hollie my dear friend. You are scaring me. And I am laughing. Takes somebody special to do both at once!
And other commenters… thank you! I especially liked the bit about my kids not having to have fun. What a burden I am throwing off my shoulders with that one. It’s ok for school to be work? Yip hip hooray! They can get back to their regularly scheduled fun afterwards. 🙂