not
that kind.
This kind. Under the heading you'll find the "why" page.
People were getting confused so I guess this calls for a little more information. Yes, we have decided to homeschool. For now. I have loved working with Marshall at home and thoroughly enjoy putting together units of study for him. It is fun to watch him learn, first hand, and to know that I taught him that (whatever *that* may be).
Having him battle me when it was time to go to school every day for the 2 1/2 years he went to pre-k was not fun. Every single day was a struggle to convince him he wanted to go to school.
We haven't told many people so this may be a surprise (not that we meant to keep it from those of you closest to us, but things were crazy before we moved). But Marshall's social behaviors concerned both John and myself a lot. We started seeing a child psychiatrist in January and right before we moved she met with us to go over a psych evaluation she had done. Please don't ever label him or think of him differently because of this, but he has what's called Oppositional Defiant Disorder as well as a mild Autism Spectrum Disorder, not severe enough to even be Asperger's. I have been in all of his classrooms multiple times to help, as well as enough other social, big-group situations to see that he changes around people. I think this is why he was having a hard time and resisting going to school. Though his teachers all loved him and thought he was a model student, I saw the struggle within him in these settings and it was hard to see.
When I pulled him out of preschool last November, I began teaching him at home. He is a voracious learner and is always thirsty for more. It has been so fun and so rewarding for me to apply all the things I learned about early childhood education in college. As our year went on, I began to think more and more about keeping him home and teaching him myself.
The beginning of this year was crazy but as soon as we were settled here in KC and school was letting out I knew it was time to make a decision. I went to the school and got all the enrollment forms filled out and everything. I found out it was full day kindergarten. I questioned all summer whether I thought Marshall would be able to handle that. Each time there was a loud, resounding "no" in my head. I know my son enough to know that if he couldn't hack 4 half days a week of pre-k just one short year ago, he was not ready to do full day, every day yet. Next year we can re-evaluate.
So, that's when I started praying about it, back in May and I didn't stop until last week. My prayers began as "please help me know what to do" then evolved into "I think I should homeschool, please confirm this decision" and last week "I am trying to be open minded, please let me feel good about sending him to public school if that is what is right for him." Minutes passed and as I was laying in bed half asleep, I started feeling sick and it wasn't just physical. My mind was trying to think about public school and I was trying whole-heartedly to feel good about it when the sick feeling hit.
I really feel good about this decision and I am SO excited for this next year, we have a lot of fun things planned.
I have a lot of strong opinions about education and today's schools that have led me to question if homeschooling is right for us. Some of those include:
-I don't believe that all teachers can inspire learning, I want Marshall to be passionate about it and never lose that hunger. I know from experience that good teachers are hit and miss, but those "miss" ones sure impact a child's future educational experience.
-I got really upset this summer when a grandma told me that her little granddaughter who just finished her kindergarten year at the school Marsh would be going to, had a packet of homework each month to complete at home. The grandmother herself had taught K&1st for 30 years and never once sent home homework. I don't believe in homework at all yet alone in K/1st! Why? A) The teachers have our kids for 7 hours each day, if they can't teach it in that amount of time something is wrong with our schools! B) Again, if kids are in school for 7 hours each day they need to unwind, play, and be kids after school. Not sit down to more school work.
-I want the flexibility to teach Marshall whatever he is interested in. Obviously I will be following our state's scope and sequence but I can tweak it for Marshall. If he is interested in space more than the human body, we can spend as long as we want on the subject until we've exhausted all our enthusiasm for it. I want to offer him more in-depth, hands-on learning than what school textbooks have to offer. And make it more exciting than just "read pages 17-20 and answer all the odd questions in the chapter review."
-Going back to the grandma at the park, she was telling me that it is impossible to cater to the academic level of all 30 students in a class. She said teachers teach at the mean level of the students. In doing so, the smarter students get taught below their level (and have the potential to get bored) and the struggling students are left more and more behind (and who are just lost and bored). And about those bored students, it is those kids that are mislabeled with ADD and the like because they are not being challenged enough. Other research I've read says that kids who start out "ahead" are usually only at grade level by 2nd or 3rd grade. Which is sad, to me.
-We can go at Marshall's speed. Right now, when we do math, we do about 4-6 lessons at a time, at Marshall's request. Granted some of it is review and is easy for him, but if he is understanding a topic well, we can go faster through it, or slower if he needs. At school a teacher has 29 other kids and can't stop for my son to catch up or allow him to go ahead. At the rate Marshall and I are going, he could easily be in our curriculum's 1st grade math by January and start 2nd grade math in a year from now (if that's how it progresses, if not, fine).
-One new teacher, who just finished her student teaching wrote on her blog that after the required amounts of time for reading, math, recess, lunch, assemblies, gym, and weekly library and computer time, there is not time for much else in their day. Marshall loves crafts and art! I want to make sure there is plenty of time for that as well as learning about different artists and composers. I want to continue doing the science experiments that he loves so much! I want him to learn to memorize by learning rhymes and poems. I want to play games to reinforce concepts. I want to explore more of our city together. There is so much to do!
-Socialization is a bunch of bologna! If you send your kid to a class full of 5 year olds, they're going to learn how to act...like a bunch of 5 year olds! Honestly, if socialization is learning about the birds and the bees on the playground at recess in 1st grade, swapping silly banz at lunch, and talking about the latest fads, then I'm sorry, but I don't want that for my kid. I don't want him to feel left out of conversations about Wii games because his mom won't let him have one. Same with all the fad toys. Socialization happens in homeschool, it just happens differently. With other homeschool families, with friends on playdates, at church where he is in a classroom, in sports and extracurricular classes, etc. My bff from Utah was homeschooled in her early years and she's one of the most social people I know! I think being social, to a large extent, is inherent. Some people love to socialize in big groups, others more intimate settings. It's a part of peoples' nature.
I could defend my decision until I'm blue in the face. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is that I know I made the right decision. Well, and that Marshall actually learned something ;-)
Marshall reviewing patterns and tracing their shapes
Making his own number line
Genius at work ;)
Uh, not so genius at work... We had a family from the ward over for dinner last night. As I was making it Coen pulled every book off their bookshelf and about half the toys out of their bins. You couldn't even see the floor!!
Another one of Coen's mischievous adventures - he found my lip balm in my purse and wiped it all over brother's back as he was hunched over doodling.
By the look of this picture, it looks like he taste sampled it too.
Marshall was painting some dinos for homeschool, so we let Coen in on the action. I tried to get him to just finger paint, but he wanted the paints and brushes big brother was using.
After the dinos, Marshall chose to do some freestyle painting, too.
Trying a different technique of splatting the bristles against the paper.
Whenever Coen gets a mess on his hands, he does this thing where he grabs a handful of hair from both sides of his head at the same time and pulls.
Seconds before this picture, he was reading the book under his feet, so I ran to get my camera. He set himself up like this with his blanky, sippy, and book.
Such a goofball!
Then he started showing me his sippy...
his right foot...
then his left foot...
then the book. He would hold each thing until I took the picture, then hold up the next.
The boys were playing in their room when I heard a fight break out. The problem? Marshall wanted the "binoculars" (aka: the viewmaster) that Coen was playing with. The solution? Being the resourceful homeschooling mom that I am (hehe) I ran to my stash of random craft things I've been collecting and grabbed a paper towel tube. I cut it in half and stapled the insides together. Marshall loved it and began decorating it. A day or two later Coen wanted his own pair.
Last week we had a few nice, tolerable days temperature-wise. We took a family walk one evening to celebrate.
{click to enlarge}
Coen doing his funny run down the street
