HomeSchool.html

Home Schooling

In summer of 1999 our family finished 12 years of home schooling. When we started out, there were only a few families in our area that taught their kids at home, only a few knew about or heard of the Internet, there were virtually no support groups and few places to buy curricula geared for a family at home -- and now look! Home schooling abounds everywhere you turn! Now it's reputable; ivy league colleges and universities are preferring home schooled students and companies are eager to hire them.

My husband and I served home school families in our region and later our state for several years. During that time we had the privilege to be acquainted with some of the cream of America's families. No, they weren't rich or famous, but they were dedicated to training their children in the way they should go, and preparing those children to one day lead this nation in moral values, honor and integrity. Now we see many of those same families beginning to realize those goals.

Does my public school teacher love
me like Mommy and Daddy?

Home schooling started out a 99% Christian movement, and today it's still largely made up of middleclass, Christian families, but now people from all walks of life and religions are becoming discouraged with problems in the schools, or problems in their children, to the degree that they are boldly going where they never thought they could go before! With the general 'dumbing down' of school curricula across North America, home schooling holds out real hope of helping to turn that trend back upward, as home schooled students are becoming an excellent educational force to be compared to. As a group, home schoolers score an average of 20 points higher on standardized tests... *not* because they're superior people, but because they're learning in a loving and efficient environment...home.

More learning is able to take place where kids don't have to wait in lines, or be held back until the rest of the class catches up, and where, if there's a behavioral problem, the child is truly loved and guided, rather than coped-with and endured. I have seen many ADHD and other disabilities children achieve, excel and flourish at home, instead of be labeled and ridiculed by other children and adults that don't tolerate what they can't understand.

While teaching one's children at home brings feelings of safety and security in that you know where they are and what they're doing, it's definately NOT the easy thing to do. The day our oldest son didn't get on the bus, but stayed home for good, I felt much the same way I felt when I came home from the hospital when he was born. "I've got him, now what do I do with him?" It was scary at first, but we quickly got used to working together, and fell in love with home schooling so much that Dave and I began teaching all four of them at home. We discovered that teaching academics was just one more thing we did as a family. We taught them to walk and talk, to eat and potty. Now we'll also teach them to cipher, write, read, think, orate and drive a car. It's an indescribable feeling when you see the light of understanding dawn in your child's eyes as they grasp a new, difficult math concept, or listen to them read a passionate essay about patriotism and realize that they read because you taught them how; it's as thrilling as when they took their first baby steps. It's a beautiful thing I'll never forget: I was there when my children passed important educational milestones. I didn't hear about it at a parent-teacher conference.

We have never regretted our decision to teach our kids at home. I coined a motto back in that first year that still holds true 12 years later: "Our worst day of home schooling is better than the best day at school." I hope you'll find that to be true, too.

Below are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of web sites pertaining to home education. The Internet itself is one of the best possible home school tools. Feel free to email us to tell us your favorites. As we look back on our home school, it's kind of like childbirth: we've forgotten the 'pain' and remember only the sweetness of our babies. We really don't remember the bad days. We just have many, many happy memories that span 12 years of daily life with 4 precious pupils that also happen to be our own delightful children.

College is Possible: American Council on Education
Grolier Online
Ask Jeeves
Home & Family Idea Exchange for Moms & Dads
Teacher's Quest Index #1 Resource on the Internet
National Geographic
The Butterfly WebSite
The Ornithology WebSite

Gaggle
St. Louis Science Center
Invention Dimension!
Franklin Institute Science Museum
Discovery Online
NetVet Electronic Zoo
Teacher Features
NASA Live Cams
National Space Society
National Aquarium in Baltimore
Ocean Planet Home Page
Earthquake Information

Creation Science
Study Web
Test Prep Home Page
EarthWatch Weather on Demand
The Word Detective
Graded Vocabulary Puzzles
Spelling Troublesome Words
The Constitution Page
Peggie's Schoolroom
Links for Students K-12
KIDSURFER

The Land of Quotes
California's Gold Rush Country
College Edge Home Page
CNN Space Exploration Gallery/Shuttle
Virtual Antarctica
Steve's Ant Farm

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