Preschooling At Home

I'm such a huge fan of homeschooling, and homeschoolers, and the homeschooled...etc., etc.  Let me tell you my top three reasons why:

1)  Parents who homeschool are involved in their children's lives in an intimate way.  They have the opportunity to see all of those milestones that they might otherwise miss.  They can cultivate a synergistic relationship between home/school.  It isn't all home, and then all school.  It's both!  And then the natural progression from that is a blurring of the line between home and school, and that can mean almost anything, anything at all, can be used as a learning, growing, wonderful opportunity.  I like that.  Okay so that's sort of two reasons, not one.

2)  Children who are homeschooled get to realize very early on that the traditional classroom environment is an artificially constructed one.  At no other point in your life will you ever be stuck, for 8 solid hours a day, with 29 children the same age as you and one adult.  That is make-believe and what's more, it doesn't help children to grow up and become adults.  They don't learn how to converse with adults, they aren't exposed to any great degree to opinions other than the ones currently owned by  the classroom majority, and they are easy prey for bullies and the ignorant.

3)  Homeschooling shows seriously how heavily you take the weight of parenthood.  This one is more of a personal belief, I think, whereas the other two points are less so.  Certainly my parents cared deeply for my sister and I, and yet we went through the public system.  Also, I know of some homeschooling parents who clearly did not take their responsibilities seriously at all, and slacked, to their child's detriment.  But when done right, homeschooling brings into focus those things on which you and your family place the heaviest weight.

So it probably comes as no big surprise that David and I have always thought we would homeschool Samuel 'when the time came'.  That time was clearly 'sometime in the future' and would 'be dealt with when we got to it'.  Etc.  Then we started to realize that maybe, for our family, homeschooling would be second best to a private Christian school.  We played around with that idea for a while, eventually sort-of-kinda rejecting it.  Then we thought about private alternative non-Christian education, such as Montessori for a while, but not very seriously.  And then we went back to hammering out what homeschool would look like for us.  And the closer we've gotten to a time when Samuel might actually GO to school, the less certain we've become!

I've found out a few things about myself in the process though.  Firstly, I am not an unschooler.  Unschooling is child-led learning taken to the maximum degree, and that is not me.  I need a plan, even if we don't always follow it, and although I'm all about letting Samuel explore his interests, I really doubt that I'd thrive as an educator in an environment where my main role is facilitator.

Second, I need to buy a curriculum.  Not necessarily because I need advice on how to teach something, but because I really need to know what to teach and when.  I've been writing down homeschooling ideas in a folder on the computer whenever I come across one I like, and they're everywhere, all over the map.  Neat ideas to teach homonyms, Bible verses, measurements...except that I can't figure out how they'd fit together, how we'd transition from one to another, or even what age to introduce them!  Oh, I have ideas, but the foundation beneath those ideas...well, I think a curriculum would provide that.

Third, David wants, and needs, to be involved in this.  I think that's wonderful, but it is unexpected.  When I imagined homeschooling I never imagined teaching in tandem with someone else, but I have to admit it makes sense.  David has strengths that I don't have, he will have opportunities that I won't have to teach, and tandem teaching also presents a more united parental front.  It isn't Mom the teacher, it's Mom and Dad, my teachers.  When David goes on visitation to a nursing home, the opportunity is there for Samuel to join him and maybe complete a service project or even just practice his conversation skills.  It's an opportunity that I wouldn't necessarily provide for him.

There are things that have made me nervous, as well.  How will we manage if I need to work, either inside or outside the home?  How would we work around David's schedule?  What about multiple grades if there is more than one child?  How do we handle classes that neither of us excels at teaching?  What if I'M bored with the lessons?  Can we afford/do we need expensive science lab equipment?  Will Samuel fit in with other children his age if he's homeschooled, and should that even factor into our decision?  The list goes on, and David and I have slowly, slowly begun to answer those questions together.

But the time for deciding is getting closer.  Children in this province are going into kindergarten at age 4, and there are very few children aged 3 who are not in a preschool program.  Samuel is only 15 months old, but already I've been pressured to 'put him in care', and I know it's only a matter of time before the pressure will switch from day care to preschool.  If we don't put him into preschool we will be in the vast minority, and there will be questions, and although I'm not afraid of questions I like to be prepared with answers to them whenever possible.

And as a result to this, I've been doing a lot of research into preschool programs, all of which are, of course, way above Samuel's current level of understanding and so it's difficult for me to evaluate them based on where he may or may not be anywhere from 9-21 months from now.  There are a few clear leaders so far, and because my evaluation of the programs can't involve where Samuel is, it's forced me to think about where I want him to be, and work backwards.  At the age of four I want him to know what?  At three?  At two?

This is probably going to end up teaching me as much as it teaches him.