In The Beginning…

I guess a good place to begin on this blog is a bit about our family. My husband just recently graduated with a bachelors in Economics and is now job hunting. I am a SAHM. We have four daughters that are 9 (fourth grade), 7 (second grade), 2, and 6 months.

Next, our family’s reasons for homeschooling. We are staunch political conservatives and active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As such, we have not appreciated the direction the public school system in the United States has been taking the past few years. We had been debating pulling the kids out of the public school system, and then last week was the straw the broke the camels back for us. We do not appreciate hearing about three incidents in one week of children in US schools being punished for wearing, defending or drawing the US flag! We’ve also been having a bit of a problem with a teacher this year being fairly liberal and pushing vegetarianism onto our seven year old. We are not rich – I cannot afford to make one of my children separate meals every day. Yet she is now refusing to eat most proteins because of this teacher. So not happy about that. We are also homeschooling because we feel our children will thrive better in such an environment, our oldest daughter in particular. She is extremely artistic, but rarely has time to develop this talent because there is no time during school or after due to homework. Both of our children that are in school are also showing signs of boredom due to being very smart but having to work at the slowest denominators pace. So we feel homeschooling will allow them to learn at a faster pace that will keep them more engaged.

This blog is to help me organize my thoughts as I go about learning how to homeschool and choosing from the plethora of ways to teach and curriculums. It is also meant to be a learning place for me and anyone that reads it. I would greatly appreciate comments, suggestions and criticism. Especially from other homeschoolers about what curriculums and learning styles they have used and liked or hated. On the side bar, I’ve also placed a list of the curriculums I’m planning on using for the kids next school year. These are not complete (I still need something for science and Chinese) and will probably change as we learn better our individual styles.