School at Home

{ School at Home }

This year we made a huge and life altering decision for our family. We chose to home-school our two daughters instead of enrolling them in the public school system in our new area. It was a momentous decision because I come from a long line of teachers and I was a public high school teacher before I had children.I never thought I would be a mother who home-schooled but here we are and this is what we are doing. There are many reasons we made this decision and the main one is that we will be moving mid-year as we transition from military to civilian life. We don't know where we will land and we want our children to have some stability in a time of change. I really feel like that God led us to this point and is giving me an opportunity that I want to cherish and take slowly. I know that it isn't the mainstream way of doing things and I have been met with some critical opinions of others. It is hard to shrug them off at times because I am not thick skinned but I took the time to seek out a supportive group of women who also home-school and this has been my saving grace. I know that we will have days that feel like a failure and I will meet people who may not agree with our choice. It will be my choice to either offer that up as a test of my character and rise to the occasion or be unnecessarily hard on myself and doubt this path. 

 I did a bunch of research on different types of homeschooling and there are a lot of options. We decided on a classical curriculum from the Calvert School for the Monday through Thursday with half days on Fridays. A majority of the learning will take place during this time. It is a great program and the staff is extremely supportive. On Friday afternoons, we will exploring project based schooling with different long term projects that I hope will let our girls be creative and inventive. Our first project is building a cardboard box doll house. We will be using art, math and science to do something fun. I have planned many fun field trips and signed up the girls for ballet and art classes. We are going to a packed year of learning and fun! 

Here is a sneak peek into our classroom and play areas. We now have an unconventional home but it is kind of great to see such a big change take place in our home.