It's my blog so I can ramble on about this (AGAIN) if I want to right? :)
Tomorrow we are telling Jake we are going to homeschool next year..Oh yeah, I have mentioned that 3,249 times already right? I can't help it I AM SO EXCITED!!!
I went to a Homeschooling bookstore yesterday and found myself wanting to buy all sorts of curriculum. It is a consignment store where you can bring the stuff you have already used and get other stuff you may need. It was wonderful! There were kids sitting on the floor reading while their mom's were searching the store. There was a girl taking a piano lesson in a little "classroom" office. There were birds chirping sweetly in a big glass cage. There were A Beka (and every other one under the sun!) curriculum-the books and teachers answer guides. There were educational games and DVD's. I looked at everything and almost spent a small fortune (not really I just could have). Then I remembered that we aren't going to do it that way. We are going to be making our own curriculum...Yikes, that sounds so scary...And it is a little, but also, not so much. I have the list of all the things Jake "has" to learn in the 5th grade. We will learn those of course...but we are really going to study all the things that Jake wants to learn all about. In fact that will be our first task starting Monday...That's right the poor boy isn't even going to get a break. :) We are going to jump right in-but it isn't going to be like school AT ALL. We are going to create Jake's "compass"-the list of what he wants to learn about. The guide we will use on Jake's path to self education... How awesome is that? Learning what you are interested in. Going into that wonderful bookstore made me realize (again...) that stepping off the conveyor belt of public school education is going to be an ongoing process. It is in grained in my brain that you must follow the norm. Take the easy path. Go page by page in the workbook and that is learning. Right? It works, but Jake needs more than that. He deserves more than that. He deserves an education. He is smart enough to learn how to love learning. All children are...I am not drinking the Kool Aid, I swear. I am just excited because I have learned so much preparing to help Jake. I know he will LOVE it!!!
