The 6 (or so) month review of home schooling

Now that I have about 6 months under my belt of doing the home school thing, I thought I would take some time to reflect...isn't that some of the point of a blog?

First of all, home schooling for us so far has just been great! Most of you know, I'm not really the type to gush over anything. Even when I think things are great, I'm still one to point out the bad part too. With home schooling, I am just all about seeing the good side of it!

Here's my list of what has been great - now you have to remember my perspective of coming into being a home school mom first. I was the career mom who worked a minimum of 50-60 hours a week and was gone a couple times a month and I loved my career. My boys had a dad who stayed home with them and did a fantastic job. I switched to being the primary at home parent about a year before attempting to home school while we were living in someone else's house and had just moved to a strange city. We moved again (another new place, but our own house this time) and soon after the home school adventure starts.

What I love...
1. The laid back schedule. Every morning is not a struggle to get people dressed, breakfast eaten, teeth brushed and out the door at a specific time. We start when we start and I like to get up and get going, but we don't have to start at a specific time.
2. The laid back schedule. The boys and I have been gone many weeks doing great stuff that couldn't have happened if Andrew was enrolled in a traditional school.
3. Learning at our own pace. If we aren't really up for paying attention, the lesson will wait and not just be missed because one of them couldn't pay attention at the time.
4. Structured quality time with my boys. I'm not much of a "play" person or a silliness lover. I like to play games and do constructive kind of things but not really all about doing all of the boy playing. This gives me some great structured time with them.
5. Sonlight Curriculum. The Curriculum that we chose is not easy - it's been challenging and enjoyable for all of us to learn. I'm really glad that I spent the money and just bought it all from them so I have all the books when we need it. I'm glad that it's been deep enough for even me to enjoy. (There are tons of great curriculum's out there and anyone who has done the investigation knows that you could spend days and days and days trying to make a decision.)
6. Choosing a curriculum that tells me what to do every day. We don't follow the schedule exactly every day, but it's there to motivate me on the days that I'm not so motivated. If I were to just have some books, we wouldn't have done nearly as much stuff as we have been doing.
7. I've learned to read Usborne books. If you've ever been exposed to this brand of book before, you may love them. Generally before we started, I was not a big fan. There's so much information on a page, I didn't know how to read it. Do I read the regular text first and then all of the stuff around. Do I read the extra stuff around as we go? The curriculum that we chose uses Usborne books but we only read one spread a day. So we can spend time looking at the pictures and reading the text leisurely. I actually enjoy them now, but don't ask me to read more than one or two pages a day or I'll go crazy!
8. The great support and friends that I've had along the way. When I was first considering the home school thing after a very long time of flat out denying the fact that I would ever do it, I looked around at all of the people I knew that home schooled - Suzanne in TX, Jen in Kansas, Kim in Missouri, Sue in WI, lots of people in IA. Each one was doing it for their own reasons and taking it one year at a time...Once I made it to Rolla, the other moms have been really great friends to me!
9. Getting to know my boys more and know what they are exposed to. The days that we don't spend the entire day together (Wednesday and Thursday at a minimum), I hear so little about their day. I really can't imagine this being the case 5 days a week where I get a 30 second summary of the last 7 hours!
10. My home school choice is a year by year decision! Just because we are doing kindergarten for our first child this year doesn't tie me into any schooling decision for any future years for either of our children! I'm pretty sure that we will home school next year, but I'm only willing to make a decision for one year at a time! And we'll most likely take advantage of public school summer school again this year - aren't options great?
10. I have great students!

Summary - it's been great. We don't always have great days, but it was a great decision for us. I definitely know that it's not for everyone and in every situation but I'm very happy about the decision that we made.