I’m am joining Dana’s Home Education Week – in retrospect. This has been a week with very little online time, and so I’ll just take the time I have now, and backpost to follow the flow.
Dana asks:
Share your personal history … before you were a home educator. What was life like? Think about things you miss and things you and your family have gained.
I’m sure there was life before home education, but there is little to remember except that we had to get up early, and I missed them while they were gone. That was a LONG time ago. We’ve been home educating since 1987.
Our oldest 2 went from being in our home up to age 5, to the typical government education institution for a few years. During that time we had 2 more dc, who were home with me. We also became Christians at that time, and began researching home ed soon after. It was just coming into anyone’s knowledge then. I read the 2 or 3 books available on it, and knew no one personally who was doing it. But, within 2 years of becoming Christians, we began home educating. It’s one of the very best decisions we’ve EVER made.
BTW, although I’d only heard vaguely of home schooling and of some family 75 miles away doing it, when our first was about 1.5 and someone asked when I was going to wean her, I replied that if she wasn’t weaned by kindergarten I’d have to home school her. — She did wean, way before 5, and I did send her to ps, but brought her home a few years later.
I probably worked on more craft and sewing projects back then. Now I work on lesson plans. And I obviously read different things back then. I took a couple college classes I was interested in, got my interior design certification, personal color certification (for make up and wardrobe), and when God saved me, I began lifelong dedicated Bible study. I was already designing crafts and selling them, and teaching craft classes, and teaching nutrition classes.
But I wouldn’t say I “miss” anything. I still work on those things as time allows, and I LOVE the studying I do now, for educating my own children – since it is just as extension of my Bible Study, and for teaching other parents how to home educate in Freedom & Simplicity™ through Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™.
I believed we have gained everything! I wouldn’t send my dc out of the home that way again. During our home education years, we have gone from 4 children to 10. Those oldest 4 are now grown and in their own homes. So life has changed, because our family has changed, but for the last 21 years, home education has been the constant – a God guided life of family discipleship.
