We actually ended school about two weeks ago due to my extreme exhaustion and the kids extreme rudeness. I wanted to do a little wrap up of our experiment, maybe even a two act talent show that you are ALL invited to.
First, my regrets:
I think I started this with great confidence and ended wondering what the hell happened. I spent A LOT of money on things that ended up sitting on a shelf collecting dust, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect. All that nonsense flew out the window with my Mary Poppins attitude by the 2nd month. I have to admit that it was REALLY HARD!!!
My house took a beating from the children being cooped up like animals during the winter months.
My preparation was lacking toward the end. I have to admit that public school gives the kids plenty of time to learn a variety of subjects. Unfortunately it also gives them plenty of time to sit on buses, watch movies and learn global warming chants. It was REALLY hard for me to feel good about the variety of subjects we were able to cover.
My kids missed their friends. I didn't see this until it started to get warm, but it happened. The novelty of sleeping in and playing all afternoon got old fairly quick.
So will I do it again? OF COURSE - here's why:
I got to spend oodles of time with my kids and built better relationships with them. I think I really know who they are now.
We didn't have any fights over hair, finding books or shoes or missing the bus.
We had time to read the scriptures and pray together - without complaining.
We never had to run from place to place. By the time after school activities start, we are ready to do them!!
We got to do what we wanted, when we wanted. No cops at my house, no concerned looks - NO JAIL TIME. The great thing about Utah is that are not many guidelines for homeschool. Some people look at this in a negative way thinking that parents will just let their kids sleep all day and never teach them a thing, but I don't know what kind of nut would do that. It is hard to have kids running around ALL DAY EVERY DAY - definitely not for the lazy.
I think my kids are ahead of the curve with what they learned. They were not bound by a classroom of 30 kids, all with their own problems. We had plenty of one on one time and were able to make sure they TRULY got it before we moved on. They also learned to ski, clean a toilet, vacuum. buy me a drink at Conoco and have fun with EACHOTHER.
Our evolving education experiment will continue next year with an AWESOME change. I have gotten to know some other brave moms this year and we will be forming a co-op to help with all the negatives we experienced. I am SO excited to see how it goes - hopefully my kids are up for being guinea pigs for another year.
With the school year behind me, feel free to approach me again. I will not bombard you with my rhetoric again until September.
4 comments:
You are so cool. It turned out so great! Now whenever anyone talks about starting to homeschool their kids here, I just mention how my cousin just did it and was awesome at it. When my kids go to school, I'll probably home school them now so they don't learn homosexual chants, thanks to you!
Heaven help us...
I feel like a little kid trying to act like a grown up. I hope we don't scar the children to badly.
I think if I can hold my drinking and dancing down to a minimum they won't think anything is amiss. Plus if they are scarred too badly we can do a unit on hypnotherapy and erase their memory.
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