Golden Reflections Blog

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This coming week my husband, daughter and I are traveling to Nashville for the Teach Them Diligently Homeschool Convention! Deciding to homeschool is a very personal decision and one that we have not made lightly! I wanted to share some of the reasons we decided to homeschool our daughter in the future and also share some of my homeschool story.

I am a homeschool graduate myself. My mom work part time as well as homeschooling my brother and me from KG through 12th grade, she was a supermom! I enjoyed my homeschool experience greatly. We were always finished with school at like 1 or 2 pm and enjoyed being outside and playing when our neighbors would get home 2 hours later from public school. They were quite jealous of us too, haha! I was able to start college classes at our local community college at 16 and I graduated from high school a year early!

One thing I remember the most about homeschooling was doing unit studies each year on a certain topic and then exploring the places we learned about that summer on vacation! For example, one year we studied the Civil war. We watched videos from the library, read history books, and also watched Ken Burns series on the Civil war. Then that summer we took a tour of Civil war battle fields in the area. Another year we studied Government and then that summer took a trip to Washington DC to explore our nation’s capital.

When my husband and I were dating and then became engaged, we discussed children and how we wanted to raise them. My husband went to private Christian schools for his school and we both graduated the same year. After graduating and marriage I got a job in a local public school as an Occupational Therapy Assistant working with special needs children. My first day of work was my first time in a public school, other than college!

So deciding to homeschool our daughter actually came very easy for us. Here are some of those reasons:

• Religious – Both David and I grew up as Seventh-Day Adventist Christians are continue to practice as SDAs. A lot of SDAs are homeschooled for religious beliefs and reasons. As SDAs we believe that Saturday is the Sabbath and we also follow the health laws of the old testament (no unclean meats like pork) and many are vegetarian. Being homeschooled makes these lifestyle choices easier and we have a great community with our church for social as well as youth group and Adventurer/Pathfinder club activities. Learning that Jesus is her best friend and He will always be there for her is the most important training we have as parents. 

• Educational – I want to be in charge of my child’s education, it’s that simple really! I want to plan what she will learn, when she will learn it, tailoring it to her learning style whatever that may be. This type of learning is hard to do in public school. There is one teacher to almost 30 kids and so individualized teaching is tough! I know there are some amazing teachers out there and I do not want to diminish what they do, but as the saying goes, Mama knows best! And I feel like I will know what is best for my daughter! 

• Freedom – Being home schooled actually allows for more freedom in schedules, extra curricular activities, field trips, learning about what interests her etc. 

• Social – When most people here you are homeschooling the first question is always, “But what about socialization?!” And my honest answer to that, being in control of who my daughter interacts with and knowing all her friends and their families very well is what I love about homeschooling. My mom always says that I grew up having more lifelong friends than she did being in public school. Both my mom and my husband have lost touch with most of their friends from highschool. I, on the other hand, have very dear friends who I have known for years and still keep in touch over the years. Growing up we were part of homeschool groups, mom and tots groups, and field trip groups and I plan on doing the same with my daughter. Having close friends who grow up in a similar home and lifestyle is important to us, that way we know who our daughter is hanging out with and what kind of influences she will be around. I want her to grow up knowing who she is and very confident in that and being homeschooled, I feel, will give her that! 

I am looking forward to the Teach Them Diligently Homeschool Convention this coming week to start planning and getting homeschool ideas! You can follow me on twitter and instagram during the conference to see what all is going on. On twitter you can also follow #hsttd to stay up to date all weekend!

Are you homeschooling your children? What are some reasons you decided to homeschool? 


Blessings,