Hi Cindy Gal!
Welcome to the board! Please ask questions, as the ladies here are a treasure of information and advice.
I remember well when my kids were that young. I joined a local homeschool support group to get to know others and to learn all I could before "school age." In retrospect, preschool time was a blast!
God's richest blessings!
Christine

Hi ladies, I am new to this community and to homeschooling. My two daughters are 3 years old and 1 year old. I want to start my 3 year old on pre-K this fall. I am very excited about it, and also very overwhelmed and intimidated by it. I have no idea where to start, how to pick good curriculums, etc. etc. Any advice would be welcome.

My husband, who is pastoring a small church in Illinois, and I have talked about homeschooling our children since they were born. We weren't sure how it would all work out, but we have been praying that if the Lord would have us do it, that He would provide the way. Well, the church we are at is able to pay us enough to live on so that I don't have to work. I am blessed to be able to stay home with my daughters, and now the opportunity to homeschool them is wide open. I feel that if God has given us the ability and opportunity to do it, then how could we not? So, I am looking forward to this new stage in our lives with excitement, and pray that my children will grow to love God as well as grow to love learning thorugh this. It sounds like I am in good company, and I look forward to getting to know y'all Take care and God bless, Hallyn

Hi Hallyn,
Welcome to the board and congratulations on your decision to homeschool. Younger children these ages are so much fun! If you use a guidebook or curriculum, hold it loosely and revel in these sunshiney days of early childhood. There's plenty of time for serious academic work later.
Let us know how you're doing.
Blessings,
Christine
PS - Where are you in Illinois? We're in Wheaton.

Hi, I am a mother to three. Girl 10, Boy 7, Girl 4. God has used people and mishaps at school to open the door for homeschooling. I have always wanted to homeschool but, my husband needed more proof. Now he is on board and I am ready to move forward!! I admire all you veterans. You are amazing. Thanks for this board!!

Christine, I am familiar with Wheaton, I graduated from Moody Bible Institute in 1995, but we are quite a bit south now. We are about 1/2 hour away from St. Louis in a small town called Meadowbrook.

I have been looking at some different curriculum, and am planning on keeping it pretty simple this year, since my daughter is only 3. Next year I'll be more pro-active in finding a variety of materials. A good friend of mine who is homeschooling her 4 children (10, 8, 6, & 4) has given me a lot of good advice, and shared with me what materials she has had good success with. I probably won't follow just one (like Bob Jones, etc.) I will probably look around and try lots of different things and styles. So, anyone who has particular materials they really like in a certain subject, I would be happy to hear about it! :-)

Take care and God bless,
Heidi

Hi Heidi,
It will be exciting to hear you talk about your experiences.
God bless you!
Christine

Hi!

My name is Bekah, and I had no say in starting homeschooling ... because my Mom decided it for my older brother when he was 5! And then continued it with me and my younger brother. I chose to go to High School from 10th grade on, however, because my Mom did "school at home" and I thought it was dry, boring, pointless, etc.

And then school turned out to be more of the same, but with other kids. So I stayed because of having friends there. What I remember, though, is being able to weigh what I was taught in school against what I was taught in a Christian home, and being able to come out of public High School with ...

Almost complete opposite values from what I went in with. (Surprised? Peer pressure is much stronger than anyone will admit. Which is one of the reasons God created large Families.)

Fast Forward to the recent past.

My daughter entered Kindergarten in the local public school, which had a great reputation and her teacher was very good. She had a good time there, learned a lot of facts that had no place in her everyday life, met a bunch of other 5 year olds and learned some choice words ... and every day was the same. We would argue in the morning to rush her off to school (she likes to take her time--perfectionist), then we'd pick her up, give her a quick snack and it was argue time again, to get her homework done. Then she'd go play while I made supper and cleaned up the house for Daddy's homecoming. We'd eat, and then it was bath time or Wed. night church, or a home group, or something or other, and then bedtime. And then up the next morning to do it all over again.

During that year, I lost something very precious--my daughter. Oh, sure, she was there, in the same sense that the computer is there. I saw her every once in a while, and every so often we'd do something that wasn't WORK, but there was no relationship. Just getting things done. She started having sleep problems, and being cranky all day because of it. She was bullied by a few older kids on the playgournd. She did A+ work, but took her own sweet time about it, and her teacher complained about it all the time.

My thought? If she wants to take the time to do it RIGHT, then why not? Well, public school reason is that they have too many other kids to deal with. Everything has to keep moving.

So, over the next summer we reconnected, and got to know each other again. About that time God started directing me to homeschooling. I remembered how close I was to my Mom as a kid, and how firm my faith was until it was challenged in High School ... the result of that was my daughter, which I wouldn't trade for anything, but I did have her when I was 18 years and 2 months old.

After much discussion, research, and prayer, we decided that homeschooling was the way for us, and amazingly now, I have my daughter back year-round! I was also intensely relieved not to have to send my 5 year old son to school this year. Even if we were a schooling family, he would SO not be ready! He's a hands-on kid, and there's no way he could sit at a desk and copy letters over and over and over. Why make him? His hands can get just as much fine motor skill by coloring Tie Fighters and Darth Vader pictures or building pirate ships from his Legos. He doesn't need school to learn what needs to be learned.

So, here we are, with daughter (7), son (5), son (2 1/2) and daughter (2 months), homeschooling as the Lord leads and loving it, putting Him first, relationships second, and "school" out of the picture all together.

That's us.


Bekah C
Wife of 1, Owner of 2, Daughter of 3 & Mom of 4!

Becka, That's a wonderful story. You really have a testamony on the "why" of homeschool!
Why don't you join us on our "chat" thread over in Encouragement? We'd love to hear about your day-to-day happenings and possibly lift you up too!

Becka,

Your children are almost the exact ages as mine!

DS 6.5, DS 5, DD 2, DD 3 mos.

I would so love to see more about your family.

And how your days are.

I'm e mailing my dh your intro. he has been talking more about sending them to ps we've only had our oldest in some developmental classes years ago when he needed some speech therapy.
I have been struggling more with discipline problems than anything and I know ps isn't gonna make it better only worse. I want things to work out and am finding ways to make our days less stressful so my dh relaxes a little about our daily lives in general
Well I'd love to chat with you more when you have time.

Hey Bekah,
What a blessing to have your children home!
You are so wise!
Welcome!
Christine

Hello. My name is Nori. I've been homeschooling my seventeen year old daughter for almost eight years now.

She started out in kindergarten and first grade in a Christian school. My husband and I decided to put her in public school for second grade because the tuition was going up too much. That was not a good idea. Our early experience with public school only lasted about a month before her teacher suggested that I homeschool her because I refused to teach her to be happy with what she was learning in class and not to go ahead in her books.

My husband passed away in January, 1999. My daughter and I moved from California to Indiana. She was nine years old and blamed me for my husband's death (he was an organ donor and she thought that I let the doctors kill him). We were arguing almost constantly. So, for the first semester of fourth grade, I put her in our local public school. I told the principal and her teacher that she was an intelligent child and that if the work was too easy, she would get bored and refuse to do it. They both smiled at me and told me about their advanced classes for elementary students. Well, the teacher wouldn't meet with me to talk about her progress. And, after one semester, my daughter's grades dropped drastically. I pulled her out of school before the second semester started.

We homeschooled through the end of fifth grade, when my church asked me to teach Spanish to the students in exchange for free tuition for my daughter. I thought it would be good for both of us to deal with other students at that time. So, we spent the first semester of sixth grade at my church's school. By the end of the first semester, the student body had dropped to six students (including my daughter) and the principal told me that I would have to start paying tuition. I couldn't afford that so we went back to homeschooling.

My daughter's now nearing the end of eleventh grade. We're talking about colleges. She's been offered a full ride scholarship, if she scores well on her ACT this spring, based only on the fact that she's homeschooled. We're looking forward to completing this stage of her education.

Hi Nori,
Welcome to the group! You have quite a story. I hope you stop by often.
17-year-olds are challenging under any circumstances. It sounds like you've done a great job with her.
Tell us more about how you did high school.
Blessings,
Christine Field

Hi my name is Elizabeth I just started homeschooling this year and I am really enjoying it. It has been going very well. I am now looking at curriculum for next year and I am a little overwhelmed. I used Lifepacs (for my 2nd grader) and Switched on Schoolhouse (for my 3rd grader) but I am looking for less workbook activity. So I am open to suggestions.
Thanks!
Elizabeth

Hi Elizabeth,
Welcome to the board! Congrats on your first year. Have you been to a conference yet? Find a big one and go browsing the exhibit hall. If it doesn't overwhelm you, you'll be amazed at the variety of materials available.
Anyone have any other ideas?
Blessings,
Christine