My wife and I have been talking about homeschooling our kids for a while. I think we talked about it before we even had kids. School is a drag. Many teachers do amazing work in schools, but the cards are stacked against success from the start. Large classes give little one on one time to students, which is only exacerbated by the fact that the students may have dramatically different learning abilities. Sitting down and learning can be a huge struggle for children, and was for both my wife and me. The nature of large classes and standardization mean that students don’t necessarily study any of the things they are interested in. Add on the fact that we are in the military and have to move schools frequently, and political reasons I don’t want to talk about here, and homeschooling sounds very appealing.
But homeschooling takes work. My wife was concerned that she would be responsible for teaching our girls. She would have to read books and learn things so she could teach them, then try to get them to focus long enough for them to learn. It would require her to always be on top of things to make sure the learning happened. It was overwhelming and she really didn’t want to.
Then when we were living in Del Rio she made a friend who homeschooled her children who recommended The Good and the Beautiful. Her favorite things were that the books had everything you needed to teach. You don’t have to know, you just have to be able to read. The lessons are so small, they’re entirely manageable. We decided it was at least worth trying.
Well, after we got our tax return we decided we were going to get the courses for our oldest daughter. It finally came on Wednesday, and today was our third day of doing it. I did the first day and my wife did the next two. Our daughter was very excited the first day, but that could have just been “new thing” excitement. The second day went really well, with my wife commenting on how easy and fun it was, so much so that they did a couple lessons each of math and language arts. My daughter asked at dinner time if she could do more school. Today they did three lessons each and my wife said she had no problem with doing it. At this rate, she’ll be done with the kindergarten level books by the end of June, if not sooner. And the quality of the learning is fantastic. Having tutored math and reading, this is very high quality content.
So I’m just saying, if you are looking at homeschooling your kids, I wholeheartedly recommend The Good and the Beautiful.
We’re also talking about trying out Joy School, a homeschool values-based preschool I used when I was a kid. It might be a little while because it would be just another thing for my wife to do, but we’re interested.
Anyway, have a great night!