Why homeschool?   Well the reasons vary from family to family and I won't even pretend to cover all the various reasons. When the time came to discuss options for our family, Serona and I did not start out thinking this is the direction we would choose - but it seems more and more every day we feel at peace with this path, atleast for this point in our lives. We began with the discussion of public versus private and began investigating options in our area. We quickly realized that the price tags on the private schools could near over 10,000 a year per child. Knowing that our family will atleast have three kids each two years apart in school that became overwhelming to even consider. But consider it we did and we could not find the justification in our minds for spending that kind of money for one child when we could use far less than that and educate all three of our kids at home.

Then of course we discussed public schools and we quickly realized that we have many hesitations about that route as well, from poor standards to the values (or lack thereof) taught in the school systems in our area we felt this would be putting limitations on our children and setting us up for potential problems with values, morals and even the way our children are taught to think about the world. So we found ourselves continually coming back to the option of homeschooling, atleast at an early age, until our kids needs outstrip what we can offer them (if it reaches this point), until they have a basic grasp of how to learn, make moral judgements and learn to discern truth for themselves, or until we go crazy trying. So we made a commitment to use some resources to transform our basement into a classroom environment for our kids and begin that adventure this summer.

So we are jumping into this world. Anticipating all the criticism sure to come I have my defense ready "We don't do anything else "Normal" so why should this be any different?" But seriously there are many good reasons we are making this choice. To name just a few, we feel that we know our kids and their personalities very well and can tailor teaching them to their individual styles and give them more attention. We can help them learn how to tell the difference between right and wrong, while still teaching tolerance and respect. We can allow them to learn at their own pace (as fast or slow as that may be) and utilize their interests in their education. They can have some control over their own education and the choices we make about what and how to learn about their world. We can incorporate our faith in very realistic ways. We can spend lots of time at museums and public libraries and parks. I'm sure more of our reasons will come out as we go through this adventure together but there are a few reasons to satiate your curiosity.

Tenn