Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Homeschooling!

After a lot of wavering and indecisiveness, I finally purchased a homeschool kindergarten curriculum for Dana. It's called My Father's World, for those of you homeschooling geeks. It's pretty awesome too as it incorporates some great teaching techniques like "bundling", phonics, lots of reading, and plenty of hands-on fun. Thankfully, it starts out with a transition phase to get Dana and me used to the whole homeschooling thing. The best part--it's not expensive.

We've only homeschooled for two days, but Dana is loving it and he's really excited about homeschooling in general. It's also had some other cool ripple effects. 1) Dana has asked me a lot of questions in the last two days. 2) He's happier and his eyes are lit up. 3) My relationship with Dana is much better, I think because he's getting more encouragement from me and less criticism. He's been so bored that he's been in a lot of trouble over the past few months, so the change for the better is pretty nice.

Granted, we're on day 3, so obviously we haven't gotten very far. I'm sure there will be conflicts, but for now, I'm happy to have the excitement of a new and pleasant thing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations! Homeschooling is excellent for all those things...but mostly for the ability to really be a family, I think.

And your son has a cool name. : )

Anonymous said...

That's great Karen! I'll keep you guys in my prayers that things will continue to grow and become a blessing to yoru family. Dana is a great kid!!

roadrunner201 said...

Karen, I think that's awesome. I respect your opinion highly on this matter because you have taught in the classroom and see the effects of "schooling gone wrong." I've been doing a lot of research about homeschooling, myself (remember that I'm like a super geek when it comes to researching. Case in point, my children are still only hypothetical children). It's great to hear (uh, read) that you have found a curriculum that you think is really good.

Liz said...

That's really cool! I don't remember if I told you or not that I'm homeschooling Reagan and Sean this year. We're using Sonlight and the kids seem to be enjoying it!

People ask me how it's going and I always say that no 2 days have been the same yet, but I'm glad we made the decision we did. I hope things continue to go well, and if you need an ear, I'm here (or e-mail!).