Day 1

My husband and I have pondered over the whole subject of home schooling for years now.  With our eldest child now 10 and our baby twins now 5 we have had many opportunites to see the highs and lows of school.  We've seen many times where the kids can thrive and we've seen times where school is quite simply one of the hardest places to be! 

This summer we took the decision to take one of our children out of mainstream schooling and to teach him at home.  I am a qualified teacher but am qualified to teach Religious and Moral Education to secondary school pupils!  Quite a different area from primary 4!  However, surely the skills of teaching are the same across the board.  The knowledge base is different but I am motivated!  I want to give my son the best education that I can and am determined to put in the effort that I need to!  I have spent the last 9 weeks reading, researching, speaking to teachers and other home schoolers and preparing and planning for what lies ahead.

So today arrived!  Over 10 years after I left the classroom I returned to a somewhat different classroom situation.  Actually I feel very privileged!  What better pupil could I ask for but my own son!  My nerves and apprehension seems totally ridiculous when faced with his excited little face sitting at the desk! 

For the last few years S (I'm going to keep certain details private for his sake) has hated going to school.  Getting dressed in the morning has been a battle in itself.  This morning though, S was dressed and ready to go before I was even out of bed!  This motivation continued all morning.  We tackled so much - reading, spelling, atlas work, maths and science.  S learnt today new words - "neighbour", North, South, East and West, the meaning of an acid and the names of scientific equipment, fractions (although that's going to need a bit more work!!!!) and what an atlas is.  That was just our mornings work!

I'm going to keep this blog for many reasons.  There are so many folks who have followed S since he was born and prayed for him for years.  That concern has been so much appreciated by all of us in the family.  There will be things I won't share in the blog about him that I feel are for him to share himself or for us to share in a more personal setting - but I thought it might give folks an insight into what we are doing.  I don't know many people who home school.  I'm hoping that will change.  Maybe if you are reading this you think what we are doing is completely bonkers.  Maybe you'd like to do it yourself and are reading this to see how we get on!  Whatever the reason, I think that diaries + blogs are great things to get thoughts down and to share to improve situations. 

I hope I can keep this blog up.  I'm not going to write every little detail down and it might be that life might get so frantic during the days that the last thing I can face is the computer to blog but hopefully it will track our path through this new adventure!

So, on this the night of my birthday and the start of a new year for me in so many ways I will sign out!