| How We Got Started... |
| We choose to homeschool our children because at the time, we felt that the public school system was letting them down - and that we, as loving parents could offer them a better education. We have a more relaxed atmosphere geared to the way that THEY learn, more understanding and we cant forget more love. Because we are teaching our children within the home, we are more able to get to know how our children learn, what their interests are, and to protect them from some of the outside influences that are not within the moral standards and teachings in our home. In some ways, the choice we made to homeschool was a religious one, but more a choice based on the way that our oldest daughter was being taught within the school system. We had concerns about the behaviour of the other children within the classroom, and the way that they were able to create such havoc that the other children were unable to learn. To make matters worse, at this time Ashley had contracted the whooping cough and was very very ill. She was missing weeks of school as she was incredibly tired, loosing weight, and coughing until she either passed out or vomited. She was obviously ill enough that attending school was out of the question and yet little or no school work was being sent home for her despite our repeated requests. After speaking with my father in law who has in the past been a teacher, principle and administrator within the Canadian educational system for more than 30 years we decided that the best thing that we could do for our child was to remove her from school. She came into being home taught with the strong possibility of not being able to do the grade 4 work the next year without the knowledge from grade 3 - but in Ontario they have a policy of NOT making students re-do a grade level. She would have been pushed into grade 4 without the knowledge she needed to be successful. Within one month of homeschooling, she had gone from practically failing grade 3 to reading at a grade 5 level and doing grade 4 and 5 math. If she had continued within the school system who knows how far behind she would have gotten or how that would have affected the rest of her life. Normally an A/B student, she was falling through the cracks of the educational system. Needless to say we had a slow start with our learning but we got there and learned what worked best for US. Our 3 year old daughter will not likely ever see the inside of a classroom... we intend to homeschool all of our future children as well. Not only did we find that our daughter was learning better, we also got to know her better as well. When she came home from school she was tired and "socialized" to the point that she didnt want to talk with us. Now that she was home with us all the time, we were learning more about her - what her interests were, the dreams she has, what she wants to learn and HOW she wants to learn it. Home schooling was a wonderful choice for us and I am so thankful that we were able to choose how we educate our children. |