So you want to Homeschool...Now what?

My husband's and my desire, from very early on, was that I would home school our children. As our children have slowly crept up on "school age" our decision has been concreted as we observe the changes in the world around us.
I have always been excited about our decision to home school. Whimsical thoughts of fun projects and smiling faces while my daughter begged "lets learn more mom" are softly fading as I have encountered actually "schooling" my daughter. She is just barely pre-school age so we aren't yet doing anything official. But her overactive need to be constantly challenged has left me feeling overwhelmed and bewildered. Leaving my and her frustrated and confused.
I am a military veteran, of which I served 3 years prior to my first pregnancy, and do not have much of an education past high school. That didn't bother me at my first thought of homeschooling. But, now that I find myself standing at the doorway to this very vast, unknown, realm I find myself more confused than ever.
More than anything I just didn't know where to begin. One of the main reasons we decided to home school was to guide the values, knowledge and materials that would mold our children into the types of adults that we only hope to be.
Being the "cheapskate" I am, I headed to the library. I was comforted at the fact that I found much more information than I was expecting. A few of the books that really helped me grab hold a few of the thousands of directions I seemed to once be overwhelmed by were:

1. The ABC's Of Homeschooling By: Vicki Caruana
Being a christian myself I felt very comforted by her guidance. She showed the importance of doing what God wants for your family by following Him and referencing what the the Bible states on the issue. She gave great advice on those "Questions" you most certainly will be asked by doubters of your decisions and offers many different paths you can take based on your families particular situation based on your child's learning styles or abilities.

2. Absolute Beginner's Guide To Homeschooling By: Brad Miser
Fantastic guide on where to start, how to collect your thoughts and choose a path to start your teaching. This book covers everything from State legal requirements to creating lesson plans.

3. The McGraw-Hill Homeschooling Companion By: Laura Saba and Julie Gattis
This book is a bit similar to the Absolute Guide accept in goes in depth a bit more as to what to teach for each subject according to grade level.

I tend to make everything much more complicated than it actually is. I always find myself so overwhelmed by all the information there is out there. I would love to just sit down and read for days about all sorts of things ranging from all sorts of subjects, then turn around and experience and experiment it all. But that is a bit unrealistic. That is one reason I am so excited about schooling my kids. I get to learn, experience and experiment right along side them.

Once I read these books I received much more direction, but still wasn't settled on exactly what to teach. For some reason I felt like there was a specific thing and if I didn't find out what it was that I would just ruin everything. False! So I stopped trying to complicate everything, for once, and started with Gods word.

Train up a child in the way he should go:

and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

If you think about it the Bible has all we need in it to teach our children what the "really" need to know. I was once asked "what are you going to do when your child's education has surpassed your own?" The truth to the that is "I'm not sure." And we shouldn't be concerned with that. God teaches us to concern our self for today and not for tomorrow. So, In all His great wisdom, the Lord guided me to use the Bible as a reference guide.

I know as our kids get older I will need to use other materials to teach them things such as grammar, punctuation and calculus. But I will continue to use the Bible as a guide for secondary things such as animals, dimensions and geography. But the authority on the way we live our life.

The truth of the matter is, I have come to the point where I am not so concerned anymore with weather my kids can say there alphabet and count to 100, by a certain time, as I am with weather I can raise children that will one day love and serve the Lord.

So with that said; I have been reading through exodus about the plagues and God hardening the Pharaoh's heart. I have decided to start by teaching my daughter about the things God uses to teach us. As a starting point, I am going to use each of the 10 plagues as a guide on what we learn daily.

1. Water is turned to blood: I am going to teach Abigail all about the human body and of course I will be learning right along with her. I will be using this teachers guide from Discovery.com

http://yucky.discovery.com/teachercenter/pg000064.htm

2. Frogs

3. Lice

4. Flies

5. Cattle

6. Boils

7. Hail

8. Locusts

9. Darkness

10. First Born Dies

The exciting thing is these are just subject guides. You can get as creative, in depth or even take these in any direction you want. If you child needs to work on counting make frog pictures or buy frog toys to count, practice colors, match or even allow fall from a parachute that you made out of tissue and floss. The possibilities are endless and If you have a starting point and get practicing it will get easier and easier and the ideas will come flooding in with the more research and digging you do.

Again, don't be discouraged or doubt yourself due to a lack of knowledge. Educating yourself in the area of homeschooling or any other subject, for that matter, should always be a possibility worth exploring. As wives and mothers we are to live our lives in servitude to our Lord through serving our husbands and families.

Choose to make your household a happy one...Today!