How and Why We Homeschool

When my daughter was 3 homeschooling wasn't even an option on the radar, we were happily counting off the milestones towards the public school system, Kindy (preschool) then school on the day she turned five, and so on.

 We were, except my daughter hadn't been consulted, life at home was fine, hanging out with mum and dad, and going anywhere wasn't an option.  So for the first 10 weeks of her Kindy experience, my daughter, me, my 1 yr old son and the growing bump in my tum headed out three afternoons a week to settle her into preschool....and we did, for all of ten weeks before finally she let me leave, or rather let Daddy leave.

Not to be the end of the story the next Monday, reacting to a review, the Kindy suspended all the teachers... yep all of them on one day, because although they had that certain something that all good Kindy teachers should have, an ability to get alongside 3-5 yr olds, they were young and not so good at putting proper learning plans in place for each of the children, measuring their achievement and telling up how well they were doing. .. a couple of weeks latter my Daughters best friend moved up to morning Kindy and rather than keeping on with the struggle we entered the world of homeschooling..

School at home, on a budget, limited internet and to the shock of everyone that knew us and to us...after all how do you teach a child to read....

We followed our feet, wandered down paths that presented themselves, reached back into what we loved at school and what we had learned since.
  • The teacher who kept a good book running to settle us down each day after lunch;
  • The history courses at college that finally made sense;
  • Even the Irish bible college lecturer who taught us Hebrew;
  • The woman on the NZ email group that introduced me to Trivium at Home and Classed -  Christian Classical Homeschool egroups, an amazing group of women who constantly stretch and mold what we do.
  • A Group of Mums online trying to work out what language studies looked like under the classical greats...that  gave us the first draft of Classical Writing
All had an influence on where we wandered and what we did... and one step after another lead us to a mixture of Charlotte Mason and Classical Ideas, sometimes way more than we can cope with but still the reality of where we are. A semi-crazy attempt to round out a Christian education with great books,  to develop a love of beauty, virtue and truth, and hopefully to arrive at the end of with some level of sanity.














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