Welcome!

New Orleans, Louisiana ~ Exploring the live oaks at Audubon Zoo

Hello! Welcome to our new homeschooling blog! It feels really weird to finally put that in black and white. The truth is, I haven't shared with too many people that we are soon going to be a homeschooling family. We needed some quiet time to ready ourselves for this new journey. We are finally at peace with our decision and ready to share our adventure with all our family and friends. Currently our children are enrolled in a public school in Texas, but in a few short weeks that chapter will come to a close and our new journey will begin. I chose to let the kids finish out the current school year so I would have time to prepare our curriculum and prepare myself for the challenge ahead.

Our children are both very intelligent, they are (mostly) well behaved and they enjoy school. We've been at our current school for 4 years and we like it well enough. We have good teachers that care about our children and do everything they can with the time and resources they have. So why homeschool? Basically, it comes down to the fact that school is getting in the way of our children's education.

I could go on and on about how messed up the public education system is in our country and I also know plenty of expensive private schools who are battling their own issues. I could get really fired up about standardized testing and throwing fundamentals out the window in order to teach to the test. I could get down right mad about the lack of science, history and the arts in our schools. I could seriously give you a laundry list of reasons why we've made the decision to educate our children ourselves. What it really boils down to for me, is the fact that our children are spending 7+ hours a day in school and very little of that time seems be focused on the joy of learning. Large class sizes, increasing disciplinary issues, stressed out teachers, lack of funding and a whole heap of other issues have me dreading sending my kids out the door every morning.

I don't have much power to change the system (believe me I've tried), but I do have the power to change our situation. I have no grand delusions that it's going to be easy, but I do believe it's going to be an exciting adventure. I am so looking forward to having the luxury of time; time for my kids to catch their breath, slow down, explore, invent, travel, be consumed by the love of learning and time for my kids to just be kids. I also have the luxury of being able to offer them an exciting curriculum, hands on experiences (Let's not just read about the Alamo, let's go to the Alamo!), my full attention and time to really master the fundamentals that will shape their future education.

Lately, our lives have been a series of "hurry up, stop it, quit it, don't". I can't wait for it to become "take your time, relax, enjoy".  Maybe I'm crazy, or just maybe I might be on to something. All I know is that I've got to try. I know all the stereotypes about weird, unsocialized homeschoolers and quite frankly, I think they're ridiculous. On top of that, I have the wonderful ability to not give a rip about what anyone else thinks.

So here we are, 9 weeks out and we're ready. We've done our homework, we've chosen our curriculum and I've designed this little blog to document our adventures, discuss what we're learning, share our work and answer questions from concerned friends, family and strangers ;-)  Please don't be shy, let us know you're reading. We're always open to making new friends and sharing new adventures!

And so it begins......