The Bowin School for One Small Brown Child

Last fall, we made a very big decision for our family and decided to homeschool E through 4th grade.  We made the choice for a lot of reasons, none of which are exciting enough to detail here. Suffice it to say that we weren't happy with the school he was in, and the other various options were not very desirable either.  Since I was homeschooled for 4 years and loved it immensely, I don't have the same biases against it that most people (including my dearly beloved husband) do.  For anyone who's contemplating it, I think the most important factors are choosing a clearly defined curriculum and making sure that your child has plenty of opportunities for socializing, since they won't be doing it in the school room any more.

So for the first point, the curriculum, we started with the Sonlight curriculum, which is a reading-based, Christian program that my mom used waaaay back when we were homeschooled. One of the best things about homeschooling is the ability to pick what your child is going to learn.  With Sonlight, you choose from several different programs within each subject, depending on what you want to emphasize. For instance, this year, we chose a 4th grade world history/geography program, and the science program focuses on electricity and magnetism.  The core program is made up of history and geography combined with the language arts: in short, E will read a short textbook chapter on a country or a spotlight in history, and then read a novel that incorporates those ideas.  It's fun. Some of my favorite books of all time were books that I first read as part of a curriculum (like Witch of Blackbird Pond and Johnny Tremain). We also have the ability to add in whatever "electives" we like. (But he doesn't get the choice, he just has to do them...) This semester, we added journal writing (D comes up with some hilarious prompts), world religions, letter writing, and typing.  Chores figure prominently as a part of his day, and he regularly washes, dries and folds his own laundry, sweeps, dusts and vacuums, and cleans the bathrooms.  Manual labor is very educational, you see!

As far as socializing, E's best friend lives down the street from us, and there are about 4 or 5 other boys his age that live in this neighborhood. In the summer, they form a regular little hoodlum gang, running around the park, jumping over fences, and generally being a fairly well-behaved little bunch of nuisances.  In the winter, they're mostly restricted to indoor play, which they do almost every day.  E's also been on the same soccer team for 3 seasons now, and they practice twice a week during the season. Practice slash play around on the soccer fields and drive their poor coach nuts.  Homeschooling is a situation where it would admittedly be nicer for E if he had a sibling closer to his age, something he pointed out quite early in the process, but we manage quite well.

I think my favorite part about homeschooling is that it's fun to know exactly what E is working on in school on any given day, because then we talk about it at the dinner table or when something comes up while watching television or driving around town on errands.  When we play games, Spartans and Trojans and Romans figure prominently. When E helps D cook, they talk about random science and math topics.  School isn't limited to a certain time of our day, it's all day long. And most of the time, E doesn't even realize it.