Home or School?

So after 3 years of homeschooling we went ahead and sent the girls to school. Whew. What a difficult decision. This spring I was so sick of having everyone with me all the time; I was annoyed with the fact that it was not possible to do anything but school work on a school day - we just could not do both school and go to Walmart. So after we go settled into our home here in Rapid City we checked out the school and decided that we would send the girls off in the fall.

Then summer came and we had a lovely time reading books by Andrew Clements, swimming, and sewing. It was a nice, low pressure time. It was strangely still difficult to get more than one thing accomplished in a day, but I became better at going out with all 4 kids all by myself. It became possible for me to go to Walmart (early in the day) will all the kids and not tremble and quake. And I began to remember why I love having these kids home with me.

As school got closer to starting, I became more nervous about sending the girls. I put off enrolling them and began to start looking through my vast stash of homeschool catelogs. (As a side note, many nonhomeschoolers do not realize that there are tons of material available for homeschoolers. When someone would find out that we were homeschoolers they would often ask what we use for books, not realizing that there is a whole world of homeschool books and manipulatives and kits. I think it suprised people that I wasn't just coming up with an entire math curriculum off the top of my head, but used instead an official looking math program complete with teacher's guide and speed drills.) After changing my mind daily, I think Nathan was ready to leave (wait, he did leave, maybe this is the reason..)

To get to the end of the story, the girls are in school and loving it. Sydney loves her cute 1st grade teacher. She tells me all about the stories they read and the fun games they play. She loves recess and music. Hannah wants to be involved in everything. She is doing running club, chess club, band, future teachers (I know that's not what they call it, and too bad they don't have the Amigo program like they had at Sonoma, but it is the same thing) and a gifted pull out. She is doing great, making friends and getting the flute to make notes. I am so glad we made this decision. I feel at peace with the kids in school. But now it is easy to see where homeschool can be better in some ways. More about this another time.