Homeschool Open House

Tiany over at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Tiany/ has a great thing going on, its called Homeschool Open House 2007, just in time for the new school year. I love her blog and read it often. Since I am one of those mothers with grown children I thought I would share our experience.

If you would like to join “Homeschool Open House 2007”, here are the guidelines:
To participate simply write a post (as elaborate or simple as you want, pics or no pics its up to you) about any of the following, …
A short intro about you, how many blessings? How long have you been Homeschooling etc.. Just incase this is someone’s first visit to your blog.
Your Homeschool Day, what does it look like?
What curriculum will you be using? Do you not use a curriculum? Do you homeschool for FREE? Tell us about it!
Do you schedule your day to the minute or go with the flow with no real structure?
Do you homeschool in a homeschool room, at the kitchen table, at a desk, in the park on the grass?
Do you have any “must share” tips?
Do you have a question or concern? Throw that in there too!

**** If you are a mother who has homeschooled her children and your children are now grown and have left the nest we would love for you to participate and share some words of wisdom.
Write a post on your blog, copy the post link (not your homepage URL), and add your individual post link to Mr. Linky. It will be the easiest way for us to hop around and visit each other!
If you do not have a blog and would like to participate send me an email tiany@cox.net
You must spread the word! Please put a link back to the Open House on your post so that others can participate and visit other participants. You can use the Open House Graphic in your post or blog if you like. Simply right click and save the photo to your computer. Then upload the graphic to your blog through your blog provider or through a photo host such as photobucket.com.

What a fun thing ! We raised 4 children, two adopted and two birth. Our girls were homeschooled from the beginning, both of them had their first day of "real" school on their first day of College. Way back in 1980, the year Melissa was born, we began reading John Holt's books on homeschooling. Such insight and such a love of learning he shared with his readers. He was interviewed for Mother Earth news in the summer of 1980, just about the time Melissa was born. I was hooked. We were in on the very beginnings of the homeschool movement. Learning and preparing for when Melissa would be old enough to start school. Things were not easy in the early days, we were among the pioneers, learning right along with our children, how to make this all work. I subscribed to Growing Without Schooling and soaked up each and every word of each issue. We heard daily from family that we were single handedly destroying our children by homeschooling. Social misfits would be the result. We never went any place without hearing the word, socialization ! We felt so led in doing what we were doing, that we knew some day we could just say, "well folks, the proof is in the pudding" and it has been. One family member who was so against homeschooling, later homeschooled their child.

I learned to answer the question of "where do your children go to school?" by saying, "they have a private tutor". That stopped folks in their tracks, not sure if we were wealthy or what. And it was the truth. We had a small homeschool support group in California in the 1980's that was a great place to be encouraged. By the middle 1990's there were more and more families homeschooling and we just did not feel so all alone. Homeschool fairs came on the scene and what a blessing they were for choosing the books for the new school year. We spent mornings doing school work and afternoons were time for farm life and exploring. We always spent most of the summer doing some sort of writing and art work. Music lessons were an on-going thing for us.

Somewhere along the way, our focus changed from being just about learning at home, to adding in the serious responsibility of raising Christian children. When Melanie began school at home, we started using Rod and Staff curriculum and our whole lives changed. We began to see a life style that included all aspects of life. Not much longer we began attending a Mennonite fellowship.

Our kitchen looked more like a school room than a kitchen. A huge blackboard hung over the table, charts and posters lined the wall. Our house was a place of learning, and with great enthusiasm. There was such a freedom in learning but when the children reached middle school age, we opted for a classical approach to learning and the curriculum included logic, Latin, a choice of a foreign language and the like, preparing them for college. It paid off, both girls went to college and did exceptionally well. One of the boys we adopted went back to his bio parents and the other is Steven who has a wonderful high paying job. He learned well from his dad, the value of hard work. Steven is 22 years old and owns his own house, and a rather fancy car !

All three of our children are happily married, and doing very well. They are successful and have never once gotten into any trouble. All three count their homeschooling as a very positive thing. We homeschooled for a total of 17 years, non stop. Not one minute do we regret this choice. It was such a joy to have the children home all day long.

Pictures from the good old homeschooling days, my how they passed so quickly !