The Adventure Begins

It has felt like it's been a long time since we began to even think about home learning.  In reality, it's been less than a year.  But it because it required so much emotional energy it feels like it's been in the process for a lot longer.  For years we looked ahead to the mysterious and oft times poorly advertised middle school.  With stories of things that we dreaded our precious innocent children would ever encounter it was thankfully a long way off.  Well, a long way off was sooner than we thought and those stories were not the only concerns we had as we approached middle school.  Naturally our children have to grow up but I believe that sometimes the rate at which they grow up is just way too fast.  Sometimes, if we have the opportunity to stall the process, I think we should.  That's not to say we should shelter them.  It's a fine line and each parent must figure out exactly where that line lies for their family. 

For us, it was just one factor that led us to the home learning decision.  There is still some natural maturing that needs to take place before outside influences cause the maturing. 

Another factor was that school in the traditional sense just didn't make sense - at least not to us at this very moment.  Meaning that it was not meeting Mckenzie's needs.  It wasn't accurately evaluating his skill level, his knowledge level.  It was requiring things from him that he's just not naturally hard wired to do.  The problem with that is that it's like the old Albert Einstein quote:

How interesting and exciting would it be to change the entire way we look at school, so that in fact we no longer see it as 'school' but rather as learning!  How great would it be to tailor it to his interests and his learning styles? 

And that in a nutshell (because I could go on and on) is why we chose to take this year to home LEARN! 

I'm not sure how this blog will shape up.  Will it be just a collection of our activities and lessons?  I don't know.  Will it include thoughts on the process, feelings good and bad, probably.  Will it be a masterpiece, a piece of perfection, definitely not!  It's just the story of our adventure, the good, the bad, the triumphs and the opportunities to try again and do it better next time.