Do you homeschool or just thinking about it? I hope that whether you are a veteren or a newbie to the ring, you will receive some help here.

I have been homeschooling for a total of nine years. I started homeschooling when my daughter was entering fourth grade and began crying daily about being bored at school. In the past, she had had some wonderful teachers who would allow her to do extra work or peer teach. That one year, though, the teacher told me that she could just sit and wait for everyone to finish. The teacher informed me that she had too much to do without having to keep my daughter occupied.

Being a teacher myself, I can understand where she was coming from. I couldn't understand why she just wouldn't let my daughter help her with the slower ones by peer teaching like she had in the past.

Worse came to worse and I took her out. I told myself that with my teaching degree, I could do better with her at home. Little did I know that my teaching degree actually hurt me in homeschooling. I had been "trained" by the institutions to teach. I had not been trained yet by God to lead my children in learning to learn.

Since then, God, in His wonderful mercy, has led me away from schooling at home to where we are now. We use a unit approach in which I chose topics and search the internet for ideas. I then plan activities and such around that topic. The kids compile a notebook to store the info in that they study on the topic. We recently (March'99) finished studying Ancient Eygpt. It was a blast. I learned just as much as my children did - if not more.

My daughter sat down one day and made a short list about some reasons that it was nice to homeschool. I thought she did a good job so I am going to share it.