A Choice to Homeschool

So many people have asked my husband and I how we came to our decision to homeschool.  From the very beginning what we agreed upon and understood was that we both greatly value education.  I was raised Catholic, but attended public school my entire life until I went to a Catholic University, and my husband was raised Baptist but went to Catholic school his entire life.  Neither of us disliked the public or parochial school system so when we got engaged and even early on in our marriage we always said that we would continue to re-evaluate the topic of education when we were blessed with children.  We had both heard of homeschooling, but honestly had never even brought it up as an option early in our marriage.

Once we started our family, when our oldest son was 2 1/2 years and our middle son was about 1 year old I was in a Catholic book club where we were reading "Beloved and Blessed" by Kimberly Hahn.  This was my first examination of the idea of homeschooling in my adult life.  I decided to dive deeper into her thoughts on the issue and started reading Catholic Education: Homeward Bound and by the end I was hooked!  I brought the information I was gathering to my husband and we started the dialogue.  At this time I was working part time as a nurse to help support our family as my husband was a medical resident.  I knew that I felt called to be home full time with our children and my husband was very supportive of that choice for our family.  He was hesitant at first of the idea of homeschooling, but we both knew that we had time to make a decision and we put it into God's hands and started praying about it.

As time went on it started to become more and more clear to us that homeschooling was something we were called to do with our family.  We liked the flexibility it would allow us with our schedule, as my husband's schedule would never be consistent in day or time as an Emergency Physician.  We liked being able to continue our role as the main educator to our children that we begin at birth.  We love being able to promote and integrate faith into our home and education and be able to follow our children's lead and interests.

My husband started a one year medical fellowship shortly after our third son was born and I was able to start staying home with our family full time.  Our oldest was 3 1/2 years old at this time and I started more of a "formal" education at home using Catholic Icing's Preschool Curriculum and Before Five in a Row.  We had so much fun and not only was our oldest learning so much, but so was our middle child who was 2 years old! 



We were all growing stronger in our faith and also becoming more connected as family.  We continued to pray and discern if homeschooling was what we were called to as a family as the year continued.  During the spring of 2014 we were blessed with being able to attend the Minnesota Catholic Home Education Conference.  I think it was truly at this conference being able to listen to the amazing speakers and talk to the vendors at the curriculum fair that we knew homeschooling was the right choice for us.  Ginny Seuffert who is an author and homeschooling mother of 12 was at Seton Home Study's booth, and talking to her helped reassure us that Seton has a faith filled and rigorous program that we knew would be perfect for our family.  Our decision to use Seton Homeschool Study was confirmed and we enrolled our son into their preschool program.

 

 

 

We started Seton's preschool curriculum with our oldest son at the end of July 2014 when he was 4 1/2 years old and he will be completing the curriculum this week in November 2014!  It has been such a blessing to be able to teach him, watch him learn and go at his own pace.  Our middle son who just turned 3 years old in October has followed along with a lot of the program, but we will formally complete it with him probably this next year.  We still are not sure what the future holds for our family, and know that is in God's hands.  We will continue to take each year at a time and each child at a time in our homeschool adventure.  I thank God for trusting me with these beautiful souls in helping me lead them to him.