I never thought I would be this excited

Boo is really picking up the pace with learning to read. He is often readin over my shoulder as I sit at the computer and read or type. He's reading everything around him and every lesson is going faster and faster. There were days I would DREAD doing reading lessons due to the snail-like pace.

But that's not what I am excited about. I am excited about the fact that I actually like to teach math. I've never been a good math student, and I have never liked the subject, but I like teaching it. Apparently, Boo and Meenie both enjoy learning math, evidenced by the fact that Meenie can count and understand the concept of numbers and Boo is doing addition now at age 5.

I guess that is what is so great about homeschooling. At five, I was in half-day kindergarten, where I was with all the other children who had not learned their ABC's yet. I do not remember any type of math, but I do remember that there were addition facts involved in Kindergarten.

Some people would say, that you have to let kids play and be little kids, and so on. My kids have more playtime than children who go to school. I've estimated that the average school child has between 2-3 hours at most, of play per day (not counting recesses at school). Many children have homework, dinner and baths to take care of in the evening after school. How much time does that really leave for playing and being a kid?

So even though I try to push my children to reach their full potential, there are over 8 free hours per day, in which they have to be a kid.

My Life without TV

Before we were married, my husband and I made a commitment that we would not be allowing our children to watch television. For those who cannot understand this, here is why:

• It fosters immorality and anti-Catholic ideas
• Impurity on television is rampant
• Adult themes can even be found on children's shows
• It robs children of creativity
• It steals away precious time that we could be doing something for God, our Faith and other people
• It creates a television-based culture in many aspects of life, just look at how products are used to market TV shows
• We want to have our own Catholic culture based on values that we determine, not networks
• Television is a passive activity and does not promote critical thinking
• It is a distraction from our daily duties and our spiritual duties
• Anything can pop up on the TV, thus limiting parental control

Now, before you draw other conclusions, let me say that I do not think the object the TV set is evil or bad in itself. It is what is put onto the television that makes it bad. I think renting movies, shows, documentaries is a good idea. Not all shows are bad, but many commercials are. I do think that people should seriously consider renting instead of subscribing to a cable service. In this way, TV does not rule your day and you are more in control of what you and your children view.

If television programming came into union with Catholic standards of morality and decency, I would subscribe to it once again, however, it would not rule our lives. We would not base how we relate to others on television shows and it would not be our only discussion piece among friends.

I definitely strongly oppose children having a TV set in their rooms. I think this is so detrimental to children, so many studies have been done on the effects of TV on the brain. I think you would have to be a very careless parent to allow a television in the bedroom.

One of the best rewards of having a no-TV home that I have seen in my own life is reflected in my children. Everywhere we go people compliment us on good behavior, the children are able to sit through Good Friday Liturgy, which is so wonderful. They are much better behaved and kinder than other children their age, that I have met, who watch a lot of TV. They would rather play horses than pretend they are Spiderman. To me, this is a gift to me because I know I am giving my children something that I never had, a great but innocent imagination, with which it is my hope and prayer that they will use their gifts to serve God and His Church well.

I have returned, with more First Impressions

If anyone was thinking my blog was dead, they were wrong! I took a break from most of my usual Internet activities during Lent.

In the near future, I have plans to write about my own home education plans and ideas, the reactions of those around me, and of course introduce my children and their works!

First Impressions Part III

When I was in high school I was very active at church, I got to know almost everyone who went to daily services and some of their families. I was also involved in the youth group. Which is where my next encounter with homeschooling began.

These two families are actually related and were fairly conservative for people attending the Vatican II church. They were actually the first families I met who gave me a favorable impression of homeschooling. I'd like to say that in both families, all of the children were nice and relatively innocent. I would not say that "Family A" put homeschooled out of any love for education but rather because of religious reasons. However, "Family B" was probably homeschooling for religious and academic reasons. So anyways, I continued to have social dealings with both families over the years and was able to gain a more realistic impression of homeschooling.

Both families changed my mind about the socialization issue. I would like to say that the children in Family B, had better manners and were able to communicate better with all sorts of people than their relations in Family A. At times, the children in Family A did things that were socially inappropriate and acted like they were in their own world. However, knowing the parents made me understand this all together: If you have a parent that is weird, usually the children are weird.

I began to understand that homeschooling and homeschoolers could take on so many different qualities and they were dependent often on the parents and their style or approach to home education.

In the case of Family B, I saw that homeschooling produced smart and funny people-- the kind of people everyone loves to have around. The children of both families were also very prayerful and took their faith seriously. At this point my view of homeschooling began to change.

It was also during this time that I spent half of my waking hours on the Internet chatting with other Catholics. During this time I met what most people know as "traditional Catholics." I didn't know I was on the road to becoming one, but that it another story for another day. Most of these people homeschooled. They showed me that their children loved God and the Catholic Faith, they showed me that homeschooling could produce exactly the kind of child that I would want for myself. These people also introduced me to many of the traditional Catholic homeschooling websites, which I read, looked over their curriculum and was very pleased with. I even pleaded with my own mother to take my little sister out of school and homeschool.

Before I knew it, I was totally in support of homeschooling and knew from the age of 18 that I was going to homeschool my children.

So at 19, when I met my future husband, we were already in agreement about homeschooling, and there was nothing more to do than dream of the day when we would have children of our own to teach.

First Impressions

I want to begin by recording my first and earliest impressions of homeschooling, homeschoolers and their lives.

My very first contact with the concept of homeschooling was when I was in fifth grade, in public school. We had a student, Jimmy, who seemed to be a social misfit. Whether he was or not, it did seem like he came from an odd family. His mother came to school to eat lunch with him because the other boys would not play with him. The boys were constantly picking on him and teasing him, I don't know if Jimmy provoked it. However, the situation escalated and I can imagine school must have been a horrible experience for this boy.

Eventually, Jimmy's mother pulled him out of school to teach him at home. Of course all of the other children thought it was because Jimmy couldn't handle "real" school and that he was a momma's boy. Unfortunately, my earliest attitude towards homeschooling was shaped by this experience.

I just want to say that now I realize Jimmy had a wonderful mother who really cared about him. Jimmy is probably out there working on his doctorate or pursuing something else great or at least worthwhile. Meanwhile, many other students from our school are working at Odd-Lots and Valu-City, I know because I see them when I go home to visit.