When I began home schooling I never sat down and figured out what it would take for my wife and I to school our children at home. Basically, we hold onto several decisions that are normally made by committees, school boards, principals and teachers. We hold onto questions of class structure, content, teaching style, lesson plans and curriculum. As parents teaching in the home we not only maintain the role of parent but also keep that of administrator, teacher, janitor and lunch lady.
I never really considered this a few years ago when I consented to letting my wife to “try” teaching our kids at home. Now, I wouldn’t give away these roles. Our children gain several benefits from us not delegating these roles away. We are able to seek outside help in our state and have consultants that we pay for out of our own pocket, that help us make decisions of curriculum but my wife and I (mainly my wife) make the final decision.
The biggest benefit that I can work with is I can tailor my curriculum at the beginning of the year to the level my child is at right now. They can be halfway through second grade on one subject, at the beginning of third grade in another subject, and even further on in another subject. The decision on what is taught to my child is based on what she knows and what she has mastered. This is a huge benefit for my child over institutional school where decisions are made on some imaginary standard of a student that is used to develop grade levels.
As the school year progresses we are able to adjust our schedule and path for each subject as the year moves forward and meet my child’s needs. The benefit is that we are able to present the lesson to our child and our child alone. I only have to meet one mind in its needs and its understanding.
The role of administrator really is the role of parent. We have to make decisions about how much outside playtime, inside playtime, computer time and field trips. The great thing is that we don’t have to participate in parent-teacher conferences and teacher-administrator meetings. We are able to combine all of these roles together into the parents.
The role of janitor is one of my favorite roles because it really takes very little additional time to fill when you are teaching your children at home. If you think about it the additional mess that a child in school makes is really small in the grand scheme of a toddler and their ability to help is present (in varying degrees and depending on their attitude).
The role of Lunch Lady, especially for me as a father, can be lots of fun as well. Currently, I am working second shift and I get up in the morning and make breakfast for my children and then we have lunch together before I go to work. We don’t have to rush around in the morning trying to get anyone out the door unless we have something we have scheduled or planned.
Another favorite activity we have undertaken this year is going on nature walks. Every week we are going outside and just experiencing nature and what is going on with the seasons. I am thinking of adding geocaching to the experience of the outdoors as it could be a fun game for the kids to grow into, problem solving and some basic orienteering skills could easily be learned.
Anyway, I am beginning to digress from my point. What does it take to home school? It takes decisions about lifestyle and roles that you are going to undertake. My wife is a Stay At Home Mother (SAHM) and that is one of the things that makes homeschooling a possibility. We also make choices about what is important to have in the house like cable, newspapers, cellphones and how much you eat out.
One of the big things I work to maintain my attitude on is the question of what do I do when I am not at work. When you are a parent you are “on the clock” and working from the time you wake up until you go to sleep at the end of the night. From the time you go to sleep until you wake up you are merely on call. As the parent that works outside of the home I consider that I have one job outside the home and many inside the home but I don’t ever truly have “off-time”. My wife who stays at home has time on the clock and runs longer than a full-time job. However, I do work to give her time away from the home and time to herself since she doesn’t have the “break” of getting out of the house as regularly as I do.
So, to return to the question, what does it take to home school? It is a choice that a parent makes, it is a commitment. It isn’t for everyone but it is an option that should be preserved, promoted and defended.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
What does it take to homeschool?
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The Moat Monster
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Homeschoold Adventure #2 (VideoCast)
Okay, another video is up, still learning all the ins and outs of Windows MovieMaker.
I should also check into finding some podsafe music or something for bumpers, an intro and credits.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S.
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Sunday, September 16, 2007
Why do I homeschool
This is a question that gets brought up around my house from time to time and I feel that I really need to work it out. We have a good parochial school system here in this diocese. Cost isn't much of a factor thanks to a very generous stewardship program that allows those that give of their time, talent and treasure as a family the ability to have their children attend the school. We are also in a for the most part in a faithful diocese that presents the faith well.
However, a long time friend of mine that has studied education thinks that we, as a society, are failing our children. It is not enough to just teach the elements of the faith but the children have to learn a relationship with Jesus. By the time children come into the hallways of a formal school the opening in the relationship doorway is often being pushed closed rapidly by society.
One of the things that we, as a family, have done is to minimize the amount of media that our children are exposed too. The biggest thing we have done is to eliminate (for all practical purposes) television from our daily lives. This is a 'negative' thing we have done by eliminating something that has so much harmful content from my children's being.
The harder things to do are the positive steps that have to be taken to form the relationship between Jesus and my kids. This is the place I am called to grow, having to live my faith in front of and with my children. How I treat my children and relate to them forms their idea of God and how they relate to God. My personal growth is formed in my call to holiness inside my vocation is found here, relating to and with my children.
Here is the place that I really begin to feel my call to homeschool. I am able to form my children and have to work to relate to them better and better. I don't have as much luxury in being able to send them away and avoid dealing with problems when they are small or large. I am forced to deal with them, it can be hard but it is something that I have to do.
As a father I feel that I have to protect my daughters, I am their knight and they need to see me protecting them. It is a role that I didn't understand when I became a father but it is clear that I am the primarily responsible for the education of my children. In and how they are educated is one of the biggest places I can protect my daughters but also treat them with knightly chivalry.
So, why do I want my children taught at home? Simply it has to do with my taking responsibility for being directly responsible for their education in knowledge, wisdom, dealing with society, dealing with relationships and meeting them at the place they are at the moment. I can impart the values that I want them to have without interference and work with them in a way that a teacher that has more students at different places can. In doing all this, I can protect their innocence; I can let them enjoy their childhood.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
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Tuesday, September 4, 2007
I can almost hear Alvin and his brother's singing. . .
My dad said something to my brother the other day, "It's the last four months of the year, you remember what you aren't supposed to do?"
"Yes, Dad!"
"Just making sure you remembered that it was a bad time of year to buy anything for yourself."
As I get older I can see the wisdom of my college rector's idea that Advent was Advent and a time to prepare for Christmas and not a time to celebrate Christmas. The best way I have to explain it would be pointing out that we don't celebrate Thanksgiving all of November but we wait and have our celebration on one day. It is getting harder and harder to set our focus as a society on what is important, the world is more complicated every year and more commercial. This song reminds me of when I was a child, it was so much easier for things to be simple.
That is one of the advantages of homeschooling, not having a TV and my kids don't get caught up in the cultural/societal hype that can be so inncocently amplified by well-meaning people. I want them to have calm and quiet memories of Christmas, something that we celebrate when it comes and we prepare for before hand.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Art, piles of stuff and a blank canvas
I am currently working on a blog post about art and how it works, I am highlighting one of my favorite modern artists. I am fortunate enough to have met this person in real life and he has something special in his soul.
I am also in a homeschool support group that is having a t-shirt design contest, well lets say I have a design in my btain but I am having trouble getting it to come out. What I am saying is that I am someone who can appreciate art but I have trouble drawing it. I should post some of my stuff that is "decent." Of course, its really frustrating when I get an idea for a piece of art because it is hard to get it out of my head, no software can help with that, I think its related to some type of hand-eye coordination issue and having trouble making things look right in reference to each other.
Enough rambling, have some work to do, some writing to write and loving of my children that needs done. Also, if you have noticed that blogs aren't coming as quick as they once did, I am working on a rough draft of a book about fatherhood. I will publish some parts of it here but I need to get the draft done so I can start filling it out.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
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Monday, July 23, 2007
Being my Children's Curriculum
"You are the curriculum."
This phrase is something that I cringe at hearing because it means that I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing. I suppose I should explain what I am talking about for everyone reading this who is not my wife and is just now jumping into the conversation.
Our household is a Catholic Home schooling household. I have four beautiful daughters from eight months to eight years old that don't go away for school but instead it is part of their day here at the house. Every year we have debated over, researched and lost hair over trying to decide what exact curriculum and curriculum style to use.
We have lots of different ways to teach your children at home and they all have different personalities, strengths and weaknesses. They also have unique products that have to be purchased, different levels of time commitment and wildly varied price tags.
This has really caused us to step back and reevaluate what our priorities in home schooling are. Our prestige is not at stake, a cute notebook isn't important, approval of others doesn't make it, nor does smooth quiet idealistic days that are carefree and have no problems the point.
What we are trying to accomplish is the formation of an eternal soul, a gift from God that is given to my temporary care. I am responsible for raising this child to know, love and serve the Lord. My goal is to be greeted at the gates of heaven with the words, "Job well done my true and faithful servant." It is also my job that my children be greeted similarly.
I want to spend eternity in heaven and my children learn that love for the Lord not from coloring pages or singing Kumbaya but from seeing me. I am the curriculum and though I fail, I will ask forgiveness and continue to run the race before me. That is the most important lesson they learn, perseverance unto the end in abiding in the Lord.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S.
Catholic Catholic+homeschooling homeschool homeschooling education children fatherhood
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Something to chew on.....
Ok, a serious rant but it was inspired by something I thought was cute and I tie it all together and share it at the bottom, so pardon my soap box.
One of the things that I am working on as I go on (thank God we are homeschooling our kids) is their "education" in that which brings about human life. Oh, and I am not talking about the story of creation. So, we have decided that formal education is out, just see what bringing attention to drugs has done in the D.A.R.E. programs. So, our kids ask us things and we tell them a true answer but not completely true answer to their question and their current level of satisfaction. For example, our five year old will tell you that babies are made by Mommy and Daddy participating in a "special hug" that brings about a new baby. In fact, she has asked when my wife and I are going to do that again so we can have another baby!
My opinion would be that we should not have any form of public sex-education, I don't want my kids taught about condoms or an abstinence only program. I have a feeling that highlighting sexuality, especially in a mixed environment (lets face it the 1 hour of class may be segregated by gender but the rest of the day isn't), no matter what the message is, especially to a younger group of kids that are still learning to reason, is a dangerous thing. I get alot of my information from Steve Wood's website, Dads.org. On e of the things that I think is important is modeling the virtues for our children, if we want them to be modest, shouldn't their education be modest? Does a young woman need to know that sex can be really exciting and fun until she is engaged and soon to be married? What is she going to do with that knowledge before then? She can know it is beautiful, special, important and the means of procreation.
I really think that telling 12 year olds how to chart and know what it means (this is when you are "safe") is like giving them a loaded gun, especially if they are of the thought that this is going to be fun. The other thing that I think is important is that our daughters and sons know that we respect them and support them in a decision to be chaste. I know how hard it is to be chaste in a wild dating society and fully intend on my daughters only being allowed to court. Anyway, I am swinging far and wide. Does anyone else have any ideas about sex education for kids? Right now we are just running with it as any other part of life, not something that you have to be sat down for and make a big production 
out of. I am not calling anyone a bad parent for what they have done, I am trying to build on experiences and figure out what is best, so that I can provide it for my kids. Though, I will say that this makes for interesting times with my 7 month old daughter as she chews on the different ideas around contraception.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S.
sex+education homeschool homeschooling contraception NFP natural+family+planning
Sunday, July 8, 2007
I don't want to be a bully anymore (and other rambling)
Okay, so my wife is a great source of inspiration that draws me outside of myself. This is why she is my dearling. I should probably tell that story so that all of you can come to know a hidden gem of a story; it’s a tale of love, faith and how the two work together. Anyway, off to my current point of inspiration, discipline and children.
We went out to eat last night and got on the subject of our tempers, how kids react to us, and how early they need to be educated. My wife is currently reading a book entitled, The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Dr. Ray and Dorothy Moore. The Moore’s are advocates of a late start to formal education. They also talk about how the first ten to eleven years are extremely important for a child.
They talk about how a child’s values are formed in the first ten to eleven years and their full understandings of things come to the front and are cemented about the age of eleven. In other words, a child may not fully comprehend obedience to mother and father until about that age and their core values are basically set about that time. Up until the age of eleven the location the child spends time is what sets their values and social behaviors. I keep returning to the question of who is going to teach my children their values and how to behave. Do I want a bunch of eight year olds who watch Pokemon and go to sleep listening to their parents watch Sex in the City and The Sopranos, teaching my kids how to act? Do I want eight year olds I know little about expressing values I know nothing about to my kids?
These are the fears that I struggle with. I also don’t want to feel like I am condemning the lifestyle I was raised in or say the other families that aren’t just like me are wrong. I just feel, after prayer and meditation, that I have a much higher and harder tasks than prior generations in my family tree (technology, enough said for now, that is another oddity of a rant) have had in the task of parenting. Also, as someone who works in emergency services I have a slightly skewed reality of the world as I see more of the bad that happens. I just feel that I have to protect my daughters; I want the best for them in this world.
Anyway, as to discipline, I feel that (and I am guilty of this as well) most of what we do with discipline isn’t a good model of God. Personally I have struggled with not working on promoting good behavior enough. Instead, I have often looked at punishment as a way of promoting good behavior and have tried to punish my children into behaving correctly. In reality, punishment is rendering a debt for a transgression that has occurred. We should be giving small aids, gifts of ourselves (Grace), to help our children grow in virtue and discipline. Instead of trying to BULLY my child into behavior through increasing punishments (however, JUST punishment are very important) I need to punish them for transgressions and give them part of myself, working with, directing or rewarding them to help move them in the direction of behaving and doing chores with a proper attitude. I need to give more of myself, exhibit more of Christ’s love to them.
As a parent I shouldn't try to bully my child into behaving.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
children parenting discipline Catholic+Dads CatholicDads Punishment homeschool
Friday, July 6, 2007
Money Kids get for Birthdays
One of the things that is very popular for our kids to receive is money for birthdays and other gifting occassions. We allow them to buy some things that they want with the cash and we also use it to go get things that they need. Problem today is that it was all in a pile and we were scratching our heads trying to figure out how much each kid had been given and how much eavh had spent without having a written record. Now, spending the kids money is my wife's area of responsibility for the most part.
Lets just say we were both stressing out but across the kids we got down to a nine dollar disparity from the initial 75 dollar disparity. We didn't come up with more money, my wife remembered the purchase of cookies at the mall (very expesnive, high overhead and good tasting from what I hear). Anyway, budget and money is something that is stressful but I would like to say that I am proud of my wife as she kept her cool, she did awesome. Dave Ramsey and is financial planning has really helped us out with dealing with finances and getting on a better track than we were.
As to the rest of the world, my now 7.5 month old is actually crawling a little, most of it is belly army crawling but she does some real crawling. Of course, she can pull herself up standing on things too. That is scary. Maybe I will have to loud up blogger in draft and upload some videos for everyone to see. Would also give me a chance to compare it to myspace and youtube video features.
Today is the last day of my training at work and we are going to do some work on multi-tasking with the new computer software in a simulated environment. Tommorow I am going back to the center and will work on overtime shift one 1 of my 2 days off this week, but since that isn't my normal day off and it backs up to my normal two days off I will get 2 in a row after that. Of course next week I will probably have 4-5 12 hour days. This will be going on for the next 4 weeks or so and it sounds like we are probably getting ready to loose a few more people in the department, good for me that this will boost seniority but its going to mean a long long time of lots of overtime and the new stress of restarting homeschooling while I am running on low and it takes quite a long time for us to get people hired, trained and out working on their own.
Now, starting tommorow the older two kids are taking off with my parents for a Gulf of Mexico beach week in Texas. They are going to have so much fun on this trip and my wife and I will not know what to do with just two kids here at the house. I think we are going to rent a movie (Pirates of the Carribean 2) and then possibly try to go watch a movie as well or go out to eat or both. We are also going to have the assesment packet from our homeschool academy that we signed up for to go through starting this week. I am very excited.
Don't forget to vote in the Pocast awards for your favorite SQPN shows, and if you don't know what SQPN is, its a great Catholic Podcasting network. Kick the radio habit and get into podcasts, you can control the content and listen to stuff from EWTN, SQPN, and several other places around the net. On the left sidebar I keep a scrolling run of things that are in my MP3 player.
God bless, pray for us as we work on our children's classical education. Maybe I should blog about that and I am working on the topic idea for the Catholic Dads Carnival, suggestions are always appreciated.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
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Saturday, June 30, 2007
The beauty of homeschooling
Well, its that time of the year again. No, not time to start homeschooling but wrapping up things for the year and working on planning for the next year. A few people I know are working to be teachers because they will have the summer off to be with their kids. While you do have more time off in the summer than someone that works year round I do know that teachers have to do continuing education and prep-work for the next year during the summer. The same is true for homeschooling parents.
We have to study curriculums, activities, evaluate the last year and enrich our knowledge base during the summer. The plus for us is that the students we teach learn with us throughout the summer. We also learn from them, their is not a big getting to know you period at the beginning of the year, we taught these kids last year and we have done things and grown with them all summer long.
We are in the mode of teaching our kids and they continue to learn, we undertake one of our fundamental responsibilities as parents to educate our children. My wife being a stay at home mom is home with the kids all the time, its a way of life. Its not a way of life without struggles (for both of us) but its a calling from God. Today is our cleaning day at the house and we worked all over cleaning and some of the kids learned new chores. Yes, the chore was cleaning the toilet bowl. This is another way that my wife is working smarter. Instead of sending the kids off to a corner and having to deal with them when they interrupt her work, she is working smarter and putting all of us to work on the weekly cleaning chores. She is working hard and working smarter!! Did I mention I love and adore my wife, she is just plain awesome and I am blessed by having her around.
Our kids are learning service to each other , their fellow man, as they do this work beside us. This doesn't make them perfect by any means, all of us in this family fall from time to time. However, we hope that the time we spend together and I with my daughters will help them to get a good start on the way of perfection. This spending time together and teach I think really fits John Henry Cardinal Newman's approach of "Cor ad Cor Loquitor". Hearts speaking to Hearts, that is how school should be, that is how we make a difference in the school that is life, that is what homeschooling is really about, the school of life.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S.
p.s. Since this is emailed to you and you get to read it, I love you dearling.
homeschool homeschooling Cardinal+newman the+school+of+life children chores
Monday, June 18, 2007
Oh by the way, things I learned from my kids.
Today we got all out of sorts on schedule and I ended up missing the Homeschool support group meeting tonight. Its ok, as it gave my wife some time out and about with just the littlest one. I stayed home and fed the kids and we all ended up watching Flicka. The kids finished watching the movie and were up past their bedtime but they still wanted one thing, their mom to read them a story 
. The joy of routine, they watched an almost two hour movie and they wanted mom to be home to read them a simple story for their imaginations to run wild with. God bless them.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S. 
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Tuesday, June 12, 2007
New Homeschool Forum
This could become a great resource for homeschoolers everywhere.
http://www.chsna.net/
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
