- To foster a hunger for a living relationship with Christ and the tools of perseverance, obedience and discipline to realize that relationship.
- To encourage a tremendous life-long passion for learning.
- To promote a unified family entity that each individual can rely on.
- To train our children to think "out of the box" and reach the potential God gives them, not ones others may impose upon them.
- To protect our children's innocence and guard their hearts until they are old enough to guard them.
- Discourage materialism they would be inundated with in the larger culter and encourage an others-focused life rather than a me-centered attitude.
- I felt called by God.
- Dave desired to give me my heart's longing, even if it was a struggle for him at first. He's a big proponant of home schooling now, can you tell?
The best list of why to homeschool that I've found came from an article written by Maureen Wittmann in A Catholic Homeschool Treasury. Other reasons to homeschool :
- To center our lives on the family rather than on school.
- To nurture, train, and educate our children.
- To pass on our faith and culture.
- To foster emotional security.
- To hold our children close while they are young and then let them fly.
- To provide role models ourselves.
- To protect our children from pressure to try drugs or engage insexual activity before marriage.
- To ensure that the children learn to read phonetically.
- To encourage creativity.
- To provide a classical education.
- To reeducate myself.
Also Because...
- We can accomplish more in less time.
- We can vacation and travel during the off-season.
- Socialization, socialization, socialization.
- We can take field trips on the spur of the moment and many of them.
- The Church teaches us that, as parents, we are our children's primary teacher.
- Every child is unique and learns in different ways.
- We know exactly what our children are taught.
- One-on-one tutoring far outwieghs large-class settings.
- In this computer age, resources for home educators are bountiful.
- School is in session year round, even on sick days and snow days.
- I love being with my children.
Why do we homeschool? As education is largely accomplished by imitation, exposing our children to the greatest works of literature, art, music, and persons of virtue and accomplishment throughout the history of western civilization, will train their minds, souls and will to be great. We have chosen to homeschool to encourage our children to both know and love what have been the greatest achievements of civilization and to understand the unity underlying them; a unity that leads back to one loving, merciful God of all. We endeavor to provide a discovery-based, literate and enthusiastic environment where lifelong learning become self-initiated and self-fulfilling. As children of God we will strive always to know, love and serve God through discovering God's gifts to us and sharing our God-given gifts with others.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad we established written reasons we have embarked on this homeschool voyage. More than once, I have wanted to jump ship, but re-reading our own reasons/goals has been like a lifevest!