militarymoms

It’s late spring, which means I’m up to my eyeballs in textbook catalogs.  I’m getting ready for next year’s homeschooling adventure.  For the next month or so, I’ll be driving to homeschool conventions, looking at materials and supplies, and asking friends in my online homeschool community about chemistry labs and math programs.

 We are finishing our sixth year of homeschooling.  The whole thing started when we received overseas orders and my husband started asking about the base school.  Our daughter was in preschool and was teaching herself to sound out short words, but we discovered that she would not be able to start kindergarten until at least the following year because of her birth date.  We heard from friends that the school’s principal was doing a less-than-stellar job.  My husband came home and informed me that we just had to homeschool.  Huh?

I had no intention of homeschooling anyone, ever - but the Good Lord had other ideas.  Once I started looking into home education, I discovered that homeschoolers were everywhere.  As I learned more, I decided I could do it for the two years we’d be overseas, and we did.  We studied ancient history and traveled all over Italy, visiting the places in my son’s history books.  We tweaked our schedule so school days matched Dad’s duty days, which meant we were able to spend more family time together.  We had fun, and my children learned.  We’ve never looked back.

I know I am making it sound easy, perhaps easier than it is, but, for us, homeschooling has really meshed with our military lifestyle.  I no longer dread trying to find Catholic schools  - with openings and affordable tuition - at each duty station.  My children aren’t the “new kids” every two years.  No one bullies them or calls them ”military” anything.  They have tons of friends, through Scouting, church activities, homeschool co-ops, dance and music classes - you get the idea.  They’re confident and happy, and they know their multiplication tables, the Pledge of Allegiance, rules of grammar and history facts, just like any other students their age.

Every family is different, and there’s no perfect way to educate your children.  For us, homeschooling is a good choice.

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