School: decisions decisions!

We've decided what we will be doing next year for Nehemiah's schooling. Our choices were: pay to send him to WEE school at our church again next year which is three half days a week or to go ahead and officially start homeschool kindergarten. He would not be able to start public school yet because of the birthday cut-off date...he has a late October birthday.

This year he has been in a three year old class, of which he's been the oldest in there. It is a great program and he has an awesome teacher, but he has been bored, to the point of begging to stay home and do homeschool! He loves it once he's there, most of the time but even the teacher and the director have noticed his boredom and started giving him class work from the older class. They often send "homework" for him just to challenge him a little and he gladly does it after dinner when the big boys have homework time. I am so glad I have a happy little learner. I just pray he continues like this!

So we obviously don't want to push him too much, too quickly but we also don't want to pay for something pointless either. I know he'd still get benefits from preschool but are they worth the cost and time if he can get those same benefits elsewhere? We have decided no, not for us. We are going to look for social activities and sports to involve him in, such as soccer, as well as AWANAS and homeschool co-op.

We live in Louisiana and fortunately (and unfortunately) there are not very strict guidelines for homeschooling. From what I have researched and found by asking other homeschoolers is that you must only send in a letter of intent to homeschool at the start of the school year. I will not have to send any lesson plans, records, test grades or attendance in. We also do not have to participate in standardized testing if we don't want to (not sure how I feel about this yet; they do offer it to homeschoolers every year though so that's good!). This is good in the aspect of being more flexible but also there is less accountability in the state for ensuring that people are homeschooling well and really educating their kids. For me, this means we can continue to take Nehemiah's schooling at the pace we are already on, being more easy going and flexible, allowing for him to learn and do things at his pace and explore his interests.

This is a little daunting to me in the respect that up until now we have been unofficially homeschooling and now it will be "official" in the Fall. My type "A" personality wants to get all worked up over it but I am trying to not freak out keep the big picture in mind. Pray for us in this exciting adventure, that I would have great patience, creativity and energy!

Blessed in more ways that I can count!

Stephanie