Home schooling thoughts and Review of "For the Children's Sake"

A little known fact about me is that I like to learn about different home school approaches.  Part of this is because we have a good number of close friends and family who home school.  Part of this is because the older kids are now school age, and it's good to keep track of all the school options.  And part of this is the numerous benefits that I see homeschooling as offering (here are a few):

• It's a good chance to have lots of quality family time - to nurture that bond, to control the environment of your kids, and to let the kids grow up with maximum time around both their parents and siblings.
• It allows you to emphasize what's most important to you both in terms of time spent on certain subjects and how they are taught.  
• You could tailor the education more to the needs and interests of each of the individual kids.
• At least in elementary school, you could shorten up the school day substantially and allow more time for free play and have more freedom in the schedule in general.  If you wanted to travel, or needed to take a sick day, you could work the school schedule around that..

With all of this being true, why don't we homeschool?  (Before I launch into these, I want to really emphasize that this is just how it has gone for OUR family; every family has different kids, different needs, and a different situation; and the home school families I know are doing an amazing job educating their kids.) Here are some of those reasons:

• We have so far had a very positive experience with the kids' public school.  The kids' teachers  are professionally trained to teach, and they have all incorporated things into their lessons that I would have never thought to include.  (I feel like it's worth noting here that I was educated outside of the home for PreK-12, and I had a very positive experience, including some very good teachers, great friends, and rewarding extracurriculars - so that certainly plays into my perception of public school.)
• There are some areas where Josh needs specialized instruction, and the school has met this need - if I was homeschooling, our days would involve a lot of driving around to speech therapy and occupational therapy and that sort of thing.  Which somewhat takes away the freedom of schedule advantage for our family.  
• I will likely go back to work in the next few years, at least on a part time basis.  My years at home have been rewarding and special (and hard!!), but at least for now, I envision a return to the workforce.
• Just to be totally honest, I feel like I would have a really hard time as a home school teacher.  That's a lot of responsibility to be managing (BIG kudos to all you teachers inside *and* outside the home).  Plus, my kids respond differently to me teaching than to other adults doing it.  It's nice to have home mostly just be a haven for rest and relaxation, and the "work" of school happening in a physically separate space.  

So that's the background on my thoughts about homeschooling for our family.   Public school is working well for us for now, but I still like to keep tabs on the homeschooling world.  Related to all this, I recently read the book "For the Children's Sake" by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, which describes ideas about education and childhood that are based largely on Charlotte Mason homeschooling methods.  I chose to read this book because a friend recommended it to me, and I really respect this person - her character, the way she's lived her life, and the way she's raising her kids.  

This book is best suited for someone who's planning to home school and who is trying to figure out a vision and guiding theory for how to shape that education.  But I feel like it also has lots of value for parents who are thinking about how to best use the hours of childhood outside of school.  (Between weekends, holidays, and breaks, kids have as many days off of school as they have in school, so there is a good amount of time to work with.)

Here are the recommendations in this book that I agree with and that I plan to either keep doing, start incorporating, or ramp up:

• Keep the schedule light - there are so many good options for extracurriculars these days.  Between sports, music, languages, church, scout groups, tutoring / therapies, and the list goes on, you could easily keep your kids enrolled in organized activity every waking minute.  But kids really benefit from down time.  They thrive with time to play, to run around, to daydream, and to be bored.  My kids ask for time to play all the time, and they really struggle on days where those hours are cut short.  We do participate in a few extracurriculars, but I'm doing my best not to bog down the schedule any more, and to keep the outside of school extras to a minimum.  (I find it really challenging to hit this balance just right, and would love any advice from other parents on how you figure this out in your family.)
• Spend lots of time reading together - this is one that Kenny and I both try to do.  Honestly, I'm able to fit a lot more reading in when the kids are on break, so I try to have books queued up for those times.  We also use the library as our second home (this is for my sake as much as theirs, haha).
• Expose them to great stories, music, and art - this is one that I have not been particularly thoughtful about.  We do read a lot and listen to music a lot, but I've been as happy for them to read Pinkalicious as the classics, and for them to listen to K-Love rather than Bach.  And while I do think there's room for "twaddle" (the name the author gives to art that won't stand the test of time) and I feel like my kids like twaddle much more than the kids that this author has apparently worked with, I do think that regular and thoughtful exposure to the great works is an important part of seeing what true beauty consists of, and what we can aspire to.  
• Go light in talking at them - the ideas is that they should have lots of room to ask questions and come up with their own conclusions.  Kenny is good at this; I have room for improvement here.
• Give them lots of time to play and explore and create art - We do have some art drawers with materials for the kids to draw and cut and paste, and they all very much use this as an outlet for their creativity.  Again, the main challenge here is time during the school week, but they make good use of this during their free play hours. 
• Spend lots of time outside - We are great about this during the warm months and terrible about it during the cold months.  I have it as an ongoing resolution to stock up on really good cold weather gear and learn a cold weather activity (we live next to the Sierra Nevadas for pete's sake), but so far that hasn't happened.  But in the warm months, we do hikes and lake days as much as I can possibly cram it into the schedule.  
• Spiritual instruction - One of my favorite things about our current church is that they have an amazing children's program, so they are getting good instruction on Sundays and Wednesdays at church.  I also try to include the kids in what I'm doing in my own spiritual life - Zoey and I memorize verses together, we all listen to KLove together, we pray together, etc.  We don't sit down and have hour long lessons, but we try to incorporate our faith into regular checkpoints of every day.  
• Foster an environment rich in love, support, valuing them, and stimulating them - This is certainly what we aspire to - I fail to meet the gold standard on these all the time, but I hope my kids are getting at least some of this every day.

Whew, this blog ended up being longer than I had planned!  Good on you if you made it to the end!  I love these ideas for how to structure and prioritize what my kids do with their free hours.  Would you add anything to this list?