Catching Up

We love the fall.

She just threw a bunch of leaves at my head.

Picasso Art Day

Charlie and his buddy, Jeremiah at the first soccer game of the season.

First Candy Machines

Jackson Pollock Art Day

Tales of Capitalism and Motherly Ponderings

First mentioned here, my latest and greatest obsession is turning my kids into little money makers. Our own vending business! It will be so easy!

So we picked up our two machines on Sunday. I'd show you pictures but I can't find the camera cord thingy. Then we created flyers to pass out to local businesses. Today we spent our afternoon canvasing potential customers. I, my friends, am not a salesperson. I'm the girl who threw away the candy order forms instead of soliciting our poor neighbors with overpriced junk. But there is a natural born salesperson in the family. See if you can spot him/her:


(in an insurance office)

Ava: Can we put our candy in your store?
Office worker: blank stare
I mercifully intercede.

(in a doctor's office)

Charlie: Uh....we...uh....started....er...our own company....candy...uh.... machine...errr...
Office worker: stare of pity
I mercifully intercede.

(in a pharmacy)

Juliet: We've started a candy vending business and we were wondering if you would like to have one of our machines in your store.
Pharmacist: What kinds of candy will you have?
Charlie: Uhhh...errr.....
Ava: GUMBALLS!
Juliet: Skittles, M&Ms, Reeses Pieces...


Juliet was born to make money. She scours the house, collecting loose change, which she hordes like a Mongolian warlord. She's savvy, but personable. It was rainy and cold outside, and the kids were getting turned down every where they went, but she said it was 'fun.' Good for her, I say. Every family needs a Juliet.

Charlie is altogether different. You may have read his dialogue and presumed he's just an awkward, shy, altogether unfortunate individual. This is not the case. Charlie is inexplicably well-loved. He's the kid that is universally liked by all sorts of other kids and adults. It's a phenomenon, really. There was this one Sunday when I had no less than three different individuals tell me how much they like my son. Go figure.

Ava. Oh Ava. Did you ever see Amelie? This is Ava. Impish, mischievous, borderline bizarre, but so freakin' adorable that she gets away with it all. She recently promised that she 'would never choke me because she loves me so much.' And smart as a whip, that one. But so was Ted Kaczynski, so we have to keep an eye on her.

When I started homeschooling, I went from dropping my kids off at daycare at 7 am and picking them up at 5:30, to being with them 24/7. There are days, ahem yesterday, when the whining and bickering and trivial annoyances knock me out. Literally. I was in full crisis mode by dinner last night. But there are other days, like today, when I see glimpses of the people they will become, when I know it's worth the headaches. Homeschooling gives me the time to know my kids. Warts and all. And vice-versa. I don't have to listen to a teacher tell me how they interact with others, or how they are getting bullied or being brats in the classroom. I get to watch them be brats all day.

Knowing your kids better, in itself, is not a sufficient reason to homeschool. But watching them grow and catching them being momentarily brilliant is definitely a plus. The way I see it, this is my one shot with them. I've got a few years and then it's all over. They move on, hopefully to great lives with their own families to exciting places, and I move on to do all the stuff I'm not doing now. But I'll know I gave them all of me when they were mine. This, my friends, is why I homeschool.

Tackling Tom Sawyer, Part Deux

Dgm brought up a great point in the comments section of my last post:

"So you can bet I'm censoring the 'n' word from Tom Sawyer. And guess what? They don't really know the difference. It's certainly the only way I'm attempting this book while my chil'luns are this little."

Maybe that's a sign that they aren't ready for this book. I think it's great they are learning about great literature, but not all great literature is appropriate for 4-8 year olds because they don't understand the context in which the story takes place. So, for example, much of Romeo & Juliet may be lost on them because they don't have the experience to understand what this kind of love and feuding is about. It's great adult literature, but I don't see how kids can truly appreciate it.

Likewise with TS, which admittedly is great children's literature. However, if you don't want to say the "n word" in front of them because you don't think they'd understand how bad it is and why they shouldn't say it, maybe they aren't ready to hear it. I could see my 9 year old "getting" it (and shriveling up every time she read the word), but I don't think my 4 year old is ready to understand the context of the word and why it is so inappropriate to use these days.

This is a tough issue, but one that I feel strongly about. No, my kids are not ready to be exposed to the 'n' word. And they certainly didn't appreciate Romeo and Juliet at the same level they would as freshmen in high school. But that's ok. I'm not reading them these stories so that they may completely comprehend the social context or tragedy of love lost. Not at all.

There is so much more that they are getting from these stories. The beauty of language, hearing the cadence of wonderfully written sentences, following along a difficult plot, tracking multiple characters, identifying themselves with a character, and the joy of hearing great literature. There's much more to Tom Sawyer than its social context. It isn't Huck Finn, whose central theme is the injustice of slavery. Tom Sawyer is a celebration of boyhood. And my kids are laughing out loud with each chapter.

Literature, good literature, doesn't need to be fully understood to be appreciated. They will read Romeo and Juliet again. And again. And hopefully, again. In the meantime they are exposed to greatness. And even more importantly, they don't know what it means to be intimidated by language written several hundred years ago. If I do one thing right, just one thing, it will be that I raised strong readers. A good reader will have the knowledge and history of the world at their feet. A good reader will be able to learn anything they want to know, will never be bored, and will know the joy of being humbled by the written word.

For that, I'm grateful for the privilege of introducing these works to my children.

Tackling Tom Sawyer

We are delving into the world of great literature this year. Dickens, Shakespeare, Twain, everyone is fair game. After finishing Romeo and Juliet, I thought I'd try something lighter. So every afternoon, after history, but before the kids are free to play and wander the neighborhood in joyous abandon, I attempt the challenging dialect presented in Tom Sawyer.

'Hey! You're from Texas! Don't you already talk like Tom Sawyer?' you might be asking yourself. No'm. I ain't talked like this in my ever lovin' life. My mama done raised me right. Sho nuff.

But the southernly slangy dialect is the least of my worries. Yassir, the least of my worries indeedy. And I quote:

"Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a n******, and the n***** told me!"

Only when I said it, there was a pause after 'Ben Rogers' and an "Uhhhhhh...hold on." And I honestly didn't know what to say. "What is it?" they asked, expectantly waiting for some scandalous or exciting tidbit. "Uhhhhh...." pause, fumble, pause. The best I could come up with was that they used a word that we don't say and we can never ever say because it's a very bad word, despite what their gangsta rap downloads are telling them.

"What is it???? We'll never use it!!!!!!" You should've seen their round little eyes, anxiously planning on using the aforementioned word on each other in battle. "No," I insisted. "It was a terrible word that people used to use for black people and I'm not going to say it." They were disappointed indeed.

Listen y'all, I put down Henry Miller's The Tropic of Cancer last night because I couldn't take the repeated use of the 'f' word. I'm telling you I'm virginal. At least my ears, eyes and brains are. So you can bet I'm censoring the 'n' word from Tom Sawyer. And guess what? They don't really know the difference. It's certainly the only way I'm attempting this book while my chil'luns are this little.


PS - My kids LOVE love love this book.

And now I'm tired...

First week of school was a success. Juliet and Charlie are both going full days...by 'full' I mean jam-packed. We got our French books today. Here's what I know:

Je m'appelle Kristi.

That's about it.

And we finished Romeo and Juliet. Here's what the kids said about that:

Juliet: I don't like tragedies. Hmmmph.
Charlie: You should, since you were named AFTER A CHARACTER IN A SHAKESPEARE PLAY!!!!

This is a major point of importance for Charlie. He tells his friends, "Did you know Juliet was named after a character in a Shakespeare play?" To which his friends reply "blink blink." So here are a few pictures from the first day. Ignore the frumpy redhead on the floor.

Reading and Watching

We started Romeo and Juliet after falling in love with this movie. It's the real deal, y'all. Shakespeare's actual play...not a paraphrased or kid's version. The process of reading it is a little painful, but worth it. The rest of the items below are a few of our books and movies for the week.

I had a dream. I had an awesome dream.

Anyone who follows Here in Idaho knows I'm a little bit crazy. I get excited about projects, get started, never finish, then get excited about something else. It's what I do.

So I wanted to invest in real estate...but guess what? I've got a buck fifty to my name so it's not going to happen. Fair enough. Then I had an idea. An awesome idea. A way to make a little change AND teach the youngins about business. Here it is:

A CANDY MACHINE.

That's right. You heard me. The kids and I are starting a vending business. By 'business' I mean one machine, in one location, that will probably only make five dollars a month. Irregardless, it's a good idea. Because the kids will help pick out the machine, price the candy, scout a location, run the numbers, service the machine, count the money, deposit the money and be little entrepreneurs. Start-up will be less than two hundred dollars and the kids are PSYCHED. Ava, God bless her, even had the idea for a penny pressing machine...which we can't afford at the moment but might be a worthwhile goal. Personally, I want one of those gravity tunnel machines that you see at museums. A girl's gotta have goals.

So you don't have to be a homeschooler to teach your kids about money. This will be a side project, probably only requiring our attention one Saturday a month. But can you imagine a better way to teach about enterprise? I can't. And if you read this entry over at Here in Idaho, you know I'm all about preparing our kids to be self-reliant.

We hope to be able to buy this machine next month. I'll keep you updated.

Berry Interesting

Last night the superintendent of our school district hosted a meeting aimed at assessing the needs of homeschoolers in the community. He made it very clear that homeschoolers are welcome to use school services and participate in extra-curricular activities. What the??????

Two years ago, when I pulled Charlie out of school, I was aware that there was a provision in the Idaho Code of All Things Educational that homeschooled children should be able to participate in standardized testing with their public school peers. Fair 'nuff. Testing time came and I called the school and said, "Whutsup? I wanna test my boy." And they were all, "Uh-uh. You cut your ties with us forever. You can test him your own damn self." And I was all, "I know my rights! This here code says you have to test my child!" And they were all, "Oh no we don't. It is left to the discretion of the district if we want to test and no we do not want to test so goodbye."

Click.

Cut forward two years. The new superintendent is holding a meeting welcoming homeschoolers. He says the district will be open to testing homeschoolers AND we can join the band, go to art classes, take calculus, etcetera. This is good news to me. For one thing, I don't use grades. Testing will be an integral part of making sure my kids are performing at and above grade level.

Don't use grades? you say. No, I don't. We're pretty loosy-goosey. I don't know how I would apply numbers to their work when I make them redo everything until it's right. I test, I assess, I drill, I quiz verbally...I do lots of things. I just don't grade with numbers. But some homeschoolers do. And they brag about their '4.0' grade average. I don't get it. But...to each his own.

Back to the post. Testing is important. Standardized test scores will play a large role in our kids' transcripts when it's college time, especially since we won't have grades to speak of. On the other hand, don't get me started on the over-testing being done in the public schools. Good golly. Don't get me started. So...here's how I handle testing.

For reading level I pull three different online assessments and test the kids myself. All three were found at this website. I just keep a notebook listing the dates the tests were given and how they did.

Up to now we've never participated in standardized testing. But last spring I signed up with the Idaho Coalition of Home Educators so that Charlie will be able to take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. And it sounds like he will also be taking the Idaho Standards Achievement Test at the local school this year. Nice.

Testing is a good thing.

PS - I'm trying of getting out of the habit of bragging about test scores. This is so my kids won't tell everyone, "I'm in the X grade but I'm really a genius and my mama told me so because I read at X level."

Another reading recommendation

I loves to read. I feel empty and worthless when I'm not in the middle of a great book. I should probably tell a psychiatrist about that last statement.

So I love to read and here is my proof: my Amazon wish list. Once you get past the very sophisticated and exceptionally smart movies, you'll see page after page of VERY intellectual books. Let me tell you about one of them.

I read Last Child in the Woods this summer. At the heart of the book is the assertion that modern children are too sheltered, too entertained, too guarded from nature, and are suffering because of it. The author links lack of exposure to the outdoors to ADD, behavioral problems, and a general lack of connection with nature.

From Publishers Weekly
Today's kids are increasingly disconnected from the natural world, says child advocacy expert Louv (Childhood's Future; Fatherlove; etc.), even as research shows that "thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can... be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorder and other maladies." Instead of passing summer months hiking, swimming and telling stories around the campfire, children these days are more likely to attend computer camps or weight-loss camps: as a result, Louv says, they've come to think of nature as more of an abstraction than a reality. Indeed, a 2002 British study reported that eight-year-olds could identify Pokémon characters far more easily than they could name "otter, beetle, and oak tree." Gathering thoughts from parents, teachers, researchers, environmentalists and other concerned parties, Louv argues for a return to an awareness of and appreciation for the natural world. Not only can nature teach kids science and nurture their creativity, he says, nature needs its children: where else will its future stewards come from? Louv's book is a call to action, full of warnings—but also full of ideas for change.

I. Loved. This. Book. I loved it so much that I took it to heart, and started letting my children spend more time unsupervised outside. I've called moratoriums on movies and video games, for the sole purpose of forcing outside play. We've spent time at just about every park in town, and I'm planning a hike before the end of the summer. This particular book has nothing to do with homeschooling. It's more about parenting. And the consequences of electronic parenting.

Buy it. Or check it out of your library. You won't be sorry.

Socialization is for suckers.

This here post is gonna be what we bloggers call a 'rant.' So get yo'self ready.


The number one objection to homeschooling is an all-encompassing word call 'socialization.' I hear it all the time. Maybe you knew some homeschool kids growing up and they were a little freaky deaky. Maybe they were hyper-religious and believed the Smurfs were of the devil. Or they weren't allowed to listen to secular music. We all knew somebody, homeschooled or not, who was just weird. I'm here to tell you that homeschooling does not inherently cause poor socialization, and to think it does would just be silly. Here's why:


A public school education creates an artificial social structure. Never in your life, in your whole life, will you be surrounded by people who are the same age as you. Not at work, not in religious life, family life or in any other scenario will you be socially tied to people because you were born the same year. But the problem with public school socialization is not that kids are grouped together in this way, it's that this structure lends itself to negative socialization. Which is my second point.

I was a jerk in the seventh grade. Junior high, in my estimation, has absolutely no social value in the development of a person. Somehow this structure turns sweet little girls and boys into monsters. My number one fear in these years was being mocked or embarrassed in any way. And to avoid this, I would participate in the mocking or embarrassment of other kids. Everybody has a story from these years. Will has stories, my sisters have stories, everyone EVERYONE became someone's victim or someone's bully. And what is the value if this time? I see none. Because you will never again in your life deal with this kind of treatment, unless you're an enemy combatant of some sort. And if you are willing to subject yourself to hazing as a free-thinking mature adult, then I'm sure you got your psychological motivation in your junior high years.

Parental control is diminished in a school structure. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. I realize as a homeschooling mom, I will have to create situations where my kids can actually choose their own friends. I also have to let them go outside, unsupervised, so they can get away from me for an hour or two everyday. But when I think back on every good kid gone bad, it almost always stemmed from an association with another good kid gone bad. And those relationships were formed at school. I think it's quite possible to give kids too much freedom, too many opportunities to screw up. But the line between hovering over your child's every breath, and letting them go smoke the doobie behind the bleachers after school is a broad one. And by staying home, I made that line a whole lot harder to cross. I consider this an advantage, not a detriment. Yes, there will be problems. And yes, a rebellious kid is going to find a way to rebel, no matter what. Homeschooling just removes a couple of weapons a kid has in terrorizing their parents.

Homeschooling can ultimately create a very nurturing and healthy social environment. The most important social unit is the family. Without strong families, every part of society begins to crumble. I would rather my kids leave childhood with a vivid picture of how a family works together than whatever social skills they could have gained in a public school. Because, ultimately, their very happiness will depend on it. They will need to know how to work through problems with their spouse, how to be self-sacrificing, how to parent effectively, how to budget, how to maintain a household, and most important, how to live with other people day in and day out without giving up on them. The most successful people in the world could stand to learn this lesson. And I want my kids to get that from me.

We'll do soccer, church, VBS, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, gymnastics, music lessons and countless other things to get my kids around other children. But here's a little secret: kids are born socialized. They don't need artificial venues to teach them how to play or talk to other children. Many objections to homeschooling are valid and worth considering. But, in my mind, socialization isn't one of them.

The Privileges of Homeschooling

I WAS going to start school in about three weeks, on the 20th. This seemed reasonable, the public schools don't start until after the 1st, but they don't get out until mid June. We like getting out at the end of May.

But I've changed my mind. My kids have joined a neighborhood street gang, and I figured I should let them enjoy the rest of their summer with their homeys rather than disrupt their illicit activities.

This is a milestone for us. I let the six year old and the four year old bike down a few houses to play with their new friend, Helen. I watched out the window and bit my nails as they disappeared behind the hedges, praying I was still a good mama for letting my baby girls travel the mean streets of the Westwood subdivision all alone. They stayed at Helen's house for ONE WHOLE HOUR. Do you understand how quiet my own home was? How confused and alienated I felt with my girls bugging someone else's mama?

Eventually I retrieved them, inviting Helen over for the afternoon, secretly jealous that her house was so much cleaner than mine, resolving to get some cleaning done during the lunch hour.

What does this have to do with homeschooling? Two things:

First, I've changed the course of our entire year on a whim. Last year we went to Texas for the month of September and did school there. I anticipate that someday we will do a massive global trip of epic proportions and we will do school on the road. Homeschooling gives you a great deal of freedom and flexibility. I like this.

Second, my kids have friends. Not a ton of friends, but several really good friends. I know their friends' parents, I've been to their homes, they've been to our home and I'm genuinely surprised at how active our social lives have become. Sometime it's a little exhausting. At some point I'll do an entire post on the myth of homeschooling socialization, or lack thereof, as the topic warrants an entire post.

For now I need to clean my house. Helen might come over.

Defining classical education

We are often asked what curriculum we use. As you can see below, we don't subscribe to any one brand of curriculum, we prefer to pick and choose. Our overall philosophy of homeschooling, however, is that of a classical education. This is the post where I describe what that means.

First, I was introduced to the concept of a classical education by the book The Well-Trained Mind, the book, which incidently, became the absolute definitive textbook of our homeschooling endeavors. If there is only one homeschooling book you buy ever, buy this one. Jesse Wise began homeschooling her children back in the seventies, and had to totally make it up as she went along. She eventually concluded that the best way to teach her children was to go back to the one-room schoolhouse methods, which are very different from the methods employed in public schools today.

A classical education develops as the child develops. The first stage is called the grammar stage. These are the elementary years. Young children, as any mom knows, are incredibly capable of absorbing extraordinary amounts of information. During the grammar stage a teacher crams her students' tiny little heads with as much information as possible; facts, poetry, lists, stories, geography, languages, art, science, music, math facts, history, Bible verses...anything you can fit into your day. Like unschoolers, we also encourage children to learn about their interests independently. But unlike unschoolers, we also structure our day with a schedule and place an emphasis on math, grammar, spelling and history.

Unlike the modern classroom, we encourage memorization and utilize the dreaded 'drill and kill' method, which has gotten a nasty reputation in the past thirty years. Memory work is recorded (by me) on cassette tapes. Every morning the kids spend about twenty minutes listening to their 'memory work.' This year Charlie's tapes will include the times tables, French and Latin vocabulary, the scientific method, and the poetry of his choice. The whole process reminds me of the part in in Superman where baby Superman is traveling through space as he listens to Marlon Brando give him facts about the planet earth.


The second stage of a classical education is the logic stage. These are the junior high years. Here's what wikipedia says about the logic stage:

In the modern renaissance of classical education, this logic stage (or dialectic stage) refers to the junior high or middle school aged student, who developementally is beginning to question ideas and authority, and truly enjoys a debate or an argument. Training in logic, both formal and informal, enables students to critically examine arguments and to analyze their own.

So if the grammar stage is about training kids on how to learn for themselves, the logic stage is about testing their ability to learn and to form their own opinions about what they've learned. I started speech and debate in junior high. And that's where I learned how to write, how to organize my thoughts, how to research, how to defend my positions, and eventually how to teach myself anything I wanted to learn. I see the junior high years as a training ground for adulthood; they'll still be doing math and history and grammar, but they'll be writing and beginning the process of taking on self-directed projects.

The final stage of a classical education is the rhetoric stage.

Rhetoric debate and composition (which is the written form of rhetoric) are taught to somewhat older (often high school aged) students, who by this point in their education have the concepts and logic to criticize their own work and persuade others. According to Aristotle "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic." It is concerned with finding "all the available means of persuasion." The student has learned to reason correctly in the Logic stage so that they can now apply those skills to Rhetoric. Students would read and emulate classical poets such as Ovid and others in learning how to present their arguments well.

So at this point they are, hopefully, confident learners, able to self-educate and now able to persuade others. How important is it to be able to debate? It's not so much about winning arguments as it is about confidence, holding conversations with others and not looking like an idiot. How many times do you hear teenagers talk and there's nothing there? How many adults
do you know who can't form an independent thought or write a simple letter to an editor without sounding like an idiot? How many of you went to college without really how to write? I'll tell you what I want to avoid:






I'm going to hell for posting a video of a little girl making a fool of herself, but God help me, I will not raise little idiots.

Preschool, Schmeeschool. It's allllll good.

Coolbeans Mom wants to know how I'm going to homeschool preschool. That's a great question, and the answer is that I have no idea. But I do have some advice:

Make learning to read your number one priority and you'll succeed.

Reading? In pre-K? Yes. Here's how:


1. Teach the letters first. The ABC song but also like this: A, aaaa, apple, B, bbb, ball, etc. Create a chart that has the capital letter, the lower cased letter and a picture for each letter. Then chant the chart once a day with your child. Be sure to point to each letter as you say it.

2. Now on to phonics. This book is uh-may-zing. It will teach you the tricks and rules that aren't as plain as the nose on your darling's face. Like schwa. And that ould spells "ood." Crazy stuff that makes no sense will be taught in a systematic and logical way. We did a page a day when Juliet was in kindergarten, and we're still working on it. But she's also moved on to a formal spelling program and is writing sentences.




My only warning is that the book features this creepy, half-drugged looking cartoon worm that's always spouting encouraging advice. There's no reason for the worm to be there. It's actually very disturbing.


And that's it. You might want to get some BOB books (link below) and other readers so they can practice. And, of course, you'll want to introduce your preschoolers to the numbers and colors and shapes. The usual junk.


All of the above should take less than 20 minutes a day. For realz, yo, preschool shouldn't be hard. Get some coloring books, some scissors, read up on some easy crafts, don't let them watch too much tv, and you're good to go. Preschool should be less about stressing out over doing the right thing, more about preparing your child to love the process of learning.

No grade like first grade.

First Grade Curriculum

Uhhh...pretty much all the same stuff listed for third grade, but with their first grade workbooks.


This was the easiest post ever.

Preparing for the inevitable.

Today is July 25th. In about three weeks I'll begin school again, this year with a third grader, a first grader and a preschooler. So it's time to start assessing the damages: what will we need and how much does it cost?

I'm going to list each book/resource and its price, even if we already own the resource. This is to give an idea of the total cost of our curriculum.

Third Grade

Math

Singapore Math - Primary Math Workbook 3A - $8.50
Primary Math Workbook 3B -$8.50


Grammar

Shurley English Kit $70.00

Spelling

Spelling Workout Level C - $12.50


History

Story of the World, Volume 3 - $14.93


Science

The Everything Science Kids' Experiment Book - $7.50


French

French in Ten Minutes a Day - $13.57



Geography, literature and writing will be incorporated with history. Art and piano lessons will be stuck in there somewhere as well. It all sounds very academic, I know. It doesn't sound so academic when I'm chastising the four year old for peeing her clothes again and the older two are screaming over who gets to pick the lunchtime movie.

But we try.

Let's get this party started.

Hi, I'm Kristi. I write Here in Idaho, which is a whole lot funnier than this blog is going to be. That's because this one's going to be dedicated to homeschooling: how we do it, who does it better, what we use, frequently asked questions, and why teaching your kids at home is very awesome.


Let us begin, shall we?

How the Harrisons Started Homeschooling

I realized I wanted to be a teacher when I was pregnant with my third child, Ava. I wanted to impact young lives. No, I wanted summers off. So I suffered through a year-long alternative certification program in San Antonio, sent out my empty resume, learned how to give killer interview answers and got my first job teaching kindergarten in the Southside of San Antonio. All this happened in the year of our Lord 2003.

My first year was a little bit of a nightmare. I had five ADHD boys who ruled the classroom, one of whom was later suspended for attempting to choke his first grade teacher. I honestly didn't know the first thing about teaching, the first thing being classroom management. I also didn't know the second thing, which is teaching kids how to read. I sucked at teaching.

Over the summer I read, read, read. I spent time with better teachers and tried to learn everything I could. I entered my second year confident and ready. Only my second year was going to be very different.

To begin, Charlie, my son was going to go to school with me. He was going to start kindergarten next door. Secondly, his teacher was someone I didn't know. She was new to our school, but a ten year veteran of the classroom. More on her in a minute. Third, our school district had made a deal with the Devil, I mean a curriculum company. We had to follow scripted lessons in exchange for free curriculum. More on this in another minute.

So Charlie started school. Charlie, who is my most well-behaved child, who knew his letters at the age of two, my sweet little boy, gave me the surprise of my life by sucking at school. He couldn't focus, he could read, but he wouldn't write. Every single complaint I had about my little ADHD boys from my first year came back at me in the teacher's lunchroom. He'd come home with homework I had created and he wouldn't do it. I remember having one multi-hour session at home one night, yelling and begging and fussing and pouting and fighting over these stupid worksheets. He was miserable at school.

So while he was stinking at school, I was stinking at this new curriculum. I hated it. Our kids were going to be tested mid-year and the curriculum was moving at a snail's pace. So I dropped the mandatory curriculum and secretly taught the kids how to read using Charlie's teacher's methods. She was and is an amazing teacher. Particularly when it comes to literacy. My entire approach to teaching kids how to read comes from what I learned from her.

So. The end of the year came and we had a problem. My husband's job was in jeopardy. Co-workers were being layed off, the management was crap, he was coming home miserable. We made the decision to leave our cozy life in San Antonio and move to Sandpoint, Idaho. IDAHO? Yes, Idaho. And guess what? I couldn't find a job in Sandpoint, Idaho.

A few weeks into first grade, Charlie's teacher tactfully addressed what I already knew: Charlie wouldn't focus. And that was when the decision was made. This child would either spend the rest of his life being a bitter disappointment to his teachers, or I could pull him out and teach him myself. And that's what I did.

I started homeschooling in November of 2005 and haven't looked back. Charlie, who couldn't 'focus' to save his life, can recite The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere from memory. We start third grade in a few weeks, with middle sister starting first grade and baby girl doing some preschool.

Here's what I want you to get from this story: don't presume your kids' teachers know what they're doing. Don't presume they have your child's best interest at heart. They are there to do a difficult job, one that most people wouldn't want in a million years. But when it comes to your kids, you you YOU are ultimately responsible for all of it, their education included.

Which is why our family made the decision to homeschool.