I did not think this would happen with Natalie because she is a pretty independent little girl.  We have the Kindergarten version of T4L which also includes the 1st grade Science and LA extension.  I’ve told her that those she needs to do with my supervision because there are many areas that need to be read to her, unlike the Kindergarten Language Arts and Math curriculum.  However, she wanted to venture into the world of science by herself while I was busy helping my older daughter with homework.

She completed a couple of sections and was fine until she had to do the quiz.  She pretty much guessed at every question because she could not read the question and answers.  Her score was 30%.  She became very upset about that score.  That’s good and bad.  She realizes the importance of getting a high score.  The next day she said she did not want to do any assignments because she got “too many red Xs” and she was “afraid it would happen again.”  I convinced her to log on and told her I would help her through that section and the quiz.  Funny thing is that we went right to the quiz just to see how much she knew.  I read the questions and let her figure out the answer–she got everyone right!  She was so excited…her words were “Mom, I guess I knew it all along.  I am such a smart little girl”  I was laughing at her modesty.

She did 4 lessons after that, 2 in math and 2 in language arts and her confidence was flying really high.  She aced all her quizzes yesterday and had no reservations about logging in today before school and tomorrow she is already planning to go back into science with my help.

It’s amazing how good kids feel when they get good grades.

I just had an opportunity to read the most recent newsletter, about Accidental Homeschoolers.  John’s definition and description of an Accidental Homeschooling family could not be any closer to my family’s situation!  Reading that, made me want to share my story.  I apologize in advance for the length…

When it came time for my oldest, Bailey, to start school, there was never any doubt about putting him in the public school system.  We had no reason to feel like that was not the best thing for him.  He had a fantastic Kindergarten year.  We loved his teacher and the experience that year brought all of us.  When First grade was about to start, we thought that year would be just as good as the year before.

We were so wrong.  We started experiencing problems with the teacher, I kid you not, BEFORE school even started!  Ugh!  Anyway, the year continued to have problems.  My son, who is very social and wanted to go every single day in Kindergarten, was starting to ask if he could stay home.   We began looking into other options, trying first to get him changed to another class within the same school.  That was not on option that was going to pan out.  We then started discussing private school but the cost… Holy Cow!!  That option also quickly fell apart.

Then someone suggested homeschool.  My first thought?  NO WAY, NO HOW, NUH UH!  Why you might ask?  Well, there were a couple of reasons for that.  One being my own sense of self ability.  I didn’t think I could do it.

The biggest reason though is quite tragic.  You see, when I was pregnant with Bailey, I lost my 16 1/2 year old sister-in-law to suicide.  Going through the shock, I blamed everyone including myself for her loss.  Once the shock gave way to anger, I latched on to the one reason I could blame that wasn’t someone.  Homeschooling.  Yep, she was homeschooled.  In my mind THIS is why she gave up.  She had no friends her age, no peer group.  All of her friends were 7 or 8 years older than her, or more.  A 16 year old who thought she was fat, needed another 16 year old to tell her she wasn’t.  A 16 year old who had a crush on a boy, needed another 16 year old to talk to about that.  She didn’t have that, and I blamed homeschooling.  Homeschooling secluded kids and kept them apart from the socializing and the peer groups that they so desperately need at that critical age.

For years, I maintained that I would never, NEVER, do that my kids.  Then my husband and I met a new friend.  He was in his 2nd year of college at the time, worked 40 a hours a week and still managed to keep himself on the Dean’s List at school.  He was intelligent, responsible, grounded and had a nice group of friends.  Imagine my shock when he informed me that he was homeschooled.  For nearly his entire life!  Well, I was floored.  I questioned him endlessly, it seemed like hours.

I found out that not only did he thrive being homeschooled, he knew of many people just like him that were homeschooled and were then succeeding in life as a young adult. Even though, I had a hard time letting go of my idea of homeschooling and what it could do to a child.

After a couple months of  misery (unfortunately that is not an exaggeration) on both my part and Bailey’s, something happened at school that made me pull him out, in basically what amounted to a fit of rage.  That Friday, anger became my catalyst to homeschool.  That following Monday, I thought I should commit myself to the “special home.”  ) I was a nervous wreck.  Completely lost with no idea where to turn.  I have to tell you that I stayed lost for exactly 16 months.  For 16 months we hit every bump in the homeschool road.  We tried everything from complete boxed curricula to pieces of several different ones.  We had days where both my son and myself were in tears.  Why couldn’t I do this?  Why couldn’t he?  At least every other day, I asked myself (and anyone else who would listen) if I had made the right decision.

Then in March of this year, I stumbled upon Time4Learning.  When I say stumbled…I mean that quite literally.  I was on review site looking for yet another curriculum and thought I was clicking on one link, as it turns out I mis-clicked and landed at time4learning.com. Seriously.  Fate, you say? )

Over time, and with the help of my own family and families that I met that also homeschool, I was able to see that homeschooling in general could not be solely responsible for the loss of my sister-in-law.  However, I still believe to this day that her situation fuels me to make sure I do better for my own children.

Since March our lives have been so different.  We no longer have the struggles we used to.  Everything is just…good.  ) So… yes, I feel like we initially started out as Accidental Homeschoolers.   Will we be homeschooling right through high school?  No one knows the answer to that.  Right now however, I can say that we cannot imagine our family being anything other than a homeschooling family.  )

We had company this weekend.  Our company are “online” friends who have become very close to us.  Q and Z absolutely love these two people and look forward to their visits.  Explaining the impact that these two people have had on the boys would take forever but simply stated the boys would be lost without them in their lives.

I say that just to give you background.  This past weekend, while our friends were here, they showed the boys a new on line game.  Each boy was so excited to get home and download it so that they could play.  Our friends emailed both boys the website as well as some quick instructions on playing.  The excitement of getting home last night to begin the large download was just to much!  Both boys ran into the house, getting to their computers to check their email and begin the download. 

I did not think that either would sleep knowing that when they got up this morning they could play the game.  Just before I said goodnight to them I said “You know that you can not play until after your schoolwork is done.”  That statement was not met with moans or groans but with a nod and agreement.  

Getting to my point.  My 6 year old is very active; bouncing all over the place with what we jokingly (affectionately) call “the attention span of a gnat”.  The boys got up and raced to their computers to make sure that the download worked and then immediately signed on to T4L.  I was surprised by not having to “remind” them to first do their schoolwork and sat at my computer listening to them each doing their lessons for the day.

Zman is doing both 2nd and 3rd grade work and although he jiggs and moves the whole time he is working, he pays close attention and does very well on his tests and quizzes.  Neither boy “rushed” through their lessons and I was surprised by that, setting myself up very early for the “fight” to slow down that I knew was coming.  The game that they were so looking forward to was hanging over their heads but they both did their work like any other day.

Q finished his work first and started playing his game.  Zman had issues in math and has himself convinced of not being able to do it but finally got it done and started on his LA Extensions; zipping through like normal. (any type of English is his most enjoyable area)   School work was finally over and Z was able to sign on, create his character and start playing for the first time.

That is when it hit me…  Within about 10 minutes Z signed off the game and was heading to his room for something.  I turned to ask him what he was doing and he said that he did not want to play anymore.  I was amazed several times today but that was the biggest shocker.  T4L can hold his interest for as long as 2 hours at a time but this new, anticipated game only held his interest for 10 or 15 minutes the first time he played it.  I wondered if it was the repetition of the game or maybe the complex ideas of it that he got tired of so quickly.  I asked him the difference but gave me his 6 year old answer of “I don’t know”….  The biggest threat that I could ever make would be to switch back to traditional book work solely for school work.  I find myself pondering the difference in him between his ability to sit and pay attention and keep at each lesson every day and him playing an online game with his brother.

Today showed me many things. My boys can be responsible for making the right choices, they possess the maturity of realizing that their schoolwork is very important and needs to be done well, and Zman truly does enjoy learning more than playing a game.  I already knew that T4L was working for us but it was so evident today that we had made the right choice in this year’s curriculum.

Tomorrow might be different, you never know.  Each day represents something new learned, some new realization on my part or a new discussion about something learned.  Today was a good day and opened my eyes about my 6 year old and more importantly that my 9 year old is taking school work seriously.

I have started blogging.  I am hooked.  It has become the family joke really….  “Tracy not giving you all the information? Check the blog!”…….  Last night we said good bye to some friends and I said something to Q (my oldest son) about blogging about his weekend. 

The boys were going outside with their Godfather and our friend to learn basic “knife throwing”. (Our friends are Martial Arts black belts)   As they were heading out the door I heard my Z, my youngest (who was so excited he did not know what to do with himself) turn to Q and say “it’s really time for learnin’ now!”…….  It was an exciting weekend for them (and us)

I thought how cool would it be for the boys to have included in their “assignments” to be blogging once in a while.  I was going to set one up for the boys but if the plan is for you guys to do it…..  That would be to much and I think that would be cool…  They could talk to other kids, read about other kids and make comments?

I would like input with the blog for kids.  I’m sure my kids would like input as well.

In response to John’s newsletter title, “Do our Children Learn Differently,” I had a couple of comments to make. 

Although I agree that the children of today learn differently than of children past, I don’t completely agree with it. I honestly believe that some children would have been much better off in the 70′s and 80′s had there been more technology.  My brother is a prime example of this and I know that he is not the only one out there.  I learn by repetition, I learn by “doing” rather than by reading how to do, I learn by someone teaching me. My brother learns in much the same way that my youngest son does and that is by simply “watching” something being done and then going off and doing it himself and “figuring it out”.  My brother would have never attended one day of public school if T4L had been around when he was young. 

I believe that with technology comes more options, I believe technology helps kids grasp things differently but the concepts are still the same only now instead of my mom saying to me and my brother “Go look it up in the encyclopedia”, I find myself saying “Go google that”….. While I believe that children do process things a bit differently, bottom line is learning styles are learning styles and just because my children have the wonderful opportunity that they have does not mean that they learn any different that we did; they just have more options.

My next point is about technology taking place of sports and outside.  I totally agree that my children do not head outside as soon as they are done with their school work the way that we did growing up.  We live on 70 acres and my kids should be outside exploring ALL the time with what they have available to them.  I do agree that on occasion I have to “force them” outside or have to join them when they do go outside so we can hike or what ever.  With that being said, my family spends very little time watching tv.  We are a computer family and we sit in the same room, each with our computers and enjoy each other’s company whether it be in an online game or doing our own thing “chatting”.  We spend the summers swimming in our pool and when company is here spend most of the time outside.  Yes, we do own (collectively in our family) every video game system available (with the exception of the ps3) but that also is (for the most part) done together.  So I guess that even though my kids don’t always “volunteer” to go outside, that is the way it is now and even though I dislike it, sometimes it is easier to accept it.  As a side note, my boys play soccer, roller blade, do karate and are cub scouts.  They are very active kids and even though I think they spend to much time on line, there are far worse things that they can be doing……  What would I change?  Probably them “wanting” to go out and play…   Is that going to happen?  We are working on it. :)

The last comment I have is about “putting the gameboys down in the car”.  Each of my boys have a game boy (you shocked?) and they will probably get a better hand held system this year for Christmas.  (shocked again?)  I don’t always agree that children should have game boys and when I see children at family functions, family activities or something like that it makes me angry.  I do think that there is nothing wrong with my kids playing their game in the car and because we are home schoolers we cram learning into every bit of their lives…..  Even in the car I am throwing something “educational” at them…  I would rather them spend a little bit of time zoning while driving down the road than sitting in their rooms playing!  Of course, my kids don’t abuse their game boys and can really “take them or leave them” so it is really not an issue for us but honestly everything we do revolves around their education and something being learned, discussed or shared so giving them some time in the car to just zone is not such a bad thing for our family……

Thanks for the newsletters John, I enjoy them!