Homeschooling? Not As Bad As I Thought

Now THIS is immersive learning!

Recently I posted about why my son can no longer attend his school but what I didn’t talk about was what we were going to do to continue his education.  And the only option we have, this late in the year, is to homeschool.

Homeschooling was honestly my last choice.  I have nothing against it personally but I’ve never felt that it was a good fit for me.  My son is very social and loved public school.  My image of homeschooling was me trying to come up with boring curriculum and him turning into the world’s youngest hermit.

As they say, you do what ya gotta do… and turns out that we gotta homeschool.  Sadly, I withdrew him from his school, registered as a homeschool family with the state and returned his text books.  A whole new educational era began for us all today and I nervously took over the role of teacher parent.  Today we officially said goodbye to institutionalized education for a while.  I fully expected Day One to be a tough experience.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

So far homeschooling has turned out to be pretty awesome.  The day started with me organizing what classes my son would need to finish this year.  When that was finished we wound up heading to the beach to discuss what schedule we would have and expectations of his studies.  I realized halfway thru the day that we were no longer chained to a homogenized and repetitious schedule.  We were free to “do school” anywhere at all – why not the beach?

Feeling a lot like Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus books we set off to “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” as she says.  Beachside learning began with a student/parent conference in the shade over gelatos – and the first lesson my son learned was what a gelato was.  That was followed by “PE” which consisted of swim lessons from Mr. Smith who just happened to be a trained lifeguard.  I know we don’t have an official lesson plan set up yet, but so far I’d say that homeschool is a pretty good thing.

All in all we are starting to think all the problems we had with our old school may be a blessing in disguise.  I know everyday won’t be as fun as today but the more I research this the more I realize that homeschool is no longer relegated to a corner in the living room.  More parents than ever are choosing homeschool as an alternative to the bland curriculum that mainstream education is forced to offer.

My son said it best as he slurped down the last of his mango gelato, “Homeschool is turning out to be pretty sweet!”  I heartily agree.