Homeschooling takes a lot of work. But the benefits are well worth it.
I chose to home school because my daughter has Attention Deficient Disorder, and the school was pushing for me to medicated her constantly. The calls home started the 2nd week of Kindergarten, and they never quit till I finally had enough and pulled her out of public school.
In 5th grade she failed almost every class, the ones that she did pass she got D's. But because she passed the end of the year test, they moved her on to 6th grade. After that she learned that as long as she knew the material for the end of the year test, she didn't have to pay attention in class. It was a struggle to get her to go to school. Every morning was a constant fight to get her up for school. She said they made her feel stupid, and after a few meetings with the school personnel I understood why she felt that way.
I know that she wasn't learning disabled as they tried to tell me, but that she just learns differently then others. She got bored with the classroom setting. I pulled her out of school in the 7th grade in the middle of the year. The school tried to fight me on it, saying that she will never amount to anything with just a GED. That she NEEDED public education with trained teachers, to help her get a Diploma. But I did it anyhow.
That daughter is now 19, and has graduated from the Community College with a 3.2 average, and has an Associate Degree. She is getting ready to go to the University this year to complete her studies to become a Social Worker. I started her in college at the age of 16. It took her a little longer than 3 years to complete her degree, but that's fine with me. At age 19 she is still ahead of others her age.
The difference in confidence level was immediatly noticable in her after I started to homeschool her. She didn't feel stupid anymore, she became interested in studying daily. This child who I fought with daily to go to school, only missed 4 days of classes during college. In college she knew she was there before anyone else her age, and that made all the difference to her.
Since my state requires someone to stay home and homeschool a child, my husband quit his job to stay home since I had the better benefits in the family. It was a struggle fiancially yet we managed with the help of the Good Lord.
I didn't have the money to purchase school book programs, but I knew with a little research that I could do just as well as the paid schools could. I searched for free worksheets, and bought books from Goodwill, ebay, half.com, and yardsales. I downloaded many worksheets that were free online and learned all I could about the subjects that she would need in life. My total cost to homeschool my daughter was about $100 a year. Did I scrimp on her education for that amount of money? No, I don't think so. I just taught her wisely using all the free resources that I could find. The free resources are out there, they just need found. Since I do tech support, I was lucky to have Internet access at work that between calls, I could search, and I searched constantly to find the cheapest and best way to homeschoo.
As the days go on, I will add more links to the site, as well as the forms that I used to plan the school year. I learned by trial and error with my 1st homeschooled child, I am now homeschooling another child and my hopes are to start her in when she turns 16. My husband isn't complaining, he's still Mr. Mom, and working from home. After this last child graduates, my next hurdle will be sending him back to the rat race to go to work!
