Saturday, August 6, 2011

We're going to do what?!!?!?






It's that time of year when little children start begging to stay up later and later each night and frazzled moms start looking over the school supply lists and anxiously waiting for the morning when the big yellow bus stops in front of the house again. But we've been thinking about 'back to school' since the end of June!
Our younglings have attended a private Christian school for their entire school careers thus far (Tenor-Kindergarten through 3rd grade; Soprano-Kindergarten and 1st grade) We've said each year that for them to continue the Lord would need to provide the finances so we've enrolled them each year praying that our financial aid and income would allow for them to continue but knowing that a time might come when we'd have to do something different.
Well, this is the year!

With leaving our church (and part-time employment) last year, our income is just not enough to be able to afford the tuition this year even with the full financial aid amount available from the school. (They even scrounged up some additional funds for us to try to help.) We just can't do it unless lots and lots of Ramen noodles, zero 'emergencies', no vacations or trips, and no eating out or non-essential shopping are involved.

We are grateful that we kind of saw this coming so we've been able to mentally prepare and pray about what we need to do instead. At the end of the previous school year, we had a couple of options: leave 1 kid enrolled and pull the other out, leave them both in for the 1st half of the year and then pull them both out, public school for 1 or both, or homeschool 1 or both.

We live in a good school district and know several teachers in it but after talking to them (even though they highly recommended their schools) we just didn't feel comfortable putting the kids there. We knew, with a great sense of peace, that public school is not the right option for us this year.
After we came to that conclusion, we got our final financial aid info and knew for certain that keeping them in their current school wasn't going to happen either.

So we could either split them and do 2 different things, or we could homeschool them both. HAHAHAHAHAHA
Did I just say 'homeschool'? You're kidding me, right???
I think while I was still pregnant with #1 I said that I'd N-EV-ER homeschool. I'm pretty sure I said it everyday when they were 2, 3, and 4 years old.
I waved happily when they left each morning for school! Soprano had full-day, every day Kindergarten so I've had 2 years of my own life (at least during the school year.) It was nice. It was really, really nice! And now we're considering doing what????

Long story short (or at least a little shorter).... we've been praying and the Lord has gently pulled me down the path to homeschooling, one step at a time.
Pulled? Prodded? Pushed? Dragged kicking and pouting? No matter how I got there, it's been a couple months of massive research, talking to homeschooling friends, and major praying to get us to this point.
We officially withdrew the kids from their school and are setting out on a new path for this year.
It's a little exciting and quite a bit overwhelming but the pieces are falling into place.
So here we go! Buckle up! It might be a bumpy ride!

3 comments:

  1. Good luck with homeschooling! We are 7yrs into our homeschooling journey and love it! Homeschooling opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the kids. :)

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  2. Good Luck! This is our first year homeschooling too! I hope this year is a success for you.

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  3. I'm so excited for you! You will love it!

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Your kind comments make me smile!

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