“God is not a belief to which you give your assent. God becomes a reality whom you know intimately, meet everyday, one whose strength becomes your strength, whose love, your love. Live this life of the presence of God long enough and when someone asks you, “Do you believe there is a God?” you may find yourself answering, “No, I do not believe there is a God. I know there is a God.”~Ernest Boyer, Jr.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might.~Deuteronomy 6:5

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Our new adventure

So summer is almost over and school has already started back but things here at the Loudon's are a little different this year.
We are homeschooling this year, yes you heard me right HOMESCHOOLING! I know I said I would never home school but once again this is proof be careful of what you say you'll never do;)
As I sit here writing this on Sunday afternoon we have successfully completed week one of home school, when I say successfully I mean work got done and nobody cried.
Homeschooling is one of those funny things that you never know how people are going to react to I have found there are 3 basic reactions when you tell people you are homeschooling
  1. Genuine excitement..usually from a fellow home schooler
  2. The "oh I think that's great" with the look of "oh I think your crazy"
  3. and finally the "well I could NEVER home school"

I belonged to at least 2 of those categories at some point in the not so distant past, I'm sure I've given people the I think your crazy look when they told me they home schooled and I know I've said I could never do it. So how did I get here you ask? I started reading different homeschooling sites on the Internet trying to help my struggling son when I came across Simply Charlotte Mason, now I had heard a lot about Charlotte Mason and her ideas on education but until I read them and started digging into it I just didn't quite get it. This "new" way of educating children to teach them to think for themselves through great books and observation made sense to me in fact I wished I had be educated this way. I'm not going to get into Charlotte Mason right now but you can read more here at Simply Charlotte Mason. Check out the free e-books at the top of the page.

After my first week of homeschooling I like it because

  1. you get to shape what your children learn based on what they need
  2. you get to do fun things like make Turkish Delight when you read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe just so you know what it is and what it tastes like

    Our Turkish Delight