Homeschool Help

My children love sports and I love to let them participate.  Right now they are young enough that the only team sports available are through the local recreation departments.  But they are growing up fast.  In just a few more years, the only sports that will be open will be through the local schools.

Currently, there is a move in Alabama to allow homeschooled children to participate in extracurricular activities through the public school system.  Tim Tebow has helped this cause because he was homeschooled but participated in public sports.  Still, I can’t help but wonder is this is the answer we are looking for.

1.      Technically there is no homeschooling in Alabama.  We are “church schooled.”  There for our activities should come through our school system.

2.      There are more than enough homeschool students in any community to form organized teams if we would all just quit hiding in the bushes.

3.      Public school kids are exposed to different attitudes, elements, and ideas than most homeschooled kids and they WILL out number the homeschoolers on a given team.

Instead of looking to the government to fit our needs, there has to be a way that we can do that as a group.  Maybe a church in each district could sponsor a homeschool cover and that cover could sponsor sports teams, debate teams, and even drama teams.

There is a lot out there that homeschoolers are missing because we aren’t coming together.  Although I still have a few years before a decision has to be made, it is something that I think about almost every day.

There are times when I worry that maybe I’m not teaching my children enough.  The parents around me talk about the hours they spend “doing school” while our family is through before many of them get up.  It doesn’t help when I read about children getting college degrees at the ripe ole age of 10 (my oldest is 11).

The easy way out of this is to send them to real school and let the teachers and administrators figure it all out.  The social acceptable thing to do is to give the power to someone else.  The RIGHT thing for our family is to trust my instincts and not be concerned about what “they” are doing.

All of my children are learning.  Could they be learning more and faster?  They certainly could.  Would they be able to play outside, make up brier clubs, and build weed forts?  There probably wouldn’t be time for all of that non-sense. 

Which way is best?  It all comes back to personal needs and desires.  If the child wants to push and study and graduate college at 10 then more power to her.  If the child wants to learn a little and play a lot then there is nothing wrong with that.

I will continue to give my children a small amount of “school work” and instead focus on the life lessons.  We do our reading, writing, and math first thing in the morning and spend the rest of the day planting a garden, clearing the land, and doing puzzles.

They may not graduate college before they can drive, but they will have amazing memories of the times we spent together and that’s worth more than all the college degrees in the world.