It dawned on me the other day that I have never written a blog post about what the teacher (yours truly) has gotten out of this whole escapade called home schooling. My husband and I definitely did not start this journey thinking about our own personal and spiritual growth, but looking back on the past 16 years (with SIX more to go!), I can definitely say that we are very different people now than when we started. Of course, there were other factors, like being on a track of self education ourselves, but home schooling our children has definitely been instrumental in our lives.
The most obvious benefit is that I have LEARNED SO MUCH! For example, history was never interesting to me when I was student. Kindergarten through a bachelor's degree in engineering, none of the history classes I took enthralled me much. Then historical fiction, big picture ideas, and entertaining history books came into my life because I needed to teach someone else - and WOW! Now I get it! I will also point out that we chose to give our children a Christian point of view of history by teaching them to see God and His people working throughout history. It isn't all pretty, but it's all important.
Another blessing we have enjoyed is a concentrated time to pray and read the Bible with our children pretty much every day we have had "school". It is the first thing we do when we start. I will admit that the Bible we have typically used is a children's story Bible, but Catherine Vos does a great job with her version and we have been blessed by it. We also incorporated Christian Apologetics into our curriculum. With the older kids it was mainly science-based apologetics, but with our youngest (now 12) we have been studying a wider variety of topics related to evidence for the truth of the Bible. I continue to learn SO MUCH! And it's a blast.
The hardest part of home schooling is probably getting our children to do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it. It requires a lot of prayer, diligence, and patience to be the parent and the teacher. Ask any home school parent you know. They'll tell you. I have found so much help in seminars, podcasts, books, and mentoring with someone who has gone before me. I firmly believe that my husband and I have grown as people and as parents as we had to rely on God for so much. Ask any home school parent you meet and I believe they will all say that it is only by the grace of God that they have been able to home school. Additionally, we have not only had to plan each step, we have also had to be constantly working on being good examples for our children. When you home school, you definitely realize that everything you do and say is teaching your children something. EVERYthing.
And in the end, we have been blessed immensely. The extra time with our children and the results of pouring into them for all these years is a HUGE blessing as the older two venture off into the world. For us, it wouldn't have been like this without the home schooling path. Seeds that we have sown have bloomed and produced fruit we never could have imagined 16 years ago.
Blessings,
Heidi
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