For the Love of Learning

This article was in an email I received today. Although it is long, I thought it might encourage some of you who are starting out:

We started homeschooling our daughter right after Kindergarten. I had been working with her for years before she started school. When she was in pre-K, her teacher told us that she was the most ready to go on to Kindergarten. When she started Kindergarten, she knew everything she needed to know to get into first grade. Her teacher would rave about how smart our daughter was. She even told our daughter that she was the smartest kid in class. The problem was that the other students noticed it, too. At first, they wouldn't talk to her or play with her. Then, it progressed to physical violence. At least once a week, she would come home and tell us that someone had hit, kicked, punched, bit her, etc. I had just given birth to our second child, who was three months premature. I wanted to get her out of that school, but we couldn't afford private school. So, I started looking into other options and found homeschooling. I was having some problems convincing my husband that we should homeschool. He thought it would be too much on me with taking care of the baby. Then, our daughter came home one day and told us that a boy in her class had put her in a choke hold. I called the school, again, and was told the same thing I'd been told every other time:"We'll look into that and if it really happened, the student will be disciplined." That was the last straw. I finally convinced my husband to let me try homeschooling on a trial basis of one year.

The first year was tough. I was taking care of a preemie and trying to convince my oldest that being smart was a good thing. Due to the way she'd been treated in Kindergarten, she didn't want to admit that she knew anything, and didn't want to learn anything new. At the beginning of Kindergarten she had been well on her way to being a great reader, she was already reading easy books. When we started homeschooling, however, she would rarely read anything. When she did read, it was only books that she already had memorized and involved no work.
We used a reward system for the reading. She got a sticker for each different book she read, after each ten stickers she would get a small prize. To get her to read more challenging books, we started giving her $10 for every ten books. The money could only be used to buy books of her choice.

I finally got her love of learning back by making our 'lessons' as fun as possible and learning with her. We do a lot of hands-on projects and take as many field trips as possible. We have an eclectic style of learning, using whatever we can find on the topics we're covering. We cover all of the basic subjects she needs and she gets to choose what other things we learn about.
We are now in our second year of homeschooling. Her attitude towards learning has improved greatly, she asks to do 'schoolwork' on all of our days off. She is currently reading numerous different books, including; the first Harry Potter book; the 5th book in the Series of Unfortunate Events; and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She is looking forward to starting The Hobbit, by Tolkien. She has come so far over this last year-and-a-half, and I am so proud of her.
My son is now almost 2 years old. We were told by his Dr.'s that he would be behind developmentally, due to him being so premature. He is constantly surprising them with how far ahead he is of where they think should be.

If I wasn't able to be at home, learning & working with my kids, I have no doubt that they would not be where they are today. Homeschooling has given me the chance to give my daughter back her love of learning, and help my son develop at a rate the Dr.'s never imagined he would.
~BK~

Source: Homemade Soup for Homeschoolers
To learn more about this project go to www.soup4homeschoolers.com