I love seeing my little runners bloom through homeschooling. We believe that we are primarily responsible for the education of our children. God has given the honorable task of raising up our children to love and know Christ, and in order to do that we need lots and lots of time. Homeschooling has given us the time and fun to learn about God's creation, character, and Word. I have been amazed at the simplicity of learning. I found that I am the one that has a lot to learn as I having been homeschooling the children through pre-school and kindergarten. We started kindergarten when Andrea was 3 1/2 years old. She is now 6 and is finishing her official coursework. She reads at a 4th grade level. We took the long road so that we could enjoy it and keep her interested in learning. No major curriculum is needed. There are tons of expensive, computer-based or extensive curriculum options available. It is too much, especially for this age. I have a school room that I use and desks, but most of the time we do school at the kitchen table. We use the Bible as the basis and also use Christian Liberty Phonics and Math-U-See for Math. We currently are working on a unit on horses. Kurt is reading Black Beauty in the evenings and we have looked at horses/donkeys throughout the Bible. We have ridden horses, checked out tons of horse books from the library, and petted numerous horses as we look for a house in the country. Ethan still cries when he sees a horse but loves these scary, beautiful beasts. Simplicity is key. Having a simple plan works. The father leads the family and the mother fulfills her role of supporting his vision for educating the children. Everyone in the family has tons and tons of fun! We have made mistakes along the way thus far, and we are still working it out, but we have found that when we love learning, our children will too. And it fits together perfectly when we learn from the perspective of the Biblical worldview. Next topic for our unit study I think is going to be running. The kids have a Memorial Day fun run at our local bike path.
