The Background

How this all came about:

I am a stay at home mom to two girls - a 4 year old, henceforth called Bug, and a 5 month old who I shall refer to as Monkey. (Look at me studiously following the first rule of blogging - keep it anonymous!) I work about 8-10 hours per week from home doing bookkeeping-type duties for a mechanical engineering firm. Even before giving birth to my adorable little creatures, from the time I moved to Arizona (uh-oh, blew the anonymity with that one) in 2001, I have been worried about schooling our children. We are ranked 50th in the nation for education, and this concerns me greatly. (Although someone recently informed me that we are now at 49. We're moving up! Hurrah! :)) We have some good private schools, but the price tag is high. Especially with two children.

I was fortunate to grow up in excellent public school districts. I still remember my teachers' names, the things I learned, the friends I made... art class, music class, the enriching discussions that arose within the daily lessons. Unfortunately, because of "teaching to the standards" and huge class sizes, I am afraid that my daughters will not have the wonderful experiences I (and my husband) did. Far from it, in fact. I want to give my girls the best educational experience I can, as I believe education is the foundation for so much in life. As a result of a LOT of research over the past three years, I believe that homeschooling may be the answer for our family.

However, despite my excitement over the idea of homeschooling (awesome field trips! flexible schedule! getting to be hands-on with my daughters' education!), there is still part of me that thinks homeschooling is incredibly foreign and odd. So, we decided to do a test run, if you will. We are doing the Calvert Pre-K program at home this year with the Bug. Throughout this school year, we are going to see how everything feels. We also have a list of Kindergarten/elementary schools that we will be visiting, just to keep all our options open.

And I'm blogging about it. So people can follow along if they wish, I can have a place to record what we do, and well, because let's face it, blogging is fun! So, as my daughter would say, "Let's do this thing!" :)