The Homeschool Hop #3/It's Cool To Homeschool

I am editing this post to include the It's Cool To Homeschool button and to link up to Mama to 3 Blessings blog.  Let's celebrate homeschooling together.  As Kylie asked several months ago over at Our Worldwide Classroom, now Nicole is asking: Why do you homeschool?  My answers can be found below.  

Here is this week's homeschool hop post. Kylie at Our Worldwide Classroom is hosting this blog hop. First, the details:

Theme For The Week - Why?

Why? It's probably the most frequently asked question of homeschoolers, except of course the one about socialisation. So why do you home school? Are the reasons you home school today different from what they were when you first made the decision?

There are so many reasons why I am homeschooling my precious girls. My reasons haven't changed since I first thought about homeschooling, they have multiplied!

When my older children were little, I wanted to homeschool them because of religious reasons, a couple of families in our small Mennonite church homeschooled their children and it seemed to me as if that was the way God wanted it. Unfortunately, the children's father wouldn't allow it. And after the divorce I didn't see any feasible way to homeschool anyway due to my work schedule.

Since that time I have watched my children go through the public school system and I do not want my babies to have to suffer through the same system.

So my reasons for homeschooling are many:

1) Still a religious conviction, though stronger now, that I should be the one educating my children in the way that would bring them up for the Lord. Not being influenced by evolution everywhere they turn around especially.

2)I want my children to be able to read and comprehend. Something all my older children struggle with I feel in part because of the way it is taught in the school and the way they are pushed through, ready or not.

3)I want my children to have a love of learning and not just learn just enough for a test and then forget it again.

4)I want to be a part of those special milestones, see the ah-hah moments, the gleam in their eyes as they discover something they didn't know before.

5)I don't want my kids to worry about being bullied as my older ones have been.

6)I don't like having been at odds with the teachers throughout the older children's schooling. Trying to help the children with homework, but being told I wasn't doing something the right way because the teacher taught it differently. Never quite knowing how to help.

Now that Tabitha has just started Sunday School, she is quite eager to go to class and every once in a while I wonder if preschool would be a good thing for her. Then I realize the bad influences she could be exposed to even this young, I realize she is learning quite a bit at home and I know I am doing the right thing.


Addition Aug 5, 2010:
When I discovered my 18 year old son, who just graduated from high school and my 14 year old, can't answer simple questions such as, Who did we fight in the revolutionary war?  And: Who was fighting in the Civil War, I decided I will never falter in my decision to homeschool my children.  Check out the links below and over at Mama to 3 Blessings blog, to see why others are homeschooling.