by Kelly | Sep 15, 2011 | Featured Fridays |
Part two of a five-part series on homeschoolers in the Cowichan Valley, BC. Homeschooling mom, Dana Corbett, sat down with me a few weeks ago, and described her unique homeschooling arrangement. Below, she tells me a bit about how a homeschool co-op is mutually beneficial to three unique families. 1. Tell us a bit about your family We are a family of five. Dana (35), Kevin (39), Noah (12), Anna (10), and Mollie (8). We homeschool together with 2 other families (moms Karen, Freya and Dana). We all have very different approaches to homeschooling. I am quite structured. Karen takes a Waldorf approach, and Freya is much more relaxed and unstructured. We are all enrolled under Heritage Christian Online, though. 2. Have you always known you wanted to homeschool? No. The kids went to public school until 2 years ago. We watched a good friend homeschooling for years, but I always said it wasn’t for me. As time passed, though, I found I wanted to spend more time with the kids. I had no grand illusions that I could teach better, but I didn’t want our day to look that full. I wanted our mornings to look different. If we homeschooled, at least interactions would go their full course. I didn’t want to regret not trying it, and, we had friends doing it… Then we moved into our neighbourhood. That sealed the deal. There are three families that live one street apart from each other. One became a homeschool online teacher, and we all decided to homeschool under her. 3. What is your favorite thing about homeschooling? The mornings. We...
by Kelly | Sep 9, 2011 | Featured Fridays |
Welcome to the first of a series of interviews with homeschooling families in the beautiful Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Katie McCall Bragg is an enthusiastic and thoughtful homeschooling mom, who is passionate about her newfound lifestyle. 1. Tell us a bit about your family. We have 3 kids: Jacob (12), Emma (9) and Samantha (7). Family is so important to us. We pulled our kids out of school last year, so this will be our second year homeschooling. 2. Have you always known you wanted to homeschool? No. Our kids started off in the school system. Before we pulled them out, we were starting to have a really hard time with the school system. For one, Emma was getting frequent migraines in school. And Jacob went from a boy who loved learning everything, to, like a flower, curling up and starting to whither and die. We knew we had to do something. When we started homeschooling, we had some real resistance from some people. They were worried about socialization. But now, people who don’t even know we homeschool have noticed the difference in our children. They stop me and ask what we did with Jacob. How he has become such a different boy than they one they remembered. So much happier. 3. What is your favorite thing about homeschooling? In school, your kids are stuck in a group with people of the exact same age. In real life, half the time you don’t even know how old your friends are. Now, our kids best friends are all a few years older or younger than...
by Kelly | Aug 25, 2011 | Featured Fridays |
Check out our interview with Minti Li (mother of twin preschoolers) from Maui, Hawaii. Tell us a bit about your family. Our family consists of four member: Jason Sloan (28 almost 29), Minti Sloan (32), Lila Sloan (2 1/2 almost three), Talia Sloan (Same) We love Jesus, and that is the number one thing that we desire as the center and foundation of our children’s life. We love doing things together as a family, and Jason and I make parenting a priority after God and our marriage. We try to read many biblical parenting books, and I just started reading some homeschool books. To us, parenting is a privilege. That is why we try to learn as much as we can about it, so that we really learn how to do a good job with our kids. We love being active, and surf together as a family once a week (the girls wear life jackets and we take them out on our boards). We try to do many things together as a family, from home life, school, social life, church, sports etc. Of course the girls get time to play on their own with friends, too. Have you always known you wanted to homeschool? I absolutely never wanted to homeschool….until the girls were born, and I loved every moment of seeing them grow and learn. I just didn’t want to miss out on any of it! Jason was homeschooled and always wanted me to do it. I thought I would go crazy staying at home doing homeschool, but I actually LOVE IT. It is incredibly rewarding to be able to watch my...
