Yesterday my oldest son (third child) graduated from High School. My daughter and her husband came and my Dad and Mom. It was so fun to have everyone under one roof for several days, and the weather worked out pretty good so it wasn’t cold and wasn’t always cloudy. We were able to go see some fun sights.
Education is something that is super important in our family. How you get that education is negotiable. My kids have had quite a variety of educational experiences, so I thought I’d share some of the ways we have educated our kids.
First, my oldest daughter, when she was 2, wanted to learn how to read and write. I hadn’t even thought about teaching them that kind of stuff at that point. But her desire got me going, and set a precedent for each one of my kids, whether they liked it or not!
Because of her desire, I started each of them 3 years before kindergarten and taught them how to read, write, count, and do basic addition. We didn’t spend very much time on it each day, probably 20-30 minutes daily. But they learned. Each had achieved a different level of skill by the time they got into kindergarten, but they were prepared for the process of learning. Many people told me my kids would be bored because they were ahead, but they never were.
They went through our local elementary school, and I was very involved as a volunteer, substitute teacher, and PTA member. I wanted to make sure they knew that their education was extremely important to me, and I felt like being there and participating with them in their classrooms and activities helped them know that. I also got to know who their friends were, as well as their friends families.
In middle school I homeschooled my kids. This was a great learning opportunity not just for them, but for me also. I had learned from my mom the importance of math and how it built one concept upon another, so math as well as reading and language were non-negotiable parts of our homeschooling. Everything else was negotiable as to the curriculum. We had so much fun trying different science programs and projects. We enjoyed PE activities outside the home, like rock climbing, basketball and Tang Su Do. Homeschooling was quite fun.
I didn’t want to homeschool through high school however, so they had to return to a public school. My daughters decided to go to a Career and Technical school for the first 2 years of high school. My older son went to the regular high school for the first 2 years, and my youngest went to an accelerated high school different from the rest his first year. The first 3 finished out their high school career at a high school/college called Mat-Su Middle College School. My youngest was able to enroll in that program for the last 2 years and will finish his senior year there as well.
The Middle College is a nice program because they take college classes but the classes count for both high school and college credit. Each one of them have left with over 30 college credits, my youngest will graduate from high school with his associates degree.
Through it all I have learned a couple of things. #1 -Being involved in your child’s education is critical. #2 – education is essential, although I knew that from the beginning, I’ve learned it over and over again. #3 – There are more ways to get an education than you may think. I had a counselor one day tell me that if my child didn’t do it the way the counselor outlined my child wouldn’t graduate. But by then I knew all the available resources, I knew my child, I knew myself, and I knew there were more options. They let me do it my way, and my child did graduate. #4 – You as a parent are your child’s greatest asset, cheerleader, tutor, advocate.
Education really is critical. There are so many ways to learn now, there is no reason why anyone can’t get an education, and no reason why we can’t learn something new every single day.
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