Family Birthdays and Education

Also with the approach of the holiday season brings (at least in my family) the birthday season, too! My boy is officially 10, my daughter 4, a sizable chuck of my side of the family soon to be another year older, and Laura and I near the start of our second year of our 30’s around New Year’s Eve/Day. I know a lot of people dread growing older, but I feel like it’s just another year of wisdom to draw upon to make better choices.

With my daughter turning 4, Laura and I are talking more and more about our plans for education. We’re trying to be more self-sufficient with our garden, mostly to secure our food supply but it also doubles as an awesome introduction to science and biology. We’re leaning more and more toward doing all the education ourself, which is looking like a better decision all the time with the way the world is going. I’m confident that we could have a more comprehensive (read “well rounded”) curriculum because we’d be able to spend direct, hands-on time with them and provide them with a lot of hands on opportunity to apply what they’re learning. I think it would also prepare them for being an adult much better than the public school system(s) seem to be doing. I know I certainly wouldn’t be the adult I am now without the school system, but I also suspect that my parents are the real reason for my success with the school system. My parents were always encouraging me to learn more, encouraging me to stick with it when my patience or attention were wearing thin, and driving me to be better today than I was yesterday.

Since we’ll be the teachers, we get to tailor our exact methods to suit our kids; that means we’ll have a better ability to keep them engaged, learning, and motivated! They’ll be applying some of their learning while helping around the homestead, which will give them an immediate real-world use case for all the new things they’re learning. I know that was one of my biggest problems with staying motivated in school, and thankfully my parents were able to direct me to some things that allowed me to use what I was learning (which helped the topics remain interesting).

If anyone is interested in more, let me know and I can lay out some more of our plans to give our children a quality education. I just don’t want to bore anyone with all the details right now, but certainly wanted to touch on the topic. We will certainly be talking about it as we start putting our education plans into action (looking at starting around next fall), and we’ll be talking about the flaws and successes as we go.

Remember to be kind to one another, compassion and empathy are too far and few between. Let’s keep up the contagious kindness, one kind act often inspires many others!