A New Year....

Wow! 2010 is here!

A new year and a new perspective. 

I have really been searching homeschooling philosophies, in particular my own.  My advice to anyone who want to homeschool is, to understand within yourself that you know it is something you need or want to do. If you have a eason, it will make the endeavor so much more meaningful.  If you love your kids and like to be with them and if you know they can learn and explore good things with you, you will most likely do very well.  I would be careful not to do it because everyone else is doing it or out of fear. 

I think too many times people just get caught up on some band wagon, and just do something because eeryone else they know is.  This is not the same as doing something you yourself know in your heart that you would like to try.  Sometimes it takes seeing an example in which to follow.  In my own life someone else's example gaveme the freedom to try something new to me, but they could not do it for me not tell me what I needed to do.  I had to do what I had to do and press on, even when their circumstances changed.  Circumstances do change as do our children's needs and wants, which is why every parent needs to have some foundational aspect of conviction of the heart.  It helps us make decisions and stay the course, whatever the course is and wherever it may turn.  It even keep us afloat in our desparation.

I also think it is important to realize that people's reasons to "homeschool" is as varied as the people who do it as well as the various homeschooling approaches one reads about when they begin.   The most important thing, in my opinion is to be convinced in your own mind about what it is you do analways be willing to respect the differences of others along the way.  And to remember, you can have all the knowledge in the universe there is about everything, but if you have not love... you've missed the point of life itself. 

The secret to the success of homeschooling may very well be, LOVE.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a clanging symbol. 
And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, 
I am nothing. 
 
And if I dole out all my goods to the poor, and
if I deliver my body to be burned that I may boast
but have not love, 
nothing I am profited.
 
Love is long-suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.
It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth 
 
Love covers all things,
it believes all things,
it hopes all things,
it endures all things.
Love never falls...
 .....

These three remain  faith, hope, love, 
 

but the greatest of these is love.
.