i've  been doing a lot of research on home schooling lately.
(even though that is yeeeeears away)
i usually do this late at night when G is at work, I cant sleep and every things seems more interesting
and when most things sound more ideal at night than they do in the day light.

i stumbled upon a interesting article about home schooling.
it's titled "18 Reasons Why Doctors and Lawyers Homeschool Their Children"
(though neither G or i plan on being a doctor or a lawyer..)

here are some of my favorite reasons from the article.
(boooring i know.)

  Our kids are excelling academically as homeschoolers.  Homeschooling allows us to enrich our children’s strengths and supplement their weaknesses. The kids’ education moves as fast or as slow as required for that particular subject area.  They are not pigeon-holed and tracked as gifted, average, or special needs.

   Use whatever public school services you like.  Need speech therapy, the gifted program, or remedial academics?  Homeschooled kids are still eligible for all these services.  Some homeschoolers come into public school daily for “specials” like art, music, PE, or the school play.  Your kids can even join high school sports teams once they are old enough.  Our kids are still in sports and scouts sponsored by their old schools.

   Our family spends our best hours of each day together.  We were giving away our kids during their best hours, when they were rested and happy, and getting them back when they were tired, grumpy and hungry.  I dreaded each evening, when the fighting and screaming never seemed to end, and my job was to push them through homework, extracurriculars, and music practice.  Now, our kids have happy time together each day.  At recess time, the kids are actually excited about playing with each other!

 Our kids have time for creative play and unique interests.  Once my kids entered school, they seemed to stop making up their own creative play together.  They didn’t have time for creative play during their busy evenings.  Now they build forts and crazy contraptions, play dance parties, and pursue their own unique interests.  My eight-year-old has taken up computer programming and taught himself how to play the organ.  My six-year-old is learning to cook.

 Teach kids your own values.  According to the national center for education statistics, 36% of homeschooling families were primarily motivated by a desire to provide religious or moral instruction.  Our family is not part of this 36%– we never objected to any values taught in either our public or private schools.  Nevertheless, we’ve really enjoyed building our own traditions and living out our family values in a way that wasn’t possible before homeschooling.  For example we make Halloween a little holiday without too much decadence, but we spend an entire week celebrating Easter.  When our kids were in school, the Halloween parties went on for 2 weeks and they had a Halloween vacation from school.  In contrast, they didn’t get any time off for Easter, and there were no Easter celebrations or even decorations at school.

   Better socialization, less unhealthy peer pressure and bullying.  Our kids no longer beg for video games we don’t want them to have or clothes we don’t like, or junky snacks they saw at school.  One of our children struggled socially in school, and his schoolmates were ruthlessly mean.  Despite a school anti-bullying policy and our best efforts to work with the teacher, nothing changed.  Last year he played alone on the playground everyday.  Now he’s organizing playground games at our homeschool co-op, and he’s smiling again.  No one has ever said an unkind word to him at our co-op, because every child is there with his or her own parent.  Our kids have plenty of time with friends, but without  the unhealthy peer pressure and bullying.
Research continues to show that homeschooled kids do well socially.  Our kids have no shortage of time with friends—each week they attend homeschool co-op, scouts, sports, dance, choir, piano, religious education and have plenty of time to play with neighborhood friends.  Add in the birthday parties and homeschool field trips, and we find ourselves having to decline activities so that we can get our homeschooling done!