For Better or Worse...

Well, here we go. Does it make it official if I blog about it? :) We've decided as a family that we are going to home school Ryan and Megan.

Why?

Lots of reasons.

Even before we had kids, Ric and I had talked about it. His thing was that if we couldn't afford to send our kids to private school (not that you get a better education there...), we would keep them at home.

More and more as I hear the news and stories from other parents, I'm convinced that this is the right thing to do.

For example...just last week, the top schools in the country were announced. Newsweek magazine looks at a bunch of factors and 1600+ schools made the list for 2010. Our local news happened to casually mention that NONE of the schools in Rhode Island were on the list. WOW.

Another thing I thought was interesting...

A very short amount of time each day is actually spent actively learning in public school. (I heard somewhere it was only about 58 minutes or about 16%) I'm not sure of the actual time, but research shows that it's a very small part of the school day. (here, here, and here) To me that says that the actual things kids end up learning during just one school year could be learned in 28 days, if the actual learning time was a full 6 hours a day. (So what happens the other 8 months of the school year? That's rhetorical, don't answer that.)

Even though we've made the decision, it doesn't mean that I'm not feeling COMPLETELY overwhelmed by the idea! I definitely have a lot to learn, so this place (blog) is the place to record what we learn, what Ryan and Megan learn, and so on and so on...

Fasten your seat belts, I'm sure it will be an interesting (bumpy) ride!