Journey to Excellence

My husband called me today in the middle of the day. He said he had been listening to a radio program and the guy was talking about the creativity of children. He said that 95% of second graders, when asked, say that they are creative. By 5th grade, only 50% say that they are creative. And by high school, only 2% of students say they are creative. He told me that he believes that bringing Eli home to homeschool will be one of those things we look back and see how it completely changed his life for the better. The same holds true for Brynne, and even Dawson who is already in high school. He told me that if and when I ever feel discouraged from others about our decision to homeschool, that he wants me to remember how important our homeschooling decision is and our desire to allow our children to be creative. What a great moment of encouragement! Source

It's that time of year to get all fancied up and climb into your limo to head over to the Ultimate Blog Party hosted by 5MinutesforMom. I am Nicole, Lead Teacher at Pursuit Academy (we have a new name!) I blog here at Journey to Excellence about the schooling experiences of my children: Dawson, age 15 in the 9th grade (homeschool), Eli, age 8 in the 2nd grade (public school), and Brynne, age 6 in the 2nd grade (homeschool). I also have a 17 year old daughter, Kyndal, who lives in another state with her dad. She is a junior in high school. My husband, Rick, is an engineer and supports our schooling endeavors. Starting next year, he will be taking on a more active role by leading our children in Science Saturdays . Our homeschooling journey started two years ago when Dawson, a then 7th grader, begged to come home. God had already been speaking to me about this, so we jumped right in the next year. Eli and Brynne were in public school ... Eli in 1st grade, Brynne starting ...

... when I question my decision to homeschool, especially a high school student. I'm just being transparent here. The easy subjects are, well, easy. It's those subjects and concepts that Dawson doesn't get that makes me wonder what the heck I am doing. His two weak areas, science and math, are smacking me in the face this week. We are still stuck on that most-basic Algebra concept. And it doesn't appear that we've made any progress. Dawson has the personality, with everything in life, that if he is not instantly perfect at it, he doesn't want to try it at all. And if he does try, and doesn't get it immediately, then he is frustrated and angry. I get that. I'm exactly the same way. But the difference between us is that I get mad and determined to figure it out and succeed. He wants to just quit. Or he will wallow so deep in his frustration that he can't see the forest for the trees. And then that's when I get frustrated. I understand th...

I left Dawson a sticky note on his planner last week telling him how proud I was of how hard he had been working since we started school. The next day I had a sticky note on my chair that said, "U R A DOOFUS!" with a smiley face. I feel so encouraged. At least it wasn't a tack in my chair.

"What's next? Never mind, I'll just look at the list and see what's next. If I can do it on my own, I'll just do it."

{A little history here. Nine years ago when we moved to Oklahoma, we lived in the same neighborhood with one of the kindergarten teachers at our school. Her daughter would babysit Kyndal and Dawson for us. Two years later, Dawson had her for kindergarten. We loved her. They moved out of our neighborhood a few years later, but we still ran into her. Funny enough, we ended up building our house one street over from her. And when our new elementary school was built last year, she became one of the 1st grade teachers. It is likely she will be Eli's (my 6 year old's) 1st grade teacher next year. She knows our family well.} I was talking with her on Thursday about homeschooling Dawson, and our reasons for it. When I was describing Dawson's personality to her, she teared up. She said, "That's not the Dawson I had in kindergarten." You see, Dawson was very outgoing and made friends very easily! He was very social and happy. When I explained to her his extreme apprehen...

This morning while Dawson was waiting for the bus, I took the opportunity to share with him what I am proposing for his school day schedule for next year. I also told him about some of the books that we will be reading, and how I will be handling some of his assignments and testing. We talked about possible field trips we might take. He smiled. He looked at me and said, "This is going to be cool." He smiled. For the first time in a long time, I saw a sparkle in his eye when it came to the topic of education and learning. I think it's a good idea to have an overall goal in this journey. I had been working on the development of that goal and had come up with, what I believed, to be my real motivation behind homeschooling Dawson. I want Dawson to develop a love for learning, so that when his time with me is done that he will at least consider the idea of continued and higher education. In that one smile, I almost felt as if that goal was already being met.

An area of worry that I have in this homeschooling journey is that I will become easily frustrated if Dawson doesn't "get into it" the way I am planning to "get into it". But isn't that why I am frustrated at the public school system? The answer to that is a resounding, "Yes!" Dawson will have his own level of involvement and level of interest and level of excitement. And it will likely not line up with mine. His and my personalities are completely opposite. This will be an area where I need to adapt more than him. In my daily devotional from Proverbs 31, these words were spoken by Lysa TerKeurst : But they weren't acting the way I wanted them to. I wanted them sitting up straight, drinking in the message, and taking notes. Suddenly, an annoying little thought started to tug at the corners of my mind. "You want your children to act perfectly because it makes you look good. Let that go. They don't need to be sitting up straight furiousl...