I’ve been pondering home schooling for about a year now, although Ryan mentioned it to me as a possibility long before that.

“Oh, no. I could never do that!” I argued. I’d be too tired, I don’t know enough, it would be stressful.

Then last summer Paul taught himself to read. He’s probably at a second grade level now, at least if the text is large. (If it’s small text or too much on a page, then he still “can’t” read it.) If it was only reading, I may have let it rest. But that was not all.

Using his fingers, he began to put together the rudiments of addition. And because he has an analog clock in his bedroom, he wanted to learn how to read it. He loves putting coins in his piggy bank, and I found myself explaining how each coin has a different value.

In the fall, he started requesting books on different scientific subjects, firstly the planets. From October through December, he wanted to read everything he could find about the planets.

In about November, he began expressing an interest in the human body, probably because my body has been changing with baby growing. He became fascinated by digestion (pee and poop!) and by the heart (I feel my heart beat! I’m alive!) and his bones, which he can feel through his skin.

Around the same time as these science topics began to fascinate him, he began asking about maps. We printed a map to the church, and he wanted to follow it as we drove; he has always been fascinated to watch the GPS cursor on the map in our car navigation system. We’ve learned about map legends, the four directions of the compass, map scales (this is still a bit confusing to him), and some other things.

Because of his fascination and because he seems so advanced in his interests, I thought I’d experiment a little bit with just how interested he is: what can I manage to do with him as a stay-at-home mom? Could I possibly homeschool him?

I bought a handwriting book about ABCs and Numbers. It has a “Kindergarten” label on the cover, so Paul, being the reader he is, decided he was doing “Kindergarten School at Home.” We decided to collect his worksheets in a binder, and thus began Paul’s homeschooling. Now that we moved my office into the same room as Ryan’s office, we also added a space for Paul to be his “work space” or school desk.

We’ve been through two phases of home school now. The first phase lasted about two months, and it was exhausting. Paul wanted to spend every afternoon doing all the different subjects: ABC worksheets, number worksheets, more advanced math concepts (money or time or something new), science, and maps. Every day he wanted some of everything. It was so much fun! He didn’t want to stop for dinner! Needless to say, this was exhausting. We literally spent three or four hours every afternoon doing more and more worksheets. I couldn’t keep up in finding or creating interesting age-appropriate worksheets.

We’ve moved in to a new stage now. I should clarify that before we began “school at home” and before Paul practiced writing on the ABC worksheets, he found writing itself “too hard.” We set up a desk space for him. The numbers and the ABCs in caps and lowercase are on the bulletin board for him to refer too. Now, he does not mind writing, and in fact likes to spend an hour a day writing his own games and worksheets and activities. Some of these are for me to do, others are just for fun for him. He loves it!

A skeleton worksheet Paul made me: I was to label the body parts/bones!

So the new stage is much more balanced between Mom’s worksheets every now and then and Paul’s imaginative writing and creating. We still do some more “formal” school at home.

He loves finding things on maps, and we have been learning how there are seven continents. This month we have particularly been focusing on Antarctica and penguins for science and geography. (The human body is still on his radar, but he’s a little tired of it at the moment. Every few days he has a question and we find pictures in a body book.) In mathematics, we started learning about adding one to a number, but it hasn’t clicked yet that he doesn’t have to start at the beginning (1, 2, 3,…) to add just one more. (He regularly figures out basic adding on his hands, though.) We’re still practicing patterns, and he often makes up his own, which I hear is good for early math skills. He loves to do mazes. We’re learning about “greater than” and “smaller than” maybe once a week, and we practice reading clocks on the hour and half half hour about as frequently. Sometimes we get out the pretend money and set up a store where things cost pennies, nickles, and dimes.

And I’m trying to introduce him to the concept of “history.”

Although he still is intensely interested in learning, we’ve mellowed out to about 30 minutes or 1 hour a day of “school at home” before he’s ready to do his own writing or learning projects.

That’s just perfect for a four year old. He has preschool twice a week still to keep him social. He has gymnastics and swimming lessons to keep him physical. And he’s hard at work at challenging himself to learn and practice in his own imaginary activities as my teacher.

In the state of Illinois, school is legally required for all children beginning at age 7. Home schooling parents are not required to submit grades to the state, but they need to have records of some kind to show children are learning according to the state standards.

Paul, then, has another two years and eight months before I’m required to officially home school him. At this point, this is my plan: for the next two years, I’ll follow his lead. We’ll (probably) do three-day-a-week preschool again next year. The following year, I’ll either send him to kindergarten for 2 hours a day or I’ll join a co-op where he’ll play with kids his age. (I’m leaning toward the co-op, as I imagine that half-day kindergarten with 2 or 2.5 hours a day will not provide much time for socialization.) When he turns seven, and when kids his age are in first grade, I’ll determine just what kind of “curriculum” he needs and we’ll implement it. I suspect he’ll be far above first grade Illinois state standards come that point, if his present interest in learning about the world continues. And if he does slow down, I suspect we’ll be able to get in to a slightly more formal school routine (especially with co-op friends to support us) without too much trouble.

At any rate, I’m really excited to see where “school at home” takes us in the next two years. There are so many possibilities!