Homeschool Chat: How did you decide to homeschool?

This is how I started homeschooling: my oldest sat and listened to me read aloud all 7 books of the Chronicles of Narnia the year he was 3-4, and I knew his comprehension was fine because he dumped the people out of the Fisher Price bus, took the lion from the circus train, and played High King Peter all day long.  I was a little concerned that he thought High King Peter was also Peter and the Wolf, but it's an easy misunderstanding for a 3 year old, right?  Let me back up here...

at 7 months he learned to crawl with a board book in his hands, and told me plaintively, "Wee Boote Me."  At 9 months he sorted his toys by colors. At 12 months he sorted by shapes and sizes- the contents of my kitchen cabinets, not the toys. At 18 months I got a phonics songs tape, within 6 weeks he knew the whole tape by heart and extrapolated the phonic sounds from the songs to everyday situations. Before he was 3, he quoted back to me the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (the chapter with the "begats") because he'd listened to it on cassette.  The worst part was his birthday was September 17, so while I figured it would not be fair to a kindergarten teacher to send her a 5yo whose favorite movie was King Henry V, the real problem is that he couldn't legally start kindergarten until he was fixing to turn 6.  By the time he was 6, he had read Swiss Family Robinson- unabridged- and compared and contrasted the adventure to High King Peter's adventures.

When he was fixing to turn 14, I enrolled him at a nearby charter school who accepted him as a 9th grader (after asking him to take the 8th grade exit exams, which he did with nearly perfect scores after about 30 minutes' work). But after 2 years I felt he wasn't getting the most of it because he was pretty much a year younger than the rest of the class. He was underachieving-- he didn't see the point of getting good grades, because, and I quote, "I don't need grades to prove I'm smart. I know I'm smart."  He also tended to be easily influenced into making less than stellar personal and social choices- and he was getting into trouble. He was also still bored in the classroom which led to fooling around.  I pulled him out of school and gave him a "gap year"-- repeating some of what he'd been choosing not to do in English 10 as we did a U. S. Lit unit, and AP level U. S. History... but I also had him read 5 newspapers/journals/online news daily and write up summaries and do Dave Ramsey's high school Personal Finance course. The next year, his 4th in high school, I enrolled him in an AP/IB "magnet" high school here in town (see sidebar, it's a top notch school compared nationwide) as an 11th grader. He'll start 12th grade in a couple weeks, turn 18 yo just a month after school starts. He has a 1930 on the SAT and wants to take it again, to see if he can raise it to 2100. He did American Legion Boys State this summer before working 6 weeks as an Austin lifeguard. He told me in the car on the drive to the airport to go to Austin for the summer, "Thanks for giving me that gap year. I'm getting so much more out of high school now that I've had a year to mature." 

All in all I am very pleased with how things have turned out. Homeschooling was my only option, there was no way I could do any private schools if I'd had a suitable one available. We had private school at home. My child ate the curriculum I gave him for lunch and had dessert of another pile of books or computer games all afternoon. He had the freedom to spend hours a day in his sandbox, building his own working model of the War of the Roses and Crusades. At age 6 his passion was the British royals and knew the lineage of the kings. He has always consumed history books even at a college level and loved to compare and contrast different historians, then find primary source material to figure out who was more correct. By age 11 he liked to get on Wikipedia, in edit mode, and participate in the threads behind the scenes where collaborators discussed veracity and sources and worked together to write the wiki articles. He would watch movies and criticize historical accuracy of events and costumes. But at the same time he could totally be a boy- without labels- and play in the sandbox, discover using a magnifying glass to burn designs into wood, climb trees, design and make and wear costumes, and read every book in the library. The constraints of the grade system labeling, the classroom structure, the lack of creativity and emphasis on testing would have turned out a very different kid.  At the same time, at the appropriate time and age, the "system" is working for him to hone his abilities and teach him how to use them corporately.  


Edited in response to a question I received on Facebook from an old acquaintance I hadn't seen in years.  When she saw this posted this afternoon, she responded: 
So, Darin and I are considering homeschooling our kids and although we have a few years before Josiah is ready for Kindergarten, I've been thinking and processing what this means for our family. I wondered if you experienced homeschooling mommas can give me your thoughts and advice about this great adventure.
What should I do to prepare? What is one thing you wish you had known up front? How do you keep from going crazy being cooped up in your house much of the day, especially in the winter? What pitfalls should we avoid? What is you favorite part about teaching your kids at home? Why did you decide to do home schooling?
I really appreciate your thoughts!
Love and hugs,
Katie


So like any good blogger, I doubled my efforts to answering her by dividing my answer up into multiple posts, and scheduling them to appear each Monday for the month of August. Be watching!