Thoughts on Education

Ever since shortly after Luke and I got married, I have had fun reading early childhood development and homeschooling books. I always felt silly about it, but education is actually a subject I am really passionate about and enjoy.
Both Luke and I were homeschooled - he until 8th grade and myself through high school while duel enrolling in elective classes and extracurricular at the public school. We both always tested high amongst our peers and love to have thought-provoking conversations on deep topics. So having a smart and well educated child is very important to us.

Since we live in Texas and have no plans of moving out of state, I am not very confident in the public education system here. While I have actually researched various local private schools, the high tuition costs just don't correlate with our family goals of living as simply as possible.
Initially I wasn't super confident I could teach my own children from the very beginning. The thought of carrying the entire weight of them learning the fundamentals of the 3 R's from me felt like a lot of pressure. But seeing as how both our moms did it with Luke and I and my mom gives me regular pep talks I am getting more and more excited about it.
And of course being the planner that I am, I have already started working on my goals and curriculum I hope to use. Of course when you think that the average school age is 6, this might seem like a waste of time. But from my research, I firmly believe that starting a child off early when it comes to education helps give them a strong foundation to learn and grow. Considering that most early education programs start at 18 months we are talking about less than 2 years before Minion and I start on an actual schooling routine.
And then of course there is all the educational primers you can start with before that 18 month mark! My current goal is to work my way through the following books to prepare myself for caring for and organically teaching Minion up to 18 months.

I have also been researching ideas for curriculum planning for pre-k and kindergarten since I hope to start Minion in first grade as a 5yo like I did. My current goals for homeschooling are as follows:

• I plan to only focus on school 4 days a week.
• We will have 1 weekday dedicated for field service, followed by a mommy & me lunch and finished with any necessary errand running. My mom always did this with me growing up and it was a highlight of the week and taught me a good spiritual routine.
• Saturdays are our family service day followed by a family activity such as day/field trips.
• In addition to day-time school, we will have one night set a week for Family Worship. Luke will plan these activities.
• Besides Family Worship, we will prepare for the Bible Study, Weekly Bible Reading and Watchtower Study as a family each week. We will do this either before mtg or the night before depending on changing mtg schedules.
• I will not obsess about set school hours during the day. As long as we accomplish our required material for each day we will be happy. This again is something taken from both Luke and my schooling experience.
• We will have Summers and Dec/Jan off in conjunction with Luke's work schedule. Luke's work schedule usually runs 32 weeks/year so we will follow the same routine. This means we will plan to only do 128 days of school.
• Bible reading and scripture memorization will be part of our curriculum.
• I will sample various methods, curriculums, books, etc as I see best fit my vision for each year's goals.

The more research and preparation I do, the more and more confident I am that I can give Minion the best education possible for him/her. It also helps that a close friend has started homeschooling her 5yo with plans to continue with her 2 older and current 8mo eventually. It's always nice to have peers who are facing similar challenges and paving the way for you :)