Back to School

It's August...the month of new beginnings for so many people...so many kids...so many of our friends.  It's the month that school starts and routine is once-again achieved (woot!).  It's been a long and crazy and emotional summer at our house and we are happy to start school again.  Once again, we are homeschooling this year and I'm blessed to be able to provide this for my kids.  This makes our 11th year homeschooling (I think?)...we've been doing it since PadaOne was 3 and he's 14 now.  Crazy to think how much we've done and how far we've come since that time.    This was from Monday, our first day of the new year:

PadaThree is starting Kindergarten this year and she's been SO excited.  Loving to have her own desk, her own school books, her own everything....and especially looking forward to learning to read!

"But," so many say, "why are you trying to be like the public school?  I thought the best part of homeschooling was that you weren't like the public school!"  Yes, this is true...we aren't stuck to a schedule of 8-3, we can stop when we want to for breaks, lunch, snacks, giggles, or vacation.  :)  We don't *have* to use a certain curriculum or report anything (for our state, that's how it is).  We don't have to test yearly (again, in our state this is true).  However, for our family, we choose to do many things just like the public school:  we use textbooks, we test annually, we have desks, and we follow a pretty standard school day (especially for PadaOne who started 9th/10th grade this year, so he has about 9 subjects he's working through).

On Facebook, I saw several of my homeschooling friends posting this "Not Back to School" photo idea and encouraging homeschoolers to post pictures on a certain day (next week, I think?) of their kids doing something "non-school" or something fun on the day that the rest of the kids in their area are going back to school.  I struggle with this.  The idea (from what I've read) is to help our kids not "feel bad" that they aren't getting the new backpacks, lunch boxes, and all new things that most public school kids get.  The idea continues with, "Instead of you getting to go back to school like the other kids, we'll go out to eat breakfast and post pictures everywhere and show everyone how we aren't going back to school!"  Yipppeee.  Or not.

See, my problem with this is there is *already* such a great DIVIDE between public school parents/families/children and homeschool parents/families/children....so WHY would we want to add to that by creating more division in their hearts??  This just seems so wrong to me.  It seems very unChristian to me...especially if we are doing this to thumb our noses at our fellow-sisters/brothers who are public schooled.  See, where we worship, we are only 1 of 2 families that homeschool (for the longest time we were the only family, until our new minister's family moved in!), so for the kids at our congregation there just doesn't need to be any more cause for division or rifts or drama.

{Aside from all of that, the excuse that seems to be used (I feel bad for my kids because they don't get the new backpacks/colors/etc like the other kids) just seems flimsy at best.  There are enough school supply sales that if you *really* felt bad for your kiddos you could spend the $1 to buy them a new box of Crayolas!  So it just seems like this is what we're telling ourselves to make ourselves feel better about bragging all over Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter that we're able to homeschool our kids and others aren't (or can't or choose not to).}

Instead, what we've chosen to do this year is to start school at the same time (within a few days) of the rest of the kids in our area and post about how we ARE schooling (because really, isn't that the purpose of me staying home with them and *homeschooling* them!?).  We'll post our Back to School pictures because it is an important part of our lives as well.  Will we have days where we take the morning off and go have breakfast together? Sure, perhaps.  Will we have days where we stop early to watch a movie together as a family?  Maybe.  But that doesn't mean we are any different than anyone else...  We know a family who is taking a WEEK off in a few weeks (from public school) to take the kids to Disney.  Another family I know randomly takes the kids out of school early "just because."  

Basically, it boils down to the old saying I am constantly saying to my kids:  just because something *can* be done doesn't mean it *should* be done.  CAN I take my kids out to breakfast and take pics of them with me and be happy for ourselves?  Absolutely! SHOULD I post it to Instagram/FB with the tag of "NOT Back to School"?  Probably not.  (Especially if you're just going to go home and do school... )