I didn't know your story -- thanks for sharing, Kim. What a terrific example of the different styles of home schooling. My kids seem to be more comfortable with established schedules and lesson plans. While I find comfort in that strutcture, my challenge is to make sure they keep their curiousity and engagement in learning. It sounds like you and your kids did this beautifully! They're fortunate to have such a caring Mom!

And Angie it is indeed a marvel how many ways their are to educate our children. I grew up on literature full of "boarding schools." They always seemed so fascinating and exotic. I think the uniform would have been a deal breaker for me, lol!

It was fun catching up on this thread. I was out of town for a couple of days and was surprised to see how many people had responded to it.

I can't type too long, but our big reasons for choosing homeschooling include:

**religious reasons... Though we don't shelter our boys overly much, we do want to be the primary people involved in the shaping of their thinking.

**quality of education... Research has shown homeschooling to be of very high quality and I haven't been that impressed with much of the curriculum chosen in our local public schools.

**freedom... with our schedules, reading materials, vacation days, etc.

**letting the boys learn at their own pace... We have mostly late readers who would have been put down the path of special education classes unnecessarily if they had been in a public school. They just needed time to grow up and mature. Our four oldest have had reading get easy at 7.5 yrs, 8 yrs, 9 yrs, and 9 yrs respectively. They each went from sounding out every word to reading The Hobbit, or something similar, within a month or two. It was wonderful to let them learn at their own pace and watch the reading "light" go on.

As far as separating parenting and teaching roles, I wouldn't know how to do that. I've been teaching my boys since the day they were born. How to tie their shoes, to say please and thank you, why the sky is blue, how to make their bed, why I vote the way I do, why the argument they made is illogical.... it's never ending. Homeschooling is just an extension of that. And just as I expect them to obey when I ask them to make their bed, I expect them to obey when I ask them to do their math. It's all parenting and all teaching, all wrapped into one.

For the record, we're all for having others teach the boys. We've purposely kept doing piano lessons, even though at times it makes me nuts, to maintain another teacher in their lives. Frankly, if we had a Classical Christian school locally and we could afford it, we would consider it if only for a few classes. But we don't have one near us and private school would be prohibitively expensive. So homeschooling is the option we have chosen.

Thanks to everyone for your comments! I took the weekend off from internet but enjoyed reading everyone's perspective when I came back.