Summer Homeschool Adventure

 I might go into this in more detail later, but here's a brief description of why I made the choice I did for my daughter's education (my husband was willing to support any choice, but left the research and the ulitmate choice up to me). We chose public school. I actually never really considered homeschool until I met Sherry Jones. She was the first person I met who did it in a way that made sense to me. And I adore her kids. When the time came to make a choice for my daughter's education, I found out two of my good friends (with kids my daughter's age) were going to homeschool their children (they have since moved, so good thing I didn't base my decision on that!). So I really started looking into it. Let me just say that there are pros and cons to both public school and homeschool (private school was not an option for us unless I didn't want to be a stay at home mom anymore, which wasn't going to happen). When I found out the school I was suppose to send my daughter to school to was terrible, I put in for a transfer to a different school in the same district. I knew that if the transfer wasn't approved I would homeschool. But if it was, then a choice would need to be made. It was and I made a choice after a lot of research.
 Basically, the pros of public school were better than the pros of homeschool. Here's what I love about my daughter going to public school:
*My daughter is an only child. Socialization was important. I know people say this can happen in other ways, and believe me we've tried other ways that for various reasons weren't very successful. School has been great for this.
*We live in Southern California and diversity is the name of the game. I want her to meet other people who don't look the way she does, believe the same things she does, or live the way she does.
*She could be "a light unto the world" at school.
*Money. With all the research I did online, people claimed it didn't cost THAT much when they children were little, but just ink and paper alone would be a crazy amount of money (ink is expensive, and I noticed most people didn't include that in their "cost").
*Melodie wanted to go to school.
 The one homeschool benefit that almost won me over is the flexibility. But, I'm not really that big on daily flexibility anyway. My daughter has been on a schedule her whole life. It wouldn't stop with homeschool. The thought of going on vacation whenever we wanted was a little appealing, but public school didn't stop us from our road trip!
 I would just like to mention that after all my research there's a couple of things a lot of the online homeschool community would post that really bothered me (I might expand on my thoughts on these later). I saw these comments so often on different sites that I had to remind myself that not all parents that homeschool feel this way.
1) If you don't homeschool then you don't care about your child's education, or at least not as much as those that homeschool do.
2) Your child will see, hear and be exposed to the most terrible of things in public school.
3) Children are too young "to be a light unto the world", so even though we are told to do that in the Bible, it doesn't apply to them.
4) All public schools are terrible, after all, the public education system is terrible.
5) You're not in control of what your child is taught.
6) If the school schedule says "Math 30 min., Reading, 30 min., Writing 30 min." then children are sitting at a desk that whole time.
  So public school is the choice we've made for now, and we loved this year!  I am VERY involved at school and with Melodie's education. I love her teachers, the education she's receiving and how she's receiving it.
 Since I am not opposed to homeschool, but public school is out for the summer, I came up with an idea to do summer homeschool for Melodie. Each week Melodie and I are going to do math, reading, writing, science, art and activities centered around a mini theme. Her teachers have been so helpful (just like they were when I was planning educational stuff for our road trip). I'm super excited about this summer.
 The point of this whole post is to invite anyone who wants to to join my for my Summer Homeschool Adventure. Here are the themes I'm doing:

June 18-22 Oceans

June 25-29 Birds

July 2-6 America

July 9-13 Safari

July 16-20 Food Groups

July 23-27 Solar System

July 30-Aug 3 Continents and Olympics

Aug 6-Aug 10 Royalty

Aug 13-17 Dance and Music

Aug 20-24 Back 2 School

Join us for as much or as little as you'd like. I'll try to post links, worksheets and crafts on here at the beginning of the week, but if you'd like advance notice on any of these things, or to know about any "field trips", send me your email!