So..... we have decided to homeschool Halle.

If you would have asked me a year ago if I would ever homeschool I would probably have slapped you.  Not really, but I never thought of myself or my kids as the homeschooling type.  Even with my best friend and some of my other friends being homeschoolers, the thought of me homeschooling made me shudder.

In the past I've had the same reservations toward homeschooling as the rest of organized-school advocates:
*she won't get to interact socially with others
*I'll fail to teach her what she needs to know in order to get into a good college and/or to be a successful adult.
*she won't learn how to solve problems on her own. 
*she won't learn how to work with peers during team projects.
*she won't get to experience the good, bad, and memorable "rites of passage" that traditional school offers (i.e. school dances, prom, drama class, football games, favorite teachers, bad teachers, school spirit, passing notes in class, lockers, gossiping, bad cafeteria food, the social hierarchy, secret crushes, etc etc etc.)

So what made me change my mind?  Well.... Halle did....along with a lot of research.  Halle approached me in the Fall of last year and said she wanted to be homeschooled.  I think I probably laughed..... laughed very loudly.  But she has been adamant about it, and over time God has softened  Brian's and my heart toward homeschooling.  Now I couldn't be more excited!

Initially she came to me with a list of pros and cons on homeschooling.  She wanted to show me that she was serious about her request to be homeschooled and that she had already weighed out her options.  I asked her to pray about it everyday over the course of a few months and then let me know afterward if she still felt the same way. 

Some of the pros that she listed were: learning at her own pace, field trips, more free time to do extracurricular activities, not having to deal with negative peer pressure, not having to deal with pre-teen/teen drama, tailored learning toward her interests (dolphins for example),  doing a lot more project-based learning, and family vacations are not limited to school breaks.

After doing a lot of research on homeschooling this is what I've learned:
*On average a homeschooler with outperform a public schooler on standardized tests such as the SAT.
*Homeschoolers are not socially inept like much of society thinks.
*Close to 100% of homeschoolers become responsible members of society and are active in their communities.
*There are many social opportunities, support systems, homeschool co-ops, college classes, and teaching resources available.  The sky is the limit!

So..... Will we homeschool Halle all the way through high school?  Will we homeschool our other children?  Will we put our kids in a private school if homeschooling doesn't work for our family?  I have no freaking clue; that's too far in the future :).  We can only take it one step at a time.  There's too many variables in play to decide right now.  I am committed to the next year of Halle's education, and then we will make a decision from there.  I am open to enrolling her back in public school if this doesn't work out.  I trust that Halle will be successful no matter the circumstances.  I just have to trust in the Lord and the right decisions will come at the right time.