How we decided to start home schooling

by sumpteretc

Before I had kids, before I got married even, I thought I wanted to educate my kids at home. It seemed more like the Biblical model, and I was concerned about the kind of influences public school education would have on my children. I have probably moderated my views on some of those issues as I’ve grown older, but I still held to home education as an ideal.

When we moved to the mission field, home education became the most obvious choice for us. Here in Mongolia, there are no “Christian” schools to speak of, except for one dedicated to educating Korean missionary kids. We tried putting our older son into Mongolian public kindergarten for a semester (home schooling on the side), but it didn’t work out very well. We see here an even heavier reliance on the state to raise the children than we have in the United States.

At any rate, both my wife and I had attended Christian schools that primarily used A Beka Book curriculum, so I almost defaulted to that as a home schooling curriculum, as well. However, another missionary couple that we served with in the Philippines introduced us to Sonlight, emphasizing that it was developed with missionaries in mind. They pointed out how nice it is that everything necessary comes in one box, so that you don’t find yourself scrambling throughout the year, looking for needed materials.

We decided to give it a try with our then preschool-aged son, and we’ve never looked back.