Caeden's 1st Day of Preschool (& Mommy's 1st Day of Homeschooling)

Today was Caeden's first day of preschool! It seems so different than the girls' first days of preschool, since we are doing homeschool. But, it was definitely just as exciting!

I'm not sure Caeden really knew what to expect. He definitely expected more play time! But, I think school ended up being shorter than he expected too. (It took us about 2 hours today.)


I spent much of the weekend getting Caeden's room cleaned, rearranged, and organized for school, as well as shopping for supplies. We still have a few important things to get (like a perpetual calendar...going hunting for that tonight at the local teacher store), but he has quite enough space for our little classroom area. The kids all think his room is super-cool now!


There was one short little time-out today. Caeden is a talker like his parents, and needs to work on his listening skills. He was so excited today though, I thought he did very well.


So many have asked how we arrived at the decision to homeschool Caeden, so I thought I would try to explain a bit. It was definitely not our first choice, or even a consideration! In fact, it might even be safe to say that we have really not liked the idea until we were forced to consider it.

We strongly believe in the benefits of preschool for our children. Annah and Sylvia both went to preschool for 2 years before starting kindergarten at our local public school. It was a small, private preschool, in a neighboring village about 8 miles from our house. I was on the Board of Directors there for 4 years, and Jeremy the past school year. We did our best to help run and support the school, greatly appreciated the great start it gave our girls, and felt it was a great benefit them socially, academically, and a benefit to our community in general.

Over the past several years that preschool struggled to maintain enrollment enough to cover costs of operating the school. Then the local public school received a grant and increased the size their program, and many local families began sending their children there because it was free and included busing. We live in a small rural area, and not many families feel "able" to send their kids to a private preschool with even a minimal tuition. So, as a board, we began to brainstorm ideas and options for the preschool and how to maintain it with such low enrollment.

To make a long story shorter, as we began to see that there really was no way to keep our preschool's doors open, the teacher and her aide devised a plan move the preschool to a different neighboring community. The board knew that community also needed more preschool options and encouraged the teachers to pursue this route. However, the teacher and aide went about it in a very underhanded way, including doing some things that were actually illegal. They ended up deciding to just start a new school in that other community, but not tell the board of their intent not to come back (to our school) for this next school year. There were many nasty rumors flying around the various communities, feelings hurt, untruths spread, verbal fights, children neglected, and other such ugliness. It was a terrible mess. The board would have completely supported the teachers, but at some point they decided they didn't want our support. And in the end, we had to close down the preschool (after 25+ years in the community), and tried to do so with as much dignity as possible. It was a really rough end to the school year, and even with apologies offered and accepted, it still left a painful spot in our hearts. (In fact, Jeremy is still dealing with the financial issues of it all!)

So! Back to how we ended up homeschooling... Obviously, the closing of the preschool we'd been sending our kids to for 4 years left us without that option for Caeden. There aren't a lot of other preschools to choose from in our area, so we looked into church-run preschools in Bloomington-Normal, which is about 25 miles from our house. We enrolled Caeden in one that we were very excited about, but as gas prices rose continuously, we realized we could not afford that much higher tuition plus three more trips to town each week. So that was no longer an option for us.

We took Caeden to the screening at the local public school's preschool last spring, and were told that he was put on the waiting list. It is a partly special-needs program and partly need-based, as well as many other considerations. So, we weren't really sure what being on the waiting list meant, except that it would be last-minute when we found out if he was accepted into the program or not.

That was when Jeremy asked me out of the blue one day if I would consider homeschooling Caeden if he didn't get a spot in the public school program. My immediate reaction was yuck, no. We really feel it is important for our kids to be in a classroom setting, especially for the social aspect! And, I'm no teacher! But, I began praying about it, and decided that if Caeden didn't get in to the public school program, we would forfeit his spot in the church-run preschool and I would homeschool him.

We have friends in our Life Group who recently started homeschooling, and have been doing well with it. She showed me the curriculum she uses with her son who is Caeden's age, and that is what we're using. The lesson plan is there for me almost word-for-word, and the resources are great. I love that it's Biblical too. I am still hoping Caeden will be able to be in a classroom setting for his second year of preschool. Also, he is in a classroom situation at church twice a week, plus there are 20 kids in our Life Group that meets each week--so that's almost a 3rd "classtime" for him.

That was a big explanation there! I do feel like we made the decision God put before us, and I know it will be great. I'm thankful to have this one-on-one time with Caeden too!