Thinking Through Schooling Overseas

Next year Abby will be officially school age.  I have been thinking through what to do with her as far as schooling almost since she was born!  Being a basket wife, it was one of the chief things on my mind when I thought about living abroad with children.

I have been through lots of options in my head and have been back and forth more times than I can remember.  Originally, I had thought about finding a British or international school wherever we might be.  For various reasons, that never really panned out in my head.  First, I would like for our children’s youngest years of learning to be based upon the world views of Christianity that we try to bring them up with in the home.  For Abby to spend 8 hours away from me each day and be taught things that we completely disagree with by people that we disagree with, just didn’t make sense for us.  Plus, since this life is just so up in the air about where we may be, I would felt more comfortable doing something that will be consistent for her for a few years of her life.

So that originally brought us to doing homeschool.  I started some work with Abby when she was two years old and Elijah got little bits and pieces starting when he was a year old.  Abby I was much too ambitious and was doing K/1st grade stuff when she was only 2 years old!  I saw the error in my ways though and backed it down a good bit.  In all my research, here were some of the things I found I liked as far as homeschooling:

1. For an overall great view of classical education, the book “A Well-Trained Mind” has been invaluable to me.  I have read it at least two times and reference to it all the time.
2. In the early years 1-4, I used a lot of things from My Father’s World.  I know others who have used it for elementary ages and really like it.  I would consider it more of a light, gentle approach.
3. If I were to go with one overall curriculum, I would choose Veritas Press.    I don’t like everything about it, but for the overall vision of what they are doing and trying to accomplish, I think they are the best.
4. Another curriculum I know a lot of people use is Sonlight.    Joe’s aunt uses it (she is on her 3rd child now that she has used it for) and really likes it.  From what I have heard it is very reading intensive (for the parent early on and then for the child).  It seems to be very user friendly, but can overwhelm a parent if they think they need to get every single thing done.
5. If I were to homeschool, I would use The Well-Trained Mind as a guide, using most of their recommendations, with a few tweaks of my own thrown in there.

Since Abby and Elijah are currently both in Turkish preschool from 8:30am- 12:30pm every day, I am only doing homeschool with Abby now.  Last season I tried to jam it in with Elijah after he woke up from his 1:30-4pm naps, but this year I decided to just relax.  We do lots of reading and he gets lots of work at preschool that is age appropriate, so we just do little activities here and there.

For Abby this year, I would consider her to be in a kindergarten type curriculum.  I am only doing math, handwriting and reading with her, but she is definitely on a kindergarten level.  As with most classical curriculum’s, I did not worry about art, music, history or science at this age.  Reading, writing and arithmetic are the main focuses right now.  We have used Saxon Math 1, Handwriting Without Tears K, and The Ordinary Parents’ Guide to Teaching Reading along with Bob Books.

But after the urging from my dad to check into charter schools, I found Connections Academy.  A friend of mine from high school actually works in the PA office, so I was able to ask a bunch of questions about how it might work with our lifestyle.  It seems like it would be a good fit for us in that I would still be there to be a main influence in Abby’s day, while giving me the support I could use being overseas.  With three young ones, it can be a challenge to just get a simple curriculum together and gather the materials each day.  I really like the set-up of Connections in the way it is very user friendly for the parent to know exactly what you need to do every day.  Not only that, but it is technically a public school, so all your supplies are given to you.  They even give you a computer, printer and a subsidy for internet each month.

Not every state has charter schools, but they are an option in many states.  In New Jersey, where we have primary residence right now, they don’t do them.  But since we are planning on buying a second home in State College, PA this summer and making it our primary residence, the charter schools in PA will be an option for us.

As with most decisions we have to make with our lifestyle, this will be a year-by-year discernment as what is best for our family, and each individual child.  So that is where we will stand next year when Abby is an official kindergartner (although I may try and petition for her to be 1st grade in math, especially because the curriculum Connections uses for math is known to be a bit easy).