What's the Goal?

It's officially official - after considering every Christian/secular, Montessori/traditional, private/public kindergarten within a VERY wide radius of where we live - including a beautiful Christian Montessori school 46.7 miles away (seriously) - we have decided to homeschool for kindergarten - hooray!! I'm giddy with excitement and nervous all at the same time! (What? Me nervous? ;)

In considering all of our options, my husband and I started thinking about our goals for raising/educating our children: Is it to raise independent, "normalized" children through Montessori? Is it to raise "socialized" kids? Is it to raise the "best educated" kids? Is it to raise well behaved/well disciplined kids? Is it to raise kids who will be accepted to the best colleges and grad schools? Is it to raise kids that perform well on standardized tests?

Not that all of those things are mutually exclusive, but after all was said and done and the dust had settled somewhat, we were left with a mission statement of sorts:

Our goal in raising and educating our children is to raise adults who love, trust, and obey God and who have the academic and extracurricular foundation they need to pursue God's calling for their lives.

After considering all of our options, we've decided that homeschooling using the Montessori method is the means that best helps us reach that end (for kindergarten, at least; we plan to reevaluate at the end of the year to determine our course going forward).

What do you think? Do any of you have similar goals/mission statements for your kids' education?

Hook, Line, and Sinker

Well don't I feel foolish...

Alert reader Jen informed me that the chameleon video the girls and I adored so much was actually a fake. Oh well.

Apparently I've been watching way too much Max and Ruby (have you seen that one, the one with the chameleon?).

Thanks for letting me know, Jen, and sorry to all of you out there for spreading false information. Mea culpa!