Friday, August 14, 2009

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?

7 comments:

sarah in the woods said...

Your mission is so well stated - couldn't have said it better myself. And Congratulations! :)

Jodi said...

I absolutely agree!! That was our biggest reason for homeschooling, too. :) It is so wonderful to find other people who feel the same!

Montessori Moments said...

That is wonderful. I hope you post often about what you will be doing as well as the journey it will be. I look forward to following

Jessica said...

Well said.

Becky said...

I can totally relate to everything you wrote because I think about the same exact thing and have pretty much come to the same conclusion. I am also taking it one year at a time, just trying to keep in step with God's will. Sometimes I get anxious, but it always comforts me to know that he knows what is best and that ultimately, my kids are his.

Anonymous said...

I TOTALLY agree. I LOVE your "mission" statement. I might print it inorder to see it often!

Heidi said...

I love your well stated mission! Good Luck! I had a kindergardener last year, if you browse back through some of the homeschooling updates from last year on my blog, you can see some of the things that we did. I will look forward to seeing how the year progresses for you.

We did as you did and looked thoroughly at many schools, right down to enrolling our oldest son into one for Kindergarden. He started, but after having such a successful experience at home, it just didn't seem right for him. As soon as we pulled him out and brought him home we all felt much more at peace!