"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

The motto of every homeschooler ought to be taken straight from the Dr. Seuss classic that sits beside me as I type this...


You have brains in your head,

You have feet in your shoes,

You can steer yourself

Any direction you choose.




As I read this to the boys this evening, it seemed to speak to me and our curent life situation so clearly. Not just about our decision to homeschool, about which we have received many concerned comments, but about everything.

However, as it relates to Matthew this week, nothing could be clearer. We made the right decision for our son. Period. Is it the right decision for anyone else? I am not the one to judge. Will it be the right decision for our other children? We will wait and see.

Seeing Matthew with his nose joyfully buried in a book (He read at least 9 or 10 this week), seeing him gleefully skip as he walked out of his new art class where he produced a work unlike anything I have ever seen him create before, watching him excitedly writing down new vocabulary words and discuss prefixes and root words to try and discern the meaning of a new one, well, it was all the evidence I needed to support our decision.

What was even more interesting was watching the "learning spiderweb" begin to grow. Watching videos of Native American music and dancers on Youtube as he was creating his lapbook cover, he tentatively asked about the flutes. Wanna know more? You don't have to ignore that curiosity...let's flip to a web site and look at their design! He then asked if we could listen to sounds of the rainforest which will be our next unit...wanna know more? Let's take a listen!! NOTHING is stopping him, and he is just barely beginning to move outside the public school box and is shedding that herd mentality. It will be but a few weeks and I bet he will be burning up the laptop going from site to site to learn more! As it was, we checked out over 40 books this week from the library and I was chided by him when I said we had probably more than we could handle and he said "Mommy, you can NEVER have enough books!". Music to a mom's ears.

It is as if my son's spirit has been freed, turned lose on the world to grab as much knowledge as he can...and this is only the beginning! I can not even express what this is like. Here is his cover art for his Native American lapbook unit, and even it almost sings with a newfound joy:



I am so happy for my son, he is discovering a new side to himself, and he can explore and create and express himself in totally different ways now. It is all I ever dreamed of for ALL of our kids.

Oh the places you'll go, Matthew!!!