In which we will begin our seventeenth year of homeschooling...on the second day?

In September 2007 I posted the following:

Becky's Book Reviews posted the poem "First Day of School" by Judith Viorst. An excerpt:

And what if they say, "Do this," and I don't understand them?
And what if there's teams, and nobody picks me to play?
And what if I took off my sneakers, and also my socks, and also my jeans, and my sweatshirt and T-shirt,
And started the first day of school on the second day?

My comment:  Hey, now there's an idea...

That was five years ago.  We have been officially homeschooling since 1996, when the Apprentice started kindergarten...or didn't start kindergarten, if you want to put it that way.  Our homeschooling took her through ninth grade at home, and Ponytails through eighth.  (Dollygirl will still be home this year for Grade Six.) When people ask me to write or say something about why we homeschool, it's hard not to choose the obvious: after all this time, we just do.  Put on socks, make breakfast, start school.

There's got to be a better reason, right?  I mean, we could stop homeschooling this week.  The public elementary school is only a few streets away, and an extra backpack wouldn't set us back too much.  In fact, considering the Squirrel finances this year, it's not something that hasn't crossed our minds.

So why are we sticking with it?

"This year we are going to read, talk, figure, walk, hike, draw, recite, narrate, write, paint, sing, listen, listen some more, look, notice, see, will, plant, sow and reap.....We are going to live our lives together doing what humans do."--Cindy Rollins, Ordo Amoris Blog

Short answer: I want to raise kids who care more.

Long answer:  I believe in Charlotte Mason's principles of education (I'm not reciting a creed, I really do), and in how they relate to a Christian worldview that says that ideas have consequences, that the God of the Bible is there, that He created human beings as individuals, and that His truth makes sense...among other things.  I want to build a home life that...frail and mistake-ridden as it is and as we are...reflects that.  Days at home give us more chances, different opportunities than we would have if daily life centered on an outside school. 

So this year Dollygirl will skip, one more time, the fear of dropping lunch in the toilet or the locker door sticking or the teacher not liking us or whatever it is that hangs all the in-school kids up about the first day of school (read the poem), and move directly on to the second day.

(Ponytails, in high school, is the one who gets to deal with the locker.  The Apprentice has gone beyond lockers and now gets to have anxieties about things like new housemates.)

Linked from the 349th Carnival of Homeschooling.