To Teach or Not to Teach

                     

So for like 1 month last year I played teacher.  Until I realized that the three ultra needy babies were getting in the way of the education of my eldest and I had nightmares that she would somehow become the dumbest fourth grader ever in the history of the United States all because her mom can't teach under pressure.

Back to public school she went.  But then she periodically throughout the year said that we made the wrong choice and that she wants to home school again.  But then she went on the middle school tour this past spring and was all excited about middle school again- our crazy messed up school district has a 4 day week where the kids go to school for like 8.5 hours a day including travel time, and the 5th grade is in the middle school.  What is that?

Why am I talking about this in the summer you ask?  Because all my girlfriends are raving about their home school curriculum they just received.  And I am slightly tempted to consider it again.

But the last thing I want to be is that mom who keeps yanking her kid in and out of the school district. But I am tempted, oh so tempted to try again.  Pretty much the only issue that arose from my attempt at home-schooling was math.  Ava is great at it- in the top math class at school, but she doesn't like it.  And the math program that we were using was very tough and very fast.  Almost a concept a day.  Which every other person that I talked to said wasn't something they did when they homeschooled.  So then I got to thinking that if all these people home-schooling aren't buzzing through math like crazy, then why do a lot of homeschoolers finish school early and outperform public school kids like crazy on tests?

There also is the issue of three toddlers who like to hang around and in general create problems for me.  But there are tons of other women out there with families at least as large as mine and some with kids as close in age as mine and they can still do it.  That doesn't mean it's meant for me, but I can kind of see it.  My left-brained flower child/modern hippy would do really well being at home.  That's where she wants to be anyway.

What's a mom to do.  Is this crazy talk spewing forth from my mouth?