- Dr. Rebecca Mullican
- 22 Aug 2024
I knew from the time that my oldest was about 2 years old that I wanted to homeschool him…it seemed so foreign and unique. I remember a phone conversation with a friend about it. I had only known a few families growing up that were homeschooled. For our family, we had a precious preschool that my children were involved in that went through kindergarten so we decided to start officially homeschooling in first grade. We had done a little bit of research and as a working parent wanting to homeschool, I thought it would work well to do a partial program where my oldest could go to school a few days a week and be home a few days a week. We did that and it worked well for us as a 3 day a week program (it was a combination of two programs) and two days at home. We did this for three years fairly successfully. Our fourth year homeschooling, we took a ninety day trip out west and roadschooled! We had gone on other long trips and had missed a few weeks of school here and there, but this was our longest stretch. This also worked well and we kept a good work, homeschool, life balance. We did schoolwork on our road days, visited national parks during the day, completed Junior ranger books and received badges, and made a zillion memories! We came back and did another partial program year and now we are starting Athenaeum of Central MS to push us further in our homeschooling journey to create exactly what we want to see for our children’s experiences.
The boys had spent several summers going to a university within the state for a gifted camp because as homeschoolers, we can not access these services within the public school. While we love the program and are so thankful for it, we truly wanted our children to have access to these services year-round as well as peers who are like-minded. This is the reason Athenaeum of Central MS includes gifted programming.
When the program we had been attending closed, we decided to bring together all of the things we loved about that program plus bringing in gifted programming and specialty programs that involve critical thinking and group work.
When I took the homeschooling style quiz originally, it said I was Charlotte Mason and Unschooling, neither of which have we ever truly followed. Recently, when I took this quiz again, it was more of a mixture of several different styles which fits perfectly within Athenaeum’s European pedagogy and child-centered, arts and gifted based approach.
Our experience has been similar to other homeschoolers in the fact that we recognize each school year may look different and our children and or us as the parents, may need something different. I love that I can grow this dream while putting what’s important right now- my children and their education- first! We want to help your family give your child(ren) such a diverse, arts and gifted education while putting family, community experiences, and play first! As children get older, that”play” becomes project-based learning and having a chance to focus on projects such as writing a book or making a game that they wouldn’t have time to do in a typical school with a typical schedule.