Homeschooling: Learning for the family

Donna and Tim Thomasson knew how fast their children would grow up and wanted to ensure they spent enough time with their four sons.

So the Wellsville couple decided to try homeschooling.

“We wanted to be the major influence in their lives,” Donna Thomasson said, adding that she and her husband attended Wellsville schools and had no issue with the academics there.

“It was just simply that they grow up so fast that we wanted to grab onto that time.”

The Thomassons aren’t the only parents in Franklin County who have chosen homeschooling over public or private schools.

“There are a lot of people who do it,” Suzie Eads, a rural Rantoul mother who homeschools her children. “Different people are doing it for different reasons.”

Eads said some parents turned to homeschooling for religious reasons; others because of security and safety concerns or because they wanted to avoid putting a child with a behavioral problem on medication.

For Eads and her husband, the decision to homeschool came in 1998 after their school district wasn’t flexible enough in allowing their daughter to take the necessary measures to control her diabetes, she said.Eads said she loves being with her children and the flexibility that homeschooling brings.

“There’s nothing like teaching a child to read and seeing them get it,” she said. “It’s a good feeling.”

And her children like it, too, she said.

“I think they like the freedom that it allows them to have,” she said.

Eads said she also likes taking a lesson from a textbook out into the real world. For example, a math lesson about making change can fit well into a trip to the grocery store, she said.

Despite the benefits of homeschooling, Eads said she sometimes wonders whether her children would rather see their friends every day and be involved in public school activities.

She said the kids are involved in many activities and say they want to remain homeschooled. What’s more, their friends envy them, she said.

“A lot of their friends wish they were homeschooled, too.”

Eads said she and other homeschooling parents share resources and work together to offer certain classes for their children. Experiments during biology class, for example, are much more fun with a group, she said.

Eads doesn’t have to look far for homeschooling support. She said several groups meet regularly in Franklin County. She said she homeschooled her eldest daughter through the 12th grade and plans to do so with her other four children.

“So far, it seems to work out for us,” she said.

Thomasson said her three school-aged children are enrolled in a virtual school through the Lawrence School District, which provides the same curriculum as public school students, a laptop and access to education specialists for support.

“Districts are signing up for virtual schools all the time,” Thomasson said. “It’s a really neat thing.”

Thomasson said the program allows her to do all the teaching and gives her flexibility, and it provides good curriculum to follow.

“This was a really good way to do it,” she said.

She said she enjoys homeschooling because of the one-on-one time with her children and because she can spot immediately when they don’t understand something.

Thomasson said she’s not concerned her boys are missing out by not attending public or private schools. She said she makes sure to involve them in plenty of activities and interactions with other children.

“They’re normal, well-adjusted kids,” she said.

Thomasson said she doesn’t know whether she’ll continue to homeschool her children through high school. Right now, they want to stay homeschooled, she said, but it’s OK if they change their minds.

“We’d definitely listen to their input on that,” Thomasson said. “We won’t be against that at all.”