By Kiersten Dixon
Memory can be a funny thing. Sometimes you remember bits and pieces, other times an entire day or week, and there are swaths of time your brain deems unnecessary to remember. What is your earliest memory? Mine is learning to read. I remember sitting next to my mom as she pushed my finger across the pages of a phonics book. I didn’t know at the time, but my mom had already decided to homeschool me. Teaching me to read was just the beginning.
My mom instilled a life-long love of reading. I read just about any book I could get my hands on. I remember enjoying The Boxcar Children, The Magic Treehouse, Nancy Drew, and so many other books. Everything was a learning experience for me, something my parents encouraged as part of homeschooling. I remember finding an Usborne picture book about ancient Egypt. It was fascinating, and certainly helped establish my love of history. However, learning how mummies were made did result in them being the one monster type that scared me when I watched Scooby-Doo.
My mom instilled a life-long love of reading.
I remember learning math from the Math-U-See video series. I had fun playing with the counting blocks when I wasn’t using them for the lessons. I enjoyed counting things. Mommy let me count the coins in the loose change jar. I could spend an entire afternoon counting and summing and placing the coins into different combinations that would make cents into dollars. Math isn’t my strongest subject. I did well enough with whole numbers, and with decimals when I learned about them, but my weak point was multiplication. I had such a difficult time memorizing the times tables that Mommy found a program called Times Tables the Fun Way that included interactive computer games and fun songs. I still find myself defaulting to some of those memory tricks even as an adult.
I remember being disappointed when I learned how many subjects were based in mathematics. Most sciences have at least some math at their core. I had been fascinated by the idea of chemistry as a child and I was severely disappointed when I learned chemistry wasn’t really about mixing different ingredients together to make something new, but that it mostly involved balancing equations on paper. I suppose my child-like fascination with chemistry spurred my interest in cooking, which is much more like my first impression of chemistry, and you can eat what you cook.
My mom didn’t want me, or my siblings, to just stay at home, inside all day. She firmly believed being active was part of learning. We played outside a lot. I remember that I loved to play in the dirt patch in our backyard. It was especially fun when we added water and made it a mud hole. I enjoyed roller skating and riding my bike. My favorite outdoor activity was going to the zoo. The zoo close to where we lived had so many animals, and quite a few interactive exhibits. I remember riding camels and elephants, feeding sting-rays and lorikeets, even petting a snake on occasion. We also went to the aquarium a lot. The seahorse exhibit was amazing. Although, I think the part of the aquarium I enjoyed the most was the outdoor water splash park. The foam moray eels were equal parts creepy and cool.
Some of these classes were practical in nature, others were purely educational, and others were completely optional but gave me life experiences that I can look back on fondly.
Along with so many fieldtrips, Mommy also signed me up for classes outside the house. There were zoological classes at the local nature center, singing class, swimming classes, soccer camp, a history class based on the American Girl books, several Spanish classes, and piano lessons, among many others. Some of these classes were practical in nature, others were purely educational, and others were completely optional but gave me life experiences that I can look back on fondly. Mommy took care to sign me up for plenty of physical activities. Besides swimming and soccer, I took ice skating lessons, tried multiple types of dance, participated in gymnastics for several years, went to homeschool PE classes, and eventually settled on taekwondo as my sport of choice. I wasn’t good at many of these sports and activities, but I usually had fun and I definitely got plenty of exercise.
The words “I remember” are powerful.
I remember becoming a teenager and deciding to take many of my classes outside the house. It started because my mom and I clashed horribly over English. I also wanted to take history classes because that had become my favorite subject. The next year, I wanted to take Spanish. My parents had both taken French. My younger brother was about four years old and I needed to take chemistry. Both of my younger siblings needed more of Mommy’s help with schoolwork than I did. Fortunately, we were quite literally around the corner from CHESS. My first high school year, I took English 9 and a history class. The second year I took more classes including Spanish 1 and Chemistry. I took most of my high school classes at CHESS. I remember taking as many of the history classes as I could. That trend continued when I started college. It probably won’t surprise you when I tell you I have a Bachelor’s degree in history.
My life was shaped by my mom’s decision to homeschool me. Looking back, I can honestly say I’m looking forward to homeschooling my own children one day.
History. The study of what has happened before now. History. The story of people. History. A collection of memories. The words “I remember” are powerful. I have used this phase nine times in this article. Each memory I have shared is about my homeschooling experience. Many of them seem to be unrelated, but they were all part of my education. Writing this essay has reminded me how much my life was shaped by my mom’s decision to homeschool me. Looking back, I can honestly say I’m looking forward to homeschooling my own children one day.
What do you remember?
Kiersten Dixon earned her Bachelors of Science in History from Johnson University.
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