Begin at the beginning

Today marks a monumental first in our family. While all the children of Michigan march back into school buildings this morning, my three offspring will be sitting in our newly Christened school room, expectantly waiting for me to learn them up right. I feel like that's the picture people have when I tell them we've decided to homeschool our kids after 6 years of sending them to public school. In actuality, I'm planning to do more living in the world than schooling at home. Please let it be known that we are not teacher-haters. We know many wonderful teachers who do amazing things with and for their students. Our concern stems from how restricted those teachers are by funding cuts, paperwork, overcrowding, under staffing, and how it was personally affecting our children. Also, when I say we know many wonderful teachers, I must also point out that our children have actually been able to land said amazing teachers roughly 28.5% of their combined school years. But this is not a blog about the trials facing conventional schooling, this is a blog about our first year of learning together, at home and abroad. First days bring excitement and nervousness, and we are feeling that, too. At this point I am planning to take more of an unschooling approach to learning, letting the kids dictate the direction we move in. In order to give them more freedom, we don't have a set curriculum. I do have a few books that we are going to use as guidelines and this turned out to be sound foresight as my first child-led directive was to get them some worksheets to fill out, stat. That is called irony, dear children. Let that be your first lesson.
I call this blog Three Steps Closer to Crazy in honor of my three children. We have two type-A first-borns, Sports Nut and Drawing Diva. They are 5 years apart and of differing genders, thus the anomaly of having two first-borns. By the third child I figured out a way to effectively clone myself; enter Mini Marvel. Mini Marvel is a typical youngest: unapologetically energetic and full of life and mischief. Together with my husband they make my life puzzle complete (and little insane).
So here we go, jumping in with both feet. Except Mini Marvel, she always goes head first.