Meet THE DECKERS

Hello fellow homeschooling moms. I am Danielle Decker, a 30-something-Stay-at-home-Christian-teaching-Mother, lol. That pretty much sums it up. I have wanted to homeschool my kids since I was a Senior in high school. I have always been involved in church and have felt that more of Christian and church history should be taught in schools as well as other things. I feel that I can teach my kids better than most public school teachers and I enjoy teaching so why not teach my own.
I have been married to my husband, Greg, for 11 years now. We have 3 children to complete our family. The oldest is 16, that is Greg's daughter, and we do not get to see her very often. Our oldest is Amanda, who is 6 and the youngest is Kyle, who is 4. They are 22 months apart.
When Amanda turned 4 I started to teach her preschool. At 5 we did Kindergarten. We went through an academy that went through the public schools. They gave me the majority of the materials for free as well as the lessons. Because my husband was not as confident as I was, that is how we started. It worked well enough, I had the freedom to tweak the lessons or just skip what I thought we could skip. I didn't want to do that all the way through school though. I want to be able to plan my own lessons.
This year it worked to my advantage that I was able to teach on my own using Christian curriculum and plan some myself. This year we are using A Beka. While I think this is a good program, I think that next year I am going to switch to My Father's World curriculum. I still plan some of my own lessons also. For example, I did not get the spelling books, art, or Bible lessons for 1st grade from A Beka. I am planning those lessons myself. I have ordered the reading books that we need for this year using A Beka, but I think that I am still going to continue my own Language Arts lessons. I enjoy planning those a lot.
Kyle is only 4 this year, he will be 5 in February. He wanted to start school and I went ahead and started him with the Kindergarten program through A Beka this year. He is doing great and he loves it.
I plan on teaching the kids all the way through high school. I like to make sure that they are getting Christian materials and lessons mixed in with regular schooling. It is also something that I have been gifted by God to do, so I will do it with my family.