About Us

We were married at a Baptist church in Texarkana Texas on May 17th 1997.  We were young and happy.  The Lord blessed us with two wonderful boys that are 13 months and 3 weeks apart.  They have been a challenge as well as a blessing.  We moved from Texas (where we lived all of our life) to Olympia Washington is 2003. 

In our 12 years of marriage we have had some good times and some bad but God has been with us every step of the way.

We decided to home school our children for a lot of reasons.  A key concern for us was our youngest son’s severe speech disability.   During evaluations with several  speech therapists associated with the public school system we where told that he had severe mental problems beyond his speech disability.   Once, after a single, thirty minute evaluation, one of these ‘educated’ therapist told us that our son was border line mentally retarded and could not learn to talk, read, or write.   We know our son’s capabilities and decided we did not want to send him (or his brother) to a public school system that had already given up.

With that decision our journey into homeschooling began, and we have had and continue to face many challenges.   But as always God has been with us each step of the way and we know he will always be there as the rock we lean on.

At this time in our life our youngest son is now a very good reader, he can write to his age level, and is very good at math.   We are still working on his speech, but his growth in that area, since we made our choice has been great.   This is an example of one of the many hurdles we’ve been able to overcome since we made our choice and we know we know in our hearts that we made the right decision to home school.

Our Background

Living in Washington state there are many different requirements including the parents reaching a certain education level.    In our case, we both attended and received bachelors degrees from Texas A&M University.    Raina’s degree is focused on elementary education (K-6th grade).     Ray’s bachelors degree is in Management Information Systems.   He’s also completed his MBA and has 20 years of working in Information Technology.

Currently Raina is a stay at home mom, who spends a lot of her time teaching the boys and managing the house.

Ray currently works as a manager in IT for a large healthcare system.   He’s also very involved in teaching the boys by helping with math and other subjects at night.

We are also both Christians and attend a small Baptist church.    Our ultimate goal is to teach our boys to be responsible members of society and we feel home schooling has enabled us to do that.

What qualifies someone to be a homeschooling parent?

We believe the most important thing needed to be a good homeschooling parent is your love and care for your children as well as a lot of patience.    If you decide to home school you will need to see what your state’s requirements are.    Some states have more restrictions ranging from registering your kids with the public school system to required testing on a periodic basis.    The important to remember is to keep records of your homeschooling activities.

Choosing to home school your child is a wonderful opportunity and has the potential for many blessings for you and your family.  But homeschooling also requires dedication, energy, consistency, and patience.  If you are a parent who has chosen to home school, but attended public school yourself, think about your own educational experience.   Try to remember your own teachers and the challenges that they faced.   By homeschooling you are choosing to take those challenges on yourself.

The experience of homeschooling our own boys has proven to be both challenging and rewarding to us and if you are considering homeschooling your children we highly recommend it and hope the information presented on this site proves to beneficial to your own homeschooling experience.

 

 The Robinsons

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not

Galatians 6:9