1) did your experience lead you to educate your children the way that you have (private, public, hs'd, other)? Yes. I have been both home-schooled and gone to botth public and parochial school. There are a lot of things that I really like(ed) about home-schooling, so we have decided that home-schooling is what will be best for our DC. (Not *quite* ready to start with it, DD is 3, but we're going to start with some stuff over the summer and fall.)
2) are there any times throughout your hs'd life that you look back & think you missed out on something by not being in school? Yes, but then I *did* go to ps, and I wished I was still home-schooling.
3) do you have any distinctive positive memories? Times when you were aware of being at home & happy because of it? Yes. There are/were a lot. The field trips, especially, were neat--fossil hunting, science central, etc. Additionally, I liked all the hands-on activities we did. Fossil hunting when we studied about dinosaurs, backyard looking for insects, microscope to check out cells of basically whatever we wanted, etc. At least IME, there weren't *any* hands-on activities in higher grades in ps.
4) do you have any distinctive negative memories? Times when you desperately wished you were not at home with your family? Yes, but none pertaining to home-schooling.
I suppose I'm looking for experiences not necessarily related to education & learning but just the overall feel of being homeschooled. Did you feel unique & independent? Isolated? Free? I really liked it. A lot of people think that because you are home-schooled, you won't get to be social, and you miss out on on something or don't have any friends, but that's not true. When I was home-schooled, we had gym class every Wednesday, courtesy of the local college's physical education majors. (It was divided up by ages, and each age had 2 or 3 of the college students to lead that class.) There was home-school bowling and skating every month, where the bowling and skating places would let just the home-schoolers group skate. Every year, there is a home-schooling convention in Indianapolis, and the students are divided up by age and they have different activities. (I think I heard my mom talk about there being one somewhere closer to Chicago, as well, but I'm not sure about that.) Not to mention, once ps let out, we could go out and make friends with the ps students, or at church, or anywhere, really. I had plenty of friends, and would have even without the home-school activities (although those were always fun.) I've never understood that line of thought...
I'll be watching this thread, I'm interested to hear other people's answers