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These posts about homeschooling seem to be more like a therapy to me and a way of processing and organizing my own thoughts. Hopefully they come as helpful tidbits and perspectives to you on yours or if your considering this route. If not, that’s fine and I’d stop reading… unless you’re just nosy. Them keep going…
Are you buckled-up? This ride is the best and worst and craziest and most magical ride and I’ll forever love hating it.
Okay, all that sounds super dramatic. And it is, cuz I wrote it. Plus, it’s everything I feel about homeschooling. I love it. I hate it. I always want to quit. I probably never will. It brings the best and worst out of all of us. Never do I need to practice more patience, kindness, self-control, love and gentleness than when I’m asking my kid for the five millionth time to tell me what six times five is. Never is joy, peace, love, goodness and faithfulness brought to the forefront when we have to wakeup and do it all again. and again, and again. Thankfully, God IS right there in the thick of it with us and the fruits of the spirit are gentle reminders of Him working in us.
Some days are the most magical. Everyone gets along, listens, learning feels easy, it’s fun and you see the lightbulb moments. Others are the total opposite, and most days are mixture of both. My prayer has always been to raise forever learners, for it to be something that bring us closer, and not just a box to tick that shows they learned XYZ. We’ve been apart of a co-op since year two but things got switched up…
Well… I did it. I quit our co-op for the year -Insert all the teary eye emojis- Homeschooling is an adventure that sometimes has twists and turns you’re not expecting.
I didn’t want to. But I did. It was nowhere on the radar. But here we are. Totally veering to the left. Or right. Or taking the dirt road?… just for the year. And just for me and the younger two. We’re on walk-about this year. Homeschooling IS an adventure.
Still unsure about how I completely feel, but so far it’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve done this whole 7 year journey. But equally excited to see how the year goes. New beginnings are always a little exciting to me. So much unknown, and who knows what kind of awesome adventures awaits us. Lots could also hit the fan, but that’s a given in life so who needs to focus on that. We’re going to focus on all the positives that can come from taking a year to be home. To switch up curriculum. To find new rhythms. Fortify some good habits. Learn things we wouldn’t have had we stayed in the same place.
I wrote that months ago. So if you know me even a little bit IRL then you probably already know we ditched co-op… we’re almost through the first semester of the school year… whatever that means… and I’m here to say, it was scary and the best choice for us this year. Time will tell on what we do for the next, and I’ve got some ideas, I’m just not holding my breath on any of it yet. Homeschooling is an adventure we make the rules for, and we have lot’s of time to figure it out. One year at time to figure it out.
But I will repeat, homeschooling is a wild adventure, so when you find yourself at a gap in the road, take the leap. If you know in your knower that you gotta do something, do it. Even when lots of people around you are raising their eyebrows… (usually out of concern and love. So don’t take it personally.) Just remember, YOU KNOW BEST for your family. YOU KNOW BEST for you. What used to work might not anymore, and that’s okay. What worked for one or even two of your kids might not for another and that’s totes normal. You get to make the rules and sometimes carve out a whole new path.
A lot of us chose to homeschool because it’s not a ‘one fits all’. Seasons change. Kids change. You change. So why wouldn’t how you’re schooling?
I will say, I still stand by everything I wrote here. Stepping away for the year was hard for lots of reasons, but also because I knew no matter how difficult or smooth (thankfully it’s been 90% smooth) we would be committed for the year. There was no space for “what did we just do?”, so I HAD to know. And I did. I just tried to ignore it for a while.
When I started to explore new options, it was surprisingly easier than I anticipated. -Maybe this should have been my first clue I was on the right track about stepping away for the year.- Even once I had my back-ups picked, I still tried everything in me to make staying work. At the end of the day, I just knew we needed to stay home full-time. So I made the call, officially. Cried some embarrassing, and frankly surprising tears to our church community group asking for prayer in a smooth transition. I think the uncontrollable ugly crying is where I realized JUST how much I would miss it. We’re all still friends, they are still my people and my kids people, we pop in over lunchtime every so often. It’s not like we’ve isolated ourselves. It’s just different. Not good or bad, simply different. It comes with the territory of the choice we made and as the ones who stepped away, we obviously feel it the most. And in the most reassuring way, even the kids say they are enjoying the year. They miss the built-in social times from co-op but are loving what and how we’re learning this year.
Phew! Is all i can say to that. Also a good reminder to always trust that little voice. Even when it doesn’t seems like it makes sense.
Now if you’re super nosy… here is a closer look at what are we doing and what curriculum we picked for the year.
We stuck with IEW for writing. Or the method anyway. I somehow overlooked adding the American History book for Jacob to the order and so we’ve just opted to use the same writing styles and dress-ups on topics he’s more interested in. This has gotten us lots of papers on cars, racecar drivers, military vehicles… you get the idea. It’s made it way less of a struggle to get him writing, so it was a happy accident. Somehow even though more work is involved in finding sources to write from. And something I NEVER would have considered doing had it not happened on accident.
I even got Ellie this book to get her creative juices flowing. I figured when/if we go back to CC next year she’d be a little bit ahead when it came the writing so the time spent in class could be focused more on the grammar parts -which is really the harder part for me. I thought maybe we get 10 or so papers written but to my surprise she LOVES it! Her only pushback is the actual hand writing, so all in all it’s a win and sometimes we pull the big kids old Spelling-U-See books out to help in that area.
Science, we stuck with Apologia. We had started a little extra curricular of the Astronomy books last year that kinda only worked for a few weeks, so we reviewed what we had done already and have kept going there. Lots of fun experiments and activities go along with these. Highly recommend, especially if you have a hands-on learner. They even sell a whole kit with the tools needed for each project/activity making it fool proof.
Math is still Math-U-See. Still loving this. Quick videos to help explain new info if I’ve forgotten how to do something, or they don’t want to wait for me to sit down when them, they can easily pull it up and watch them on their own. I also do really like how it zooms in on one main idea to reinforce it well. They still practice all kinds of maths and things they’ve learned up until that point, but the main focus of the year is decimals, or fractions, or multiplication. Wherever the student is at. Some people don’t super love this, but it works well for us.
Last but not least, for our core subjects, we went with LIFEPAC for history and geography. This one surprised me the most. I thought it would be a nice and easy one for them to work independently, get some good reading in, practice some “test taking” and me be pretty hands off. In reality, it’s been the one we have all enjoyed sitting down together to read aloud, discuss the different historical and geographic locations, etc. We have zoomed through these booklets and even made some fun poster board projects from it. They are three years apart but both love sitting and listening to one another’s books while we reas the new bits.
This year has been soooo good. It has recentered me, helped me get them grounded too. We’ve (me) have felt more freedom to do as we please, when we please and not feel tied to a timeline or location. Which has led to even more learning and feeling at ease vs. “Hurrying” to get things done for class next week.
Really has reminded me why we started this wild journey. So maybe if you’re feeling at a crossroads like I was and need a little reassurance everything will be okay. or maybe your looking for a high five to just get started. Consider this both. Do what you got to do to enjoy your kids, enjoy learning and teaching, enjoy the mundane days that drag on and are going by in a blink of an eye all at once. To laugh more, relax more, do more out of joy v. duty. Slow your days down to do the things you feel called to do. Watch in awe as they blossom into full blown human beings thinking, deciding and executing and not miss it.
High fives all around cuz everything is fine on this wild homeschooling adventure.