Homeschool

-Our oldest in public school in kindergarten-

My desire to homeschool began before our oldest even went to kindergarten, but despite that desire he attended public school from kindergarten into second grade when covid hit. When schools went to “rural school” during covid I knew then that after that school year I would begin homeschooling him for his third-grade year. I am so glad I finally made that choice to homeschool, my only regrets are that I didn’t start sooner.

-Public school-

I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t overwhelmed, and the feeling of inadequacy wasn’t there cause it sure a hell was. I wasn’t sure even where to start, so I did some research online and my first step was to withdraw him from the public school system. I wrote the letter to the commissioner of education and withdrew our son from school, after that I went all in on research on the stuff I was required to teach for the school year. There is so much information and so many things that you “should” do and that you “shouldn’t” do, so naturally I got even more overwhelmed. So I started with the basics, core subjects, music, and art. I didn’t need to worry about gym cause our kids were outside and active almost all day anyways. The next thing I worried about was weather to use a premade curriculum or not, I came across this online store for school supplies called rainbow resource and spent probably two days looking through all the books for his grade level at the time. I found the books that I thought would be the best for him for the year and decided not to go with a premade curriculum. The first year of was full of learning experiences for us both, I got to better understand what worked best for our son, and he adjusted great and thrived in homeschooling. The next school year I felt better prepared with how our own curriculum was going, and I was more confident in the fact that I could do this. After that first year I learned that homeschooling is not something that has to be an imitation of public school in a home setting, it is very open and flexible and can be molded to an individual lifestyle. If mimicking a public-school setting in your home is what works do it! If its learning fractions through baking and history through your history nerd of a husband, then do it! Yes, the core subjects must be covered, but have fun with them and remember that you are teaching them so much more than just book work at home. They aren’t spending all day in a classroom just to come home and do more work, they get to enjoy their day along with enjoying school much more too. My kids for instance most mornings during the school year they wake up and head outside to help tend to the animals, then have breakfast and we knock school out and they complete their chores and are free to go about their adventurous day until its time to tend to the animals again and come in for dinner. Trust me everyday is not the same, some of the kids don’t wake up first thing in the morning and sometimes all of them are up and going before my alarm has gone off. Some days school comes at the end of the day if something has come up in the morning, like a tree falling that needs to be taken care of or it’s a blizzard outside and negative wind chills so I spend my morning tending to the fire and going in and out of the house with thawed water buckets for the animals. That is my absolute favorite thing about homeschooling is that is it always open to change just like life is.

-what a typical school day looks like (when it’s not snowing) and some of our oldest sons artwork! -

Now we are well into our home schooling journey and it not just one of them anymore its our three boys now, and our daughter will join them too when its her time to start, even though she loves that her big brothers do school so she wants to participate as well so she of course works on her letters and numbers, and her home economics skills lol.  Homeschooling dose come with its challenges even after you get into a rhythm with things, like when your 6th grader has a math lesson, and you must reteach yourself how the process goes before you can teach him. Or when you have two in the same the grade and one is stronger than the other in a subject and vise versa, so you must put some extra time into one while the other is getting bored with it. Homeschooling has been the best option for our family and I’m very happy that we made the switch and very blessed that I am able to stay home with our children and educate them.

-Our beautiful babies-

Its not for everyone whether it may be both parents work, or you’re a single parent and there is not much of an option but for those who do have the option to do so I highly recommend you give it a shot. Its flexible and I promise you its not as intense as its made out to be, so don’t let everything in your research scare you out of making the switch and just remember there a few requirements to be made and the vary by state but after that you are free to have school as you please. If your still nervous about it just remember that us parents have been teaching our children sense the day they were born, we have taught them to roll over to sit up to eat to walk to talk, who better than us to teach our children, it’s what we were made for.