Our Year of Homeschooling
Me and my girl! We just finished her kindergarten year.
*I like to preface this blog by saying that I’m not a black and white thinker AT ALL. Don’t take the words I write to mean that this what I think is best for everyone. School choices are a hot button issue in parenting and I realize that! These are just my personal ramblings reflecting back about a decision I made a year ago.
A year ago I wasn’t sleeping well and I wasn’t sure what to do about a certain decision. I was in the process of meditating, praying, and listening about what we should do for our daughter’s schooling that next year. Most things to do with parenting are weighty decisions for me that require lots of space and time to really think about what would be best. It was very easy for me to look at what everyone else was doing and imagine that maybe that was the best way.
One thing I let myself re-learn through the decision was that most choices in life are best made when you can understand yourself and not copy others. I’ve always been drawn to be more independent but this decision would be one where I would vacillate a lot and really honestly have moments where I questioned if I had made the right decision. Hence the life of overthinking!
I’m writing this early in the morning sitting in my backyard (with coffee in hand of course!). I love my backyard. We’ve tried to cultivate so much peace back here and as I’m sitting here I’m overwhelmed with the goodness of a decision I made a year ago. I love when moments align like that. When I had so much anxiety about a decision a year ago and now a year later I’m reminded of just how good that decision ended up being. The decision to homeschool changed our family routine in the best way possible and the growth we all experienced from it was amazing.
When I did decide on my choice to homeschool her, I wrote a document with all my reasons. That way when I felt insecure about my choice or it was a bad day, I had something to be a reminder stone for me as to why I had chosen this path. And then I stuck to it! I can’t tell you how many times my heart needed that paper to remind me.
At the top of the list was the need for me to connect and be present in her life. Of course this will look different for everyone’s life so please don’t read this as a one way thought. We all have our unique paths to walk. I could tell you about all the absolutely beautiful books we read this year, the composers and artists we studied, the field trips we took, and all the magical things we did that I know will be lifelong childhood memories but the thing that I was after the most was that heart to heart connection with my kids. I found a rhythm for the time and space that it takes to mother the way I feel called and oh how much I’ve learned about myself and my kids this year.
Connection and being present were big ones that I learned this year as well as simplifying and protecting the influences allowed in early childhood. I’m so very tired of talking about anything to do with Covid but it’s good for me to remember all the things that went along with that and I won’t deny that that environment and mainstream thoughts about it played a role in my choice to homeschool.
One of the best things that happened to us all this year was the inspiration of creativity in our lives. For years we had been in a state of discipline and a season of learning about community where we didn’t have the time and space to be in a season of creativity. That changed for us this year. I saw how creative my daughter was and I leaned into that originally for her but as I started to lean, I learned about myself and how good it was for me too! I found the work of the Waldorf movement so timely and inspiring to our family this year. It’s not the only learning philosophy I was drawn to this year but it was the most influential for me as a teacher. The thought that I’ve learned a lot this year comes from this learning philosophy: In our culture, it is common to hurry children. There’s an undercurrent to hurry them through the stages of childhood into adulthood all the while pushing to intentionally or unintentionally skip past and onto the next thing. I see this so much in current society and I’m convinced it curtails not just creativity, but satisfaction in really completing a task and appreciating the path it takes to get there.
Homeschooling was never on my plan for my kids but how grateful I am that I discovered it and tried it! I truly love it. It’s a lot different than the stereotypes that might be attached to it. And I think it’s like anything in life, you make it your own and you customize it to your liking. For my curriculum choice I knew that I needed something very structured at first in order to make me feel confident and organized. As the year went on and we started to get into a rhythm and routine, I started to bring in other curriculum as well. That was so important for me and my daughter. I customized what she was learning and how we chose to learn and the amount of time we spent on things. It also allowed me the freedom to define things that truly are learning but our society and traditional education system can’t offer. We not only learn math and reading but we take time during the day to learn how to do laundry, cook breakfast, and speak Spanish.
Looking back over this year, I realized just how fun it has been for me. I went into the year with a very open mind. I told myself that I would do a lot of research upfront before I started and that I would be open to doing things in a way that would really compliment how our family is. I ended up learning so much about what our family goals are and it really helped us narrow in on a vision for parenting and just overall how we wanted to shape our family life. I was so nervous and unsure at first of my choice. I knew it was what I felt called to try and I tried it and ending up loving it!