Another School Year Has Begun!

I don’t know about you, but I’m thrilled to begin another homeschool year. We have so much fun learning together, and the fact that the kids have full control over how much we manage to get done and when we get it done makes them more vested in their learning. I may decide what we’re doing that day, to keep things on track and running smoothly, but they decide if it’s going to be a smooth … or not so smooth … day.

Our typical day begins with a light breakfast of fruit and/or steel cut oats that I plop in the crockpot the night before. We snack on fruit while we work in the morning – it helps keep their brains fed while we work on subjects that are very challenging first thing in the morning. When they’re thinking ahead, we’re up and working before 8am! This is a huge difference from dragging them out of bed to get to school on time at 8:40 when the public school started.

I’ve noticed a fantastic difference in their motivation since homeschooling, and I think there are a few factors that contribute to this.

1. Because they have more control over their learning, they have really stepped up and taken responsibility for getting their work done.
2. Having more control over their learning and how they get to learn something has helped them regain their love of learning. Remember, this had been destroyed in school because I believe the system is broken!
3. The ability to just take a break when they need it. If they’re just in the weeds and need to step out for some fresh air, that’s what we do!!
4. P.E. isn’t drudgery anymore. We will take the bikes, our school work and head to a local park to bicycle and stop every so often for a while to get some school work done.
5. We get to learn together! We’re a family, and we should act like a family – the ability to learn new subjects together has brought us closer than we ever were before. When the kids can see us always learning, then they understand that learning doesn’t stop when they graduate from school.

On good days, we’re working before 8am and done with formal learning by noon. On not so good days, we’re working until 3-4pm. But the good days seem to consistently outnumber the not so good, and we just keep on truckin’.

The reality of homeschool is that the learning doesn’t stop when the books are put away for the day. We learn fractions through cooking, we learn life skills by just going through our normal day. We learn how to interact with people of all ages by going out into the world, going to the store, to play days, to other activities.

This is what homeschool looks like for us.