If you homeschool your children, you’ve probably heard comments from others like, “I  really admire you,” or “I could never do that!” For those of you who don’t homeschool, I believe I speak for many homeschoolers when I say we’re not looking to be admired.

As homeschoolers, we often feel insignificant and overwhelmed in this task, yet here we are, finding ourselves “doing it.”

Back in February, 1989, I was a mom, waiting for my third child to start 1st grade so I could have my days to myself. What was I planning to do with all this free time? I don’t remember, but I was positive it was something to get excited about.

When my husband and I decided to homeschool, it was never with the intent of making our children the smartest kids around. Rather, it was to allow our family to remain in close relationship with each other.  We were discovering that having them in school was bringing division and fracturing us as a family. This goal began to come to fruition quite quickly, and certainly beyond my expectations. Simply by having my children spend their days together, going on fieldtrips with my husband, and giving them back some time to work together and simply be children was priceless. We found ourselves having time to play games together, read books together, develop character and life skills, and find opportunities to serve others.

Along the way, two more children were born. Now, most twenty years later, the first three are well educated, productive adults who love the Lord. With the two youngest children in 8th and 9th grade, my job as a homeschooling mom is almost over, but it remains a journey that has truly enriched my life.

Would I have done some things differently? Certainly. I wished I had had more time to teach them about poetry, classical music, and how to run their own business.

Do I have regrets for choosing this path? Absolutely not! While our goal for homeschooling was never about academics, our children learned them because we cared about them and wanted them to succeed.

Could they have learned more? Yes, I’m sure they could have, but we taught them “how to learn” so they could continue to teach themselves what they need to know, and that’s a lifelong skill.

Has it been a sacrifice? I suppose so, depending on what you mean by “sacrifice.” Most would agree that anything worthwhile requires sacrifice. I’ve certainly given up time I could have spent by myself while the children would have been in school. I’m sure there were times I could have gone out to lunch with the girls, or taken bible study classes. However, I’ve gained so much because I did sacrifice my own time.

As I reflect some 20 years later, I feel incredibly blessed that God gave me extra time with my children while they were growing up so we could all make memories we would have missed otherwise. It’s fun to get together today as adults and reflect upon events that happened–good and bad. It’s made me a better person because it has shown me that I could accomplish things I didn’t believe I could. And I don’t even have time to share with you how much I’ve grown and learned about who God made each of my children to be and how much they have impacted my world and those around them.

I certainly don’t want to be admired. All I ask is for people to take the time to see what can be accomplished when families work together. We’ve been able to accomplish so much together, and I simply don’t want to go back to how we did life before 1989. I am humbled by what I believe we would have missed out on had we not taken a step of faith and started this journey.

So, the next time you encounter a homeschooling mom, don’t assume she wants you to admire her or believe you could never do what she does. Instead, listen to her heart and in doing so, you may hear something you desire for your family–even if you believe right now that you could never “do that.”

Take it from a veteran–homeschoolers don’t choose this way of life to be admired. Instead, we pray that others will desire the family life they see displayed in the lives of a homeschooling family.

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Today I walked down the hallway leading to my bedroom and passed by my daughter’s bathroom. The door was open and I heard a man’s voice coming through the door. Curious as to what she was doing, I popped my head in and noticed she was “studying.” It was so “her” that I couldn’t resist taking a picture with my iPhone and texting it to my husband.

To those of you who are not familiar with homeschooling, be advised that this really isn’t anything unusual at our house. My two youngest children are now 15 and 17, have been homeschooled all their lives and are quite independent in their studies.

Jeremy (17) loves to read just about anything in print and basically works his way through his courses of study while relaxing in the leather recliner in our living room. He is pretty straightforward in how he likes to study and seldom “relocates.”

Grace, however, is more “eclectic” in how she likes to learn. In the picture above, she was busy painting her fingernails while she watched her history lesson on the computer. The teacher on the screen is really quite entertaining as he dresses up in costume to illustrate the different periods in history he is addressing. (It’s a great course from The Teaching Company and our children, as well as my husband, have enjoyed numerous courses they offer on their website over many years.)

On other days, Grace will be busy reading literature or studying science while she relaxes in a hammock outside, enjoying the breezes and sunshine. Sometimes I’ll find her doing her math lessons outside, stretched out on the trampoline, making it convenient for her to jump and flip when she needs a break from the cerebral process.

And when it’s a rainy day, it’s routine to find her swinging in her lounging chair suspended from the ceiling in her bedroom. Actually, it can be rather tricky to locate where she is sometimes, especially now that we are a multigenerational household of 10.

Reflections

In my 20 years of homeschooling, I’ve heard about many different ways that homeschooling students study, so I know that Grace is not unusual in how she like to learn. In fact, I recognize her learning style because I’ve been here before.

Our third child, Danny, who is now 28, needed a lot of little breaks throughout his days of learning. Almost daily, I would find him flipping on his skateboard or up in a treehouse while taking a  “wiggle” break.

Now that he’s happily married, a dad, very computer savvy and working for IBM, I’d say his study methods have proven themselves worthy. I guess after doing this for so long, I’ve learned to work with my children’s bents, rather than trying to force them into mine. It has proven to be a valuable lesson they have taught me.

As I walked by Grace’s bathroom door today and saw her working, I was struck by two simple thoughts I want to share with you:

1.  Grace is so lucky, or should I say blessed, in how she is allowed to study, the medium she is allowed to use to study her subjects, and where she studies them. I wish I could have learned like she gets to.

2.  I wonder how many other children would benefit from being allowed to enjoy the freedoms of homeschooling by being allowed to learn “outside the box?”

Some Questions for You: How about your children? How do they like to learn? Can you envision them enjoying learning in different ways if they were allowed the freedom to do so?

Homeschooling certainly isn’t perfect and I understand that not everybody would want to do it, but it definitely has allowed my children to discover some creative ways to study.

Need more ideas for learning creatively? Just ask Grace. She’s a pro!

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It has probably been 15 years ago now, but I remember reading a book by Mary Hood called, The Relaxed Homeschool. Mary Hood is a leader in the homeschooling movement who had her doctorate in education and decided to come home to school her children.

I was reading her book one day and came across this thought: As a homeschooling mom, do your children really know who you are?

That statement really jumped off the page at me that day. You see, I had been so busy giving my life to my children and trying to learn everything I could about schooling them, that I forgot to let them see who I was.

The first thought I remember thinking was, “I say I’m a quilter, but my children haven’t seen me quilt anything in several years.” Guess what I started doing again?

Yep. I started quilting again. I took a class on machine quilting and made some beautiful quilts, too. I even surprised my husband with a king-sized log cabin quilt the first Christmas we were in our new home–a log house!

Now I’m in a different season of my life and my two youngest children don’t remember much about my quilting. Instead, they classify me as an author and teacher. That’s pretty good, considering that’s what I do a lot of the time now.

• So, who are you, really?
• What talents and gifts did God give you that have been on the back burner for awhile?
• If you asked your children what Mommy likes to do, could they tell you?
• If they don’t know, what do you want them to know about you at this stage of your life?

I think like so many other things in life, we can get so busy that we forget to gift our children with the knowledge of who we are. We need to let them know how God created us and what we believe He wants us to do with our lives.

Aside from loving our husband and our children, what do you love to do?

And once you’ve figured out what it is, be sure the rest of your family discovers it, too.

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From the time I first started dating my husband in 1969, I knew he wanted to be a physician. Although he always believed he would be a surgeon, things happened in his life that caused him to specialize in a different area of medicine. He ended up becoming an emergency room physician.

From 1977 to 1989, God blessed us with three children—a girl and two boys. As each of them began to enter school, I noticed there were many weeks when Jim would be home during the school day while the children were away at school. Then when the weekends arrived and the children were home, he would often have to be at work. It started to become a strain as we tried to find blocks of time to spend as a family.

Add to this the issue of homework, activities, church, and other occurrences and we were becoming a family that seldom seemed to be able to find time to be together.

One morning during the craziness of getting the children out the door for their ride to school, I found myself feeling rather unsettled. Mornings during the week were so rushed. Since our daughter had been four years old, I’d been getting up early, pushing her through the mornings, trying to get her to eat breakfast so she could make it through the day. You see, she doesn’t do mornings very well. (It’s still not her favorite time of day. Once we added the boys into this craziness, I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and lacking connection with my family.

Through the course of several “God-incidences” of 1989, our family began the journey of homeschooling in the fall and we’ve never looked back.

Has it been easy? No. It has been a lot of work for me, especially in learning what was available for teaching my children, especially 20 years ago when homeschooling was in the “pioneer stage,” how to teach them, and how to organize my time.

Has it been worth it? Absolutely! Though there have been tough, tiring, and trying moments, the results have proven to far exceed anything I could have imagined. For us as a family, we’ve enjoyed things like being able to stay up late at night to watch the Olympics together, then sleeping in the next morning. We’ve been able to take a lot of fieldtrips and go places to experience real places from history while most of my children’s peers have only read about such places in textbooks. We’ve been able to minister to other families who were facing a crisis, and even participated in helping to paint walls at church because others were too busy.

During the course of our homeschooling journey, we’ve added two more children to our family. Homeschooling is all they have ever known, and if things go according to my plans, this is the only “formal” schooling they will ever have.

I share my story with you simply to say, “you always have options.” If you don’t like how stress is controlling your family, look for change. Seek wise counsel. Talk to others who have been through what you are experiencing. Though the choices may sound difficult, or even impossible from your perspective, change is possible if you want it badly enough. It may involve making sacrifices like lunch out with your girlfriends and having hunks of time alone.

Also, taking control and doing things differently from what others you know are doing can seem risky and scary. Homeschooling can feel like this sometimes, especially when you are first getting started, however, it has the ability to change and enrich your lives as a family.

If after reading this you feel led to pursue this option for your family, I encourage you to talk and pray with your husband about it. Make sure the two of you are on the same page. Seek wise counsel and talk to others who are homeschooling, all the time remembering that your homeschool will look different from theirs. Don’t try to replicate their homeschool. Your friend’s children aren’t yours!

Finally, step out on faith and go for it! It is true that challenges await you and there will be bumps in your journey, but the rewards of preserving and meeting those challenges will bless you and your family far beyond your expectations.

Well, I still don’t like mornings. However, since I decided to homeschool my own kids I do get the luxury of deciding what our mornings look like around here. It’s definitely not always easy but I do try to remember that “The joy is in the journey.” I’m not in a hurry for my kids to grow up or for summer to be over so I can send my kids back to school like some of my friends. I don’t always feel like I’m doing many things well. But I do feel without a shadow of a doubt, that I know my kids the best and I have their best interests at heart so I AM the most qualified teacher for them.

So, thank you, Mom for stepping into the unknown world of homeschooling. The fieldtrips and the reading aloud as a family are still some of my favorite childhood memories. Because of you I made the decision to homeschool my own kids because you showed me how great it can be for the entire family.

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You know you’re a geeky homeschool mom when you look at food on the grocery aisle and the thought pops into your head, “OH Cool! I can use that for spelling class!” These new Cheez-It snacks were buy one, get one free this week and I got WAY too excited when I saw them.

It turned out to be so much fun for me and my boys. They love to snack all day so I knew that would be a winner, but I had them either spell a word on their own or read a word I spelled before they could eat them. It really caught on.

One precaution to be aware of is to make sure their hands are clean because they end up digging around, looking for the letter they need to finish their word. However, that’s a small price to pay for some fun and yummy educational moments. The box even has a grid on the back for playing a game of scrabble, but we didn’t get around to that.

In typical boy fashion, Hunter’s first word choice of the day was TURD. Not my proudest mom-moment by far, but of course, when I told my husband he thought it was hilarious.

Faith, you make me proud! As a homeschooling mom, my prayer has always been, “Lord, help me look for teachable moments.” You not only found a treat your boys enjoy, but made learning fun, too.

Now, I wonder…could it be that a homeschooling mom was the one who suggested these to the Cheez-it company?

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The first year our family began homeschooling was 1989. It was a time of excitement, hard work, and trying new things.

One of my favorite memories from that first year was our study of the Pilgrims. In order to make this event in history “come alive” for my children, my husband and I decided to put forth some extra effort. What better way to make your children feel like a Pilgrim, than a ride on The Mayflower. Here is what happened.

On a Friday, early in the afternoon, we announced to our children that they only had two hours to pack up some of their belongings. Without disclosing what we were planning, we told them to pack items they felt they would need, as if they were going on a trip. After two hours, we would meet in our bedroom.

At approximately four o’clock in the afternoon, the children showed up with a small trunk, a few toy cars, and some books. Then we announced that for the next 24 hours, we would be re-enacting a voyage on The Mayflower. From that moment, they were not allowed to leave our room and would have to remain until we “landed.” There would be no electricity used–only candles–and our attached bathroom would become “the bucket room.”

The children were instructed that they would have to sleep on the floor with whatever coverings they brought aboard; however, mom and dad would be allowed to sleep in their own bed. Rank does have its privileges, you know.

We placed an expandable gate across the doorway, high enough off the ground to allow our dog to come in and out of our bedroom by crawling under the gate. My mother, who lives with us, would remain “on land” and would take any phone calls and see that the dog was allowed to relieve himself outside.

From our studies we had learned that the Pilgrims ate beef jerky, hard tack (a hard, dried-out biscuit), and drank stale water during their journey across the sea. While I had prepared some jerky and allowed some rolls to harden, I personally refused to drink stale water.

Throughout our voyage, we read stories about the Pilgrims, played games, and talked of how difficult it must have been for over 100 people to remain confined in such a small space for 66 days. (I wish we had had The Voyage of the Mayflower Game back then to play.)

As darkness fell, we lit our candles around the room and tried to imagine how scary it must have been for little children–even adults–to be down below deck with little or no light. Thankfully, our Mayflower did not rock and roll as the real one would have; we talked of how beef jerky and hard rolls would not be our favorite foods after a short period of time; and we shared how brave these people must have been and how their faith would really have been tested during their journey.

After a refreshing night’s rest (at least for mom and dad), we had more jerky and hard tack with water for breakfast. It was becoming obvious that all of us were looking forward to coming ashore in America. With several more stories and times of quiet play, we landed!

Grandma was there to greet us as we came ashore. Upon our arrival, we enjoyed a wonderful hot meal, prepared by my mom as we shared stories of the Pilgrims from a new perspective.

This is definitely one of my most memorable homeschooling experiences from growing up! Well, the full size (and by that, I meant gigantic) Tee-Pee that my parents built in our living room comes in as a close second for most memorable homeschooling experience. My brothers and I still laugh about eating beef jerky all day as we were trapped on The Mayflower. For some reason, it sure seemed like a longer “trip” when I remember the story.

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Anybody have sidetracked Kids? My oldest son is definitely one of these. But I suppose he gets it honest considering I’m an admitted sidetracked Mom. Poor kid just didn’t stand a chance. I’ve been on him all afternoon to finish one math lesson and it is seriously like pulling teeth.

Kids are pretty smart though. If a bathroom break, requests for food, offers to help with the baby, or other interruptions are successful in sidetracking both of us, they will continue to do what works.

Better get back to work…he’s escaped yet again.

Well, what can I say? What goes around, comes around! Now you know how I felt when you had trouble staying on task.

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