Although my blog is not specifically about homeschooling, I often get homeschooling questions from readers. Since a lot of people don’t really know what a homeschool looks like (of course, that varies from home to home!), I though it would be fun to give you a peek into some of our homeschooling days.
Please do know, though, that there are times when homeschooling is not photo essay worthy. Sometimes I’m frustrated, sometimes children have bad attitudes, sometimes a lot of times they don’t read directions, and sometimes they cry (I don’t think I’ve ever actually cried about homeschooling, but I did cry about potty training back in the day. In case you wanted to know.) Anyway, homeschooling isn’t perfect, and I’m not trying to present it as such. But, I do feel the the happy moments outweigh and outnumber the sad ones, and those happy moments are the ones I’m sharing.
{Our daily United States geography card game. Joshua and I play at breakfast and the girls watch and listen.}
{a post-breakfast state geography game on the computer}
{Zoe staring down an especially difficult state}
{reading practice on Zoe’s floor}
{doing state papers for our geography study}
{lunch at our neighborhood pier, with a side of bubble-blowing}
{the post-lunch half hour reading time}
a.k.a. 30 minutes of quiet time for me, cleverly disguised as a fabulous educational tool
{math checking session on the kitchen counter, using a crayon to mark wrong answers.}
{math and handwriting at the kitchen table}
{the kitchen table does show up a lot, doesn’t it?}
{once-a-week Latin and composition with my mom}
{reading practice on the sofa}
{ok, so maybe this doubles as snuggle time}
{it’s a hard job, but someone has to do it.}
{piano practice for Lisey, piano-practicing supervision+laundry-folding for me}
Simply beautiful!
As a fellow traveler on the home school road ~ looks like a lot of love, learning & fun to me. Thank you for sharing.
Blessings on the journey~
Thanks for the pics. I’m curious to learn more about home schooling, now that I have a one-year old and will have to start thinking about her educational options. If you’re so inclined, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this in an upcoming Q&A. Do you plan to home school up through high school? I think I could handle the elementary and possibly middle school math, but high school math/chemistry/physics might be way over my head. How do you plan to handle the more difficult subjects as your kids get older?
Hi Becca,
Just a fellow homeschooler chiming in here.
I do plan (in fear and trembling!) to homeschool all the way through. Our children attended public school up until this year, and after this year of homeschooling I can’t imagine ever going back. It has exceeded all our expectations. Just so you know, our daughters attended through 4th grade and 1st grade, respectively. We have two young sons, as well, and I don’t plan to ever send them to traditional school. Yea! Also, I want you to know that our daughters excelled in public school and earned good character awards, etc., so it was not an issue of public school being a struggle for them. However, our concerns about the social element and the emphasis on standardized testing…as well as overt materialism among many other families, ridiculous competitiveness, and quite simply…the moral cesspool that we were headed into in junior high…led us to homeschooling.
As for the advanced subjects, here in Kansas City we are fortunate to have many private academies that actively “court” homeschoolers to drop in for one or two classes. There are also so many online classes and “helps” for the homeschooling parent today…I imagine we’ll plan to tackle everything, and then supplement with advanced classes outside the home/online classes/private tutors if the need arises. We might even send our children “early” for a few courses at the local community college, if we feel that is beneficial.
Blessings to you as you research!
I don’t know if we’ll homeschool our kids in high school (it will depend on their interests and preference and what the schools where we are living are like), but if we do, I’d probably utilize a combination of independent study, community college courses, online courses, and co-op classes. Some public school districts will also let students attend part-time, so a student can get the specific courses they need there.
There are subjects I feel I could teach pretty confidently–I’m a college writing instructor, so I could teach my kids English through high school, and my husband is a cognitive neuroscientist so he could have a good deal of math and science covered pretty well–but I’d really have to see what would work for my kids. At 16 or 17, they might respond better to outside input on their writing, for example, than to having their mother critique it. Or, they might respond better to me. Who knows?
But I’d definitely not try to tackle every subject myself. My son is the only one old enough to officially be homeschooled right now, and he’s pretty academically advanced. If we do keep homeschooling him, we think he’d probably be ready to add in community college courses at 14 or so, for things like science and math and maybe a modern foreign language. (I teach him Latin, because I’m a geek and LOVE Latin. I’d be no help with a modern language, though. ;))
Is that Handwriting without Tears? Love that program!
Yep, it sure is! Although, I have to tell you that we have occasionally had tears while using that program. lol
We did Handwriting Without Tears for first grade and liked it a lot. We did have a few tearful moments with it, though.
The worst part was that DS thought it was clever to call Math Mammoth “Math WITH Tears,” which he did all year. Needless to say we switched to a different math program this year!
My daughter’s first homeschool writing project was to write to the Handwriting Without Tears folks to lodge her complaint about their false advertising. :). She’s worked through the tears now and I really like the program.
Beautiful pictures! Completely off the homeschooling topic however – Is that a Klean Kanteen water bottle on the table? We love ours and highly recommend them (and no, I am not affiliated with the company in any way).
Yep, all six of us own one.
I homeschooled during the last year of high school, and I’m hoping to homeschool our kids (when we have them). Knowing there are always going to be challenges and icky days, I continue to believe that it will be the best way for our future kids. I have begun research on it now rather than wait so that when the time comes, I have a good idea of which curriculums/lessons to use. I love seeing and reading about your adventures in homeschooling, it’s really encouraging. Thanks, Kristen!
Beautiful photos! I love that you have the kids learn Latin and wish I had had that opportunity when I was their age. It’s so rarely offered in the schools.
And is it just me, or is Sonia defying the laws of physics in that third photo? It seems like the chair should be tipping forward, the way she’s balanced on the edge. Almost yogic!
Well, she weighs so little, she can manage to get away with it!
I went to my first yoga class in more than a year yesterday, and that’s the first thing I noticed in your pictures! That pose is my ultimate goal.
On another note, are you teaching your children cursive writing? I’ve been reading a lot lately on how schools are going to drop it. Six of one, half dozen of the other, as far as I’m concerned. But the thought that children will not be able to read cursive is sad. One of the articles I saw quoted a middle school girl saying she couldn’t read her grandmother’s diary; it was like a foreign language, and she couldn’t figure most of it out.
We have used a program called “Cursive First” as a part of “Spell to Write and Read”. Our children have learned cursive from Kindergarten. We used HWWOT to learn capitol letters in pre-k. My current kindergartner has the most beautiful cursive handwriting of all her siblings. I found so many benefits to this method when I researched it when we first started HS 6 years ago. http://swrtraining.com/id17.html
Here’s a better link for “Rationales for Cursive First”. http://swrtraining.com/id29.html
Written by a fellow Speech Language Pathologist
I did think it looked like an ergonomics nightmare, but I remember what it was like to be little and want to type comfortably at a table.
This is terrific! I’m a teacher (in a mainstream school) and believe in what I’m doing but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way for every family. My wee one’s babysitter homeschools her children and you could not dream of having more wonderful and well-adjusted children.
PS when your kids reach the grade 6 onward point I can send you lots of fun stuff.
I have a relative who is a public school teacher and whose spouse homeschools their kids, for a combination of religious and teaching quality reasons.
Your post made my day. My children attend public school, but I know and love many home school families.
Pretty Cool! I always admired hmeschool teachers!
I went to public schools myself, but was always so extremely bored because of how slow the classes moved. It would have been fantastic to be homeschooled I think.
This is off somewhat topic but….
Can anyone tell me why children who attend catholic schools have such nice hand writing?
At my work we hand write customer orders. Some are barely readable. Whenever I’ve complimented someone (men & woman) on their penmenship they almost always reply that it is because they went to catholic school.
I went to Catholic schools in the 50’s, and we were taught by nuns. Handwriting was very important then, and a lot of time was spent on it. It was a big deal to be old enough to start learning cursive writing in the 2nd grade! I never had my hands hit with a ruler (and really, I don’t know anyone who did), but a lot of attention was paid to form – how to hold the pencil, how to sit at the desk, how the paper was placed, and the actual writing itself. There used to be penmanship competitions in the older days, and kids were very excited about wining a penmanship medal.
My parents both had lovely handwriting. Mine is good, and it’s legible, but now I’m getting arthritis in my hands and it’s more difficult. I print quite a bit now.
Hahahaha….I attended a christian school up to grade 4 and I remember having to stay in detention every day until my handwriting was perfect lol.That was also back in the day when left handedness was turned into right handedness
May God bless your kitchen table!
I homeschooled two of my children for four years in the middle of their education.
My most major regret is that I did not homeschool right from the beginning and kept it up right until the end. It was hard to keep the vision during those rough times when they weren’t interested and when self-doubt crept in.
Considering, the pathetic education they have received in the public school system, not to mention that God is obscured with worldy thinking, they would have been much better at home with me, as inept as I felt.
Keep the vision…. you are shaping future leaders right there in your lap!
Thanks for the pictures.
I often think about homeschooling my son because he gets so tired at school and is so grumpy afterwards, but he also has trouble focusing and listening, and I worry that we would but heads all day. What would you suggest for a parent who wants to homeschool but whose child doesn’t have a natural tendency to listen and follow directions and is not at all self-motivated? (He is in private school now and will probably stay there, but I am just curious.)
My son attended a private school for kindergarten and 1st grade. He, too, was exhausted, grumpy and just plain miserable. Worse, he was like a wild animal by time class was done for the day, he was so full of pent-up anger from all the slights of the day, from being bored or from having to stop doing something he was enjoying because the schedule said they had to do something else. He refused to do homework, he even stopped reading for pleasure because he was required to write down the name of every book he read. In short, he was a born rebel, but also a bright kid who simply wanted to focus on whatever caught his fancy. It took a year of “de-schooling”, but now he’s very motivated on topics he’s interested in (like science), and we don’t worry too much about things he’s not into (like math—his first grade teacher somehow convinced him he wasn’t good at it, and we’re still dealing with the repercussions of that). If he’s interested in the subject, he will read on his own for HOURS. When he’s bigger (he would be finishing 4th grade now) and he decides what sort of scientist he wants to become, I have no doubt that he’ll be able to learn all the math required. Right now, forcing him to do repetitive math busywork (as they did at school) just irritates him so much that it pushes him even farther away. So I bide my time, and don’t worry about it. If he “needs” to learn something, he will find a way, whether it’s online, a class or a camp, or simply by reading a book. We do butt heads on occasion, but it’s easy to get past it—much easier than it was to try and force him to do homework every evening and every weekend!! But best of all, the sweet, loving boy who was taken from me by the stress of school has returned. He’s much more relaxed and easygoing, and the spark returned to his eyes. I love being with him every day!
p.s. I wanted to also say that the state we live in requires annual testing, whether by standardized test or an assessment done by a certificated teacher or consultant. So there’s no way my son could get hopelessly behind or not learn a darn thing, because the assessment would reveal that and remedial efforts could then be taken…just didn’t want anyone to infer from above that it was possible he’d never learn anything or I was neglecting his education or anything like that! Every state has different rules/requirements, so be sure to check what’s legal where you live.
School as it should be!
So is that a lego pencil holder I’m seeing in the picture of Sonia labeled “math and handwriting at the kitchen table”?? Very cool! What creative kiddos you have!
I can totally relate to bawling during potty training!
this is great! i’m new to wordpress, and would love some new friends here! i am also just dippping, ok diving, into homeschooling with a smile. your post has steered me in a good direction. its just all relaxed, isnt it. flexible. smart. thank you. looking forward to more! x
angelina
The chowder was good thanks. Home school is not always easy but, it is the best option for children who want a good education that a person can give them the extra help they need to do their best. You should be very proud of all of your hard work and effort it will pay off. It is the only option for some children due to other things.
We also homeschool- ages 8 and 5- and plan on going through high school. There are challenges… and joys! Over the years, I have learned not to get too stressed out about “messing up” the kids. It will all come out in the wash, as they say!
I enjoyed the pics!
What card game/computer game are you using for U.S. state geography please? I want to do geography over the summer since my son is not getting it in school (at least not yet, rising 5th grader).
Thank you for the beautiful trip down memory lane – our home schooling finished this year – all the kids have finished and are headed for college. Our last of our 7 moved out this spring. All of those pictures are a treasure! I could identify with every one of them – and I miss it all already. Again, thank you…
I love that picture of Sonia (?) perched on her toes right on the very edge of the chair. So darling.
Thanks for this. I’ve been thinking about homeschooling and this simple photo diary has helped me think clearer than many long articles!