Homeschooling Thoughts

I’m approaching my 24th year of homeschooling, and I recently posted some thoughts on my personal facebook page. My friends said they were encouraged by my post, so I thought I’d share it here as well. I am not a perfect home educating parent. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, and I’m sure I’ll make plenty more. In my years of educating my children, I’ve learned some things about how to homeschool, so in no particular order, here’s my current list.

• There’s no one right way to homeschool.
• Even if you use the exact same curriculum as someone else, your results will be different. You aren’t that parent and your child isn’t their child.
• It’s important to know what doesn’t work for your family. Stop trying to do everything.
• Yes, it is very possible to successfully homeschool without ever raising butterflies, without keeping a nature journal, without having a large home library, without checking out 50 (or more) books a week at the library. You do you.

• Follow the state laws. Nurture your children. Those two things pretty well cover it.
• Homeschooling is a full time job and a huge responsibility. Don’t take phone calls while you’re working.
• Special note for husbands – your wife is doing the best work by educating your children. Don’t expect the house to be clean and tidy with dinner on the table when you get home. She’s been working all day too.
• Limit screens (or get rid of them). It’s very hard for even the most amazing books to compete with video games, television, and movies. As adults, your children won’t remember the day they got to the next level of a video game, but they will always carry lessons learned from great books.

• Character is more important than grades.
• Let children explore their interests, but also make them do math and write essays. Life isn’t all fun, and we all have to do hard things.
• Be present for your children. Let them work out problems on their own, but be present to coach them toward the right direction when needed.

• All children work at different paces. Grade level isn’t important. Even in high school, credits are more important than grade level.
• Read great books.
• Teach your children to love learning by letting them watch you learn new things.

I see so many people giving unsolicited advice, especially this time of year, on things you ‘Have to Do to Successfully Homeschool’. Much of that advice is well meaning, but overwhelming to many. Keep it simple and read good books is pretty much the motto of our homeschooling. It’s so easy to be lured in by a shiny new curriculum that promises success, but be honest with yourself before you buy. Just because someone else had great success with a program doesn’t mean your family will as well. Sometimes you need to scale back to just the basics because of life events, other times you have the ability and resources to add lots of extras. The point is homeschooling doesn’t have to be hard or expensive, and odds are that no homeschool family’s day will look like any other family’s.

Have you learned any homeschooling truths you’d like to share?

If you’re looking to add to your home library, we have some wonderful, gently used books in our shop.