If you recently made the decision to bring your kiddo(s) home from public school it’s likely you are doing a little bit of freaking out. That’s totally normal. It’s to be expected. You have made a big decision that not many make. Welcome!!
We first started homeschooling starting in my kiddo(s) 5th grade year. She is now a junior in high school and thriving. In the beginning we tried a lot of things, and wondered if we would ever land on something that worked for us. Each time something didn’t really “work” fear crept in and a little more anxiety. But we stuck with it and found our stride. I’m not going to say it happened in a week or a month, but when you’re home, there really is so much time. You’ll find your way too.
Your homeschool does NOT need to look anything like public school.
I think this is the biggest thing one needs to realize. It’s only reasonable when you pull your kids from public school, especially if you had a traditional schooling experience, to try to make it look like what you already know.
The beauty of homeschool is you can make it look like anything you want it to look like. The biggest factor in creating your perfect homeschool is going to be your mindset. I know. It sounds crazy, but if you’ve been through 12 years traditional schooling plus any additional years in higher education, you’re going to need to “change your mind” and allow yourself to think a little bit outside the box.
Here’s are two of my favorite books when it comes to starting to break the traditional schooling mentality.
Dumbing Us Down and Brave Learner
I would read Dumbing Us Down first. It was literally the first “homeschool” book I read when I was still debating jumping in. It completely changed my thought process about “school” and allowed me to start thinking about things differently.
Brave Learner is amazing for when you get to the place where you understand it can be different but you have no idea where to start. I have read this book multiple times. I kept it close by for the first few years. When I would get anxious or feel like I was failing I’d pull out Julie Bogart. My homeschool didn’t really look like Bogart’s but the FEELING was the same. The gift of freedom she lets you explore, that feeling was what I needed when I got all up in my head. 🙂
What can homeschool look like?
Field Trips even if they are virtual!
Movies and TV ~ oh YES!! We learned so much from movies and TV.
Doing projects that your kids come up with. I’m not talking about premade busy work projects you hand your kid and say cut this out and color it this way. Projects your kids come up with, are excited about, and want to know the answers to. That is where the real learning comes from. The learning that STICKS IN THEIR BRAINS. The learning they remember forever. It comes from curiosity and an eagerness to KNOW something. It really does.
Funny story. My husband just got sucked into a series on tv about World War 2. We are both products of your traditional schooling and I honestly very little about WW2 from school. I’ve read many books about the holocaust but the entirety of WW2… not really. Anyway, he watched this series, and is now telling us all about the whole big picture of WW2. We went to school. I am certain we studied WW2 at some point during those years, but we remembered nothing but the parts that were important and relevant to us. (He remembered the kinds of guns and tanks everyone had)
So cut yourself some slack. I honestly believe it is WAY more important to teach your kids to LEARN for themselves than to try to teach them everything. In this day and age when anything you want to know is only a Google away, teaching kids to learn how to learn and discern information is more important than trying to cram their brains full of facts.
It’s pretty interesting, if you go to the very beginning of this blog and scroll forward in time, you’ll see our progression. You’ll see how we started like a little public school at home, and little by little created this free learning environment we’ve landed on 6 years later. If you go to my facebook group and search my name you’ll probably find a multitude of posts I made over the years where I’ve started freaking out because I wasn’t doing it right, or enough… most of which probably were at the beginning of a new “school year”. 🙂
You are not alone. You can do this. We are here to support and help.
