A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Texas to help a friend with her local homeschool conference. She asked me to share with the attendees about my homeschool style.
I thought it might be helpful to post what I shared here. This way, in the future, I can refer people to this post:
Homeschool Outside the Box
Ideas to create a home where children love to learn beyond textbooks and rigid schedules
When I started preparing for this workshop, I was in the process of cleaning up some of the clutter areas of my home, and I found some of my old notes from homeschool conferences I attended in California while I was on my homeschool journey.
The reason I am starting with this, is because it is only by the grace of God that I am here today sharing about my homeschool journey.
I never had any intention of being a stay-at-home mom, let alone be a homeschool mom.
I have a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics and had planned on climbing the corporate ladder.
I am married. My husband and I will be celebrating our 34th anniversary next month. Our son will be 30 this month, and our daughter is 24. They are both married. We have one granddaughter, and a grandson on the way.
After our son was born, God started me on our journey of seeking a relationship with Him.
The summer before we started homeschooling, my husband and I became believers and started on the path of learning more about God and what it means to live a life for Him.
So I want you to be thinking about “What is your end goal?” This seems like a strange place to start at the beginning of a workshop where I am suppose to be sharing with you about setting aside textbooks and rigid schedules, but let me explain.
When we first started homeschooling, I thought I would be preparing my kids for some Ivy league school where they would accomplish amazing things. After all, the covers of the homeschool magazines at the time when I was homeschooling had photos of all these families with their matching outfits where they shared about all the incredible things their families were doing.
But then I realized, this was an unrealistic expectation I was putting on my kids and on myself. Only God knew what their future held, and what my future held.
Many people would ask me, are you planning on homeschooling your kids through high school?
I finally got to the point where I would answer with, “I don’t know, I am just hoping to get through today.”
God is the only One who knows the number of our days. So I had to adjust my goal.
I settled on, “Teach them to love the Lord, and teach them to love to learn.”
I am definitely not an expert on the best way to homeschool. I don’t know what will work best for you and your family. I can only share from my personal experience as a homeschool mom to two children.
Since we were new believers when we started our homeschool journey, one of the best things I did was to study the Bible with my children. Both of my kids learned to read with The Beginner’s Bible. We also did many inductive studies together using the Discover For Yourself books from Kay Arthur.
We did start our homeschool journey with a charter school in California, which is basically a public school where you can teach your own children at home, but all of the curriculum is provided by the government school. I found this very restrictive for us. I did not feel comfortable being accountable to other people for what I was wanting to teach our children.
So we began privately homeschooling and were able to decide what curriculum we would use, as well as how many days we homeschooled and what day we would start and stop each year.
Since I didn’t want to be tied down to textbooks and workbooks, I tried to prioritize a lot of hands on activities with lots of field trips, park days, volunteer time, family time, and training my children to learn life skills they would need to know once they entered adulthood.
This does not mean that we didn’t hit the books on a regular basis. I would describe my homeschool style to others as eclectic. We used a little of this and a little of that. If something wasn’t working, I had no problem switching things up mid-year.
Of course, being a one-income family and not having financial resources available to supplement our curriculum caused us to be a little more creative at times.
I learned a lot about Charlotte Mason, Ruth Beechick, Karen Andreola, Clay and Sally Clarkson, Barb Shelton, John Taylor Gatto, Voddie Bauchum. The books and methods that these people shared shaped how we developed our homeschool style.
If my children started to show a particular interest in something, we would use that to guide our school time. Sometimes this would be for just a short period of time. Sometimes this meant we spent a few years on one subject.
For instance, we learned about a Civil War event happening in our area when our son was about 12. After they put him in a uniform and sent him out on the field to participate, he was hooked! We ended up spending the next 6 years participating in at least six events per year. This was probably one of the best things we did as a family. I ended up sewing dresses for me and my daughter, and all the undergarments needed. Made shirts for my husband and son. These events allowed us to spend time as a family, away from many modern conveniences and gave us a better perspective on life during that time in our country’s history.
About 14 years ago, we sponsored our first child with Compassion International. We used this opportunity to learn more about all the countries where Compassion partners with local churches. We researched each country, the capital, the language, the monetary system, the country flag, to name just a few. Eventually, I would be able to travel to Mexico with each of my children where they were able to see firsthand what life is like for children growing up in areas of extreme poverty.
Because I love books, we did tend to use a lot of literature based curriculum. I read aloud to my children until my son graduated from high school. Anytime I could include classic novels, biographies, and great historical fiction, I included those in our read aloud times.
As far as field trips are concerned, I wanted our children to know as much about our local community as possible. Wherever I thought would be a good place for a field trip, I would ask if they had a field trip available. The grocery store, the post office, the fire department, even In ‘n Out Burger! We made trips to historical locations throughout our state, visited museums, and spent time at national and state parks.
On two different occasions, we were able to take what I called ‘extended family field trips’ to the east coast. Our first trip was spent exploring areas important to the founding of our country and many locations in Washington DC. Our second trip was spent in Philadelphia and Gettysburg. We were able to see firsthand areas that many children only read about in textbooks.
As far as a daily ‘structure’ was concerned, and I use that term loosely, rather than dedicate our school day using time blocks, I used more of a flowchart type of system. Once we were done with one subject, we would move onto the next one. We were not slaves to the clock. If it only took us fifteen minutes to complete one subject, we would move onto the next one. If it took longer, it took longer. Even though my children are just over 5 years apart, I tried to make sure we did history, science and a few other subjects together, and just adapted any activities they would do based on their age and abilities.
At the beginning, I used lesson plan books, only because that is what I had learned during the time I was substitute teaching and for the couple of years at the beginning when we went through a charter school. But it didn’t take long for me to ditch the lesson plan book.
As far as the curriculum we did use, we would start with lesson one and just move onto the next lesson in the book. While my kids were in elementary school and middle school, I never put a lot of stress on myself about finishing any of the curriculum that we did use.
It wasn’t until my kids were in high school that I did more planning to make sure they were able to complete what they needed to for graduation.
Life happens, and I didn’t want my children to miss out on opportunities to spend time with family and/or serve our neighbors when things would come up.
We would drive over and spend time with my deaf paternal grandmother. We would rake leaves for our elderly neighbors. We would spend a couple of days packing boxes at Thanksgiving for needy families in our community. I wanted my kids to see that spending time with extended family and serving others were just as important to their education as any day spent going through lessons at home.
My kids also spent time helping at home. I used the Motivated Mom Planner, which is basically a chore planner for moms. But I used that chart to include them in jobs to do around our home that were based on their ability. Lots of cleaning, baking, meal planning, laundry, and other household jobs were learned over the years.
There are a lot of people who say ‘I wish they taught that in school’. As a parent and a homeschool parent, you have the ability to teach and to train your children in the skills and abilities you feel are important for them to know once they reach adulthood.
I know we did not do things perfectly, and I have already had conversations with our children that I know I made a lot of mistakes. I did the best I could with what I had available.
Over and over, during my time as a homeschool mom, a couple of Bible verse that kept coming up for me in random places are Psalm 46:10 – “Be still and know that I am God.” and Matthew 11:28-30 – “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
I encourage you to do a word study on these verses. Look up the definition of each word. Hide these verses in your heart. They will be encouraging to you on your most challenging days.
This homeschool journey is not an easy one. You will have long challenging days. You will be tempted to compare what you are doing with what other families are doing. You may be concerned about what your child is learning or not learning. You may think you are not doing enough. You may think you are not providing what your children need the most.
I recently found my notes from many years ago that I took a couple of the homeschool conferences that were held in our area. Voddie Bauchum spoke one year and one of the workshops that he gave was titled, ‘Harvard or Heaven’. He said that as parents, we are called to prepare our children for heaven.
The best thing you can do for your children is to teach them about Jesus, and love them unconditionally.
There are a lot of resources I could share with you, and I have created a Pinterest board called Homeschool Outside the Box that you can find at my Pinterest account. But I do want to share with you what I believe are the three most important books you can read. The Bible, Dumbing Us Down, and Life Skills for Kids.
The Bible is our foundation for life. This is a book that should be read and studied in every home.
Dumbing Us Down is a book that shares the history of compulsory education.
Life Skills for Kids gives you ideas to prepare your children for being adults.
Thank you for letting me share with you today and I would love to answer a couple of questions if we have time.
Some of the curriculum and resources I found very valuable during our homeschool journey:
Discover For Yourself Bible studies: Discover for Yourself (Kids) – Precept
Answers in Genesis: Answers in Genesis
Barb Shelton: HOME ARTICLE CHART BARB (homeschooloasis.com)
Five In a Row: Five in a Row Preschool, Kindergarten and Homeschool Curriculum – Inspired Learning Through Great Books
Ambleside Online: Home - AmblesideOnline - Charlotte Mason Curriculum
Charlotte Mason: Charlotte Mason method homeschool curriculum and helps (simplycharlottemason.com)
Sally Clarkson: SallyClarkson.com
Sonlight: Sonlight Christian Homeschool Curriculum & Programs
Timbledoodle: Timberdoodle Co
Apologia: Apologia - Award-Winning K-12 Homeschool Curriculum
Mystery of History: Christian World History Curriculum - The Mystery of History
John Taylor Gatto: “Education, according to Gatto, is but a nominal goal of the public schools, which are actually designed to prevent children from learning too much, thereby making them into unquestioning, dependent, and obedient citizens.”
Learning Language Arts Through Literature:
Motivated Mom Planner: Motivated Moms – make every day count
Copywork: Copywork – Queen Homeschool Supplies, Inc.
