Some things I've learned

As I was looking through our next years books, I started to ask myself what has homeschooling taught me? We've been homeschooling for six years now! That seems unreal to me, but as I thought of how our homeschool has changed over these six years I realized that it has taught me a lot!  Here are a few of the things I've learned...

 # 1 The thing I've learned is that we are unique and that's ok. Homeschooling is a journey that most people begin with no experience and no idea how this is going to work, but as you leap out in faith God will teach you and direct you. There is a lot of trial and error especially those first few years. I think a lot of us start out trying to model our school after another homeschooling family that we know or blogs we've read. If it's working for them, then it must be right! Right? Then we painfully find out that what works for them doesn't work so well for our family. It takes time and a lot of prayer to figure out what works best for your own child. When you add multiple children to the mix things really get interesting. Just when you think you have this schooling thing figured out you get a child who learns totally differently, and everything you thought you knew that worked so well with your last child flops! My first two children are like night and day in their learning styles. Next year my third child will be starting pre-k. I'm sure things are about to change again. The way we do school and my ideas of what school looks like are constantly changing and I'm learning that that's ok. It will probably change many more times before this journey is over. God did not make my three girls carbon copies of each other. They are uniquely and wonderfully different and they learn differently. Our homeschool is unique and our day will look different than our friend's homeschool day. Wouldn't the world be a boring place if we were all the same?

#2 I thought about all the practical things homeschooling has taught me. It's taught me to be more disciplined with my time. It's taught me to be a better listener.  I wish I could say that's it's taught me to be patient, but I'm still struggling there! There are some days when I'm just not getting through and it's very frustrating. Like when I've taught a math concept 5 times and they still have no clue how to do it, or when I've been trying to teach my 1st grader the same phonics sound for 2 weeks and she still can't remember it. All of the days of tears and yelling have taught me to better handle my own frustration; to take a deep breath and a break when my patience is running thin. When I am upset my kids get more upset. We now have less tearful homeschool days than we use to.

#3 My favorite thing I've learned while homeschooling is the actual academic knowledge. The one thing I dislike about Heart Of Dakota is the amount of independent work. Now, I truly believe in children becoming more independent as they get older. I try to encourage my girls to do age appropriate tasks by themselves like making their own breakfast, dressing, picking up their own messes, and making decisions. With age comes more responsibilities and they need to learn to do things without Mom or Dad. However, I don't necessarily agree with too much independent work when it comes to schooling or having children teach themselves and here's why... I have talked to many other HOD moms who love the Independence in the program. A lot of their kids do almost all of their work on their own. This requires little preparation or teaching by mom. Their children simply read the assignment in the guide, do the assignment and then the child tells them what they learned at the end of the day. I actually love to be actively involved in what my kids are learning, because I am learning too! I've joked before that I'm getting a second education. In all seriousness the knowledge that I've gained while teaching school has helped me to grow in my walk with the Lord. History has become so fascinating to me! What use to be just book work, boring dates, and facts when I was in school has become real to me. As we study what's happened in our world in the past, the Bible makes more sense! It's awesome to see how all the events of history are small parts of one bigger picture, of God's plan for mankind. All of ancient history  B.C. points towards Christ and all the events A.D. up to till now point toward his second coming! Learning science is just as fascinating when you realize the complexity of God's creation. Even studying the human body with Sis this year has made me more in awe of just how amazing His creation is! Without homeschooling I would not be learning any of these things that I missed out on the first time around. I think that Christian adults without a very strong academic education are actually missing out on all that God has for them. I'm so thankful that through teaching my kids He has made a way for me to learn too and to know Him more.

#4 The last thing that homeschooling has taught me is that I don't have to have all the answers. This is true when actually teaching. As said before if you don't know know something then look it up and learn it together, but this also goes for life. People often ask me "are you going to homeschool them forever or just in the early grades?" Well I plan on it, unless God says otherwise. Then well meaning people ask me questions like "what about highschool transcripts or college?" idk... "How do you give grades in homeschool?" The answer is right now we don't. We are taking it one year at a time. We don't have to have all of the answers for the future today. If God directed us to take this path, then he will also lead us and help us make decisions for the future.

Last week of school

I decided to write a post about our last week. Actually our last week was a couple weeks ago, but I got lazy and never posted it. Here is just a little about the end of the school year for Sis. We spent most of our days outdoors and actually had a really nice last week (except for the part where I got so sunburned that I looked like a giant lobster.) We spent most of our school days in the backyard, went on a nature walk, and even took a small mid-week road trip to visit family. Here's Sis' "WE MADE IT!!!" last day of 4th grade picture.

History: I can honestly say that we have enjoyed the history portion of Preparing Hearts for His Glory this year. We have chosen to continue with HOD next year and Sis will be doing Creation to Christ. We finished off this years history by learning about the United Nations, modern day Olympics, and finally Vietnam (to which Sis responded "another war!" Unfortunately yes.)

Sis' last project was to make a brochure for the Olympics. It was fun looking at some of the Olympic gold medal winner of the past. We love to watch the games together and Sis is already excited about the summer Olympics coming up this year.

Reading: We read our final read aloud book for the year and it was a great one! It was called Twenty and Ten. We went back to WWII which we learned about last week. This story was about twenty young students in a German boarding school who decided to hide ten Jewish children from the Nazis. It was told from the viewpoint of one of the little girls. Even though the subject matter is very serious the text is playful and even funny at times. The kids loved this book, even Boo wanted to listen to this one. We finished it in just 2 days because they didn't want to stop reading! I have to say they saved one of the best for last, This might even be the kids favorite book of the school year.

Other than that Sis finished up all her other subjects. Now we can relax and enjoy a couple months  of nice weather. Well the kids can, I will be taking a few weeks off and then starting lesson planning for next year...the life of a homeschool mom!


Boo did not officially finish all of her MFW 1st grade. She did complete her workbook and her Old Testament. She will be working just a little through the summer with reading and math. We're still slowly working our way through the math lessons scheduled in our MFW guide since we started them mid-year ans we will be using the New Testament part of the reader to practice reading. I really want her to have a summer break and not feel overwhelmed though (she's worked so hard this year!)  so these lessons will be super short and only a few days a week. I might have her read a chapter of her reader to me before bed or we might do a short math lesson in the back yard when she's taking a break from playing.

We also took a really cool family trip for Memorial day weekend. It was actually really educational. We went to Mackinac Island Michigan. We learned about butterflies and bugs at a museum, we took a guided tour on horse and buggy and got to listen to the history of the island, experience our first boat ride, learn some history at a fort and watch war reenactments, use a real working sundial, and more. It's really easy to make vacations and trips educational. There are really learning opportunities every where we go.

As far as this blog. I plan on continuing to post through the summer as things come up or I find something to write about. It probably won't be weekly though until school starts back in August. We will probably start back early in August, because we plan on taking the whole month of Sept off of school to take the longest trip we've ever taken...14 days! and we will be visiting Disney World for the first time! We are beyond excited about that! I hope you all have a fantastic summer and continue to follow us on our journey next school year!