Our Homeschooling Adventures Are Drawing to a Close

From age 9 to age 17, 3rd grade to a senior!

I'll never forget my nervousness, writing the letter to the school to pull my third grader out.  Doubts assailed my mind, even as I wrote.  Was I crazy?  What did I know about teaching?  Was I going to screw up my child for the rest of her life?  Was this going to be the start of a long road that would be discussed endlessly in therapy years from now?

The first day.

But the pull was strong.  I had researched, though I would spend the next several years learning and researching about how children learn.  I had prayed, though the prayers were only a glimpse of the years I would spend begging God to see me through, to guide me.  I might have been fighting the swarm of butterflies in my stomach, but I knew God was telling me to do something that was WAY outside my comfort zone.  I told my husband, "We'll try it for a year."  I finished the letter and un-enrolled my nine year old from public school.

Playing Store

Our journey had begun.  That was nearly ten years ago.  And nothing has ever felt as right as that time.

Bean Math

She is entering her senior year this year.  Yes, I have just one year left of homeschooling my first student.  Since that warm day in October when I nervously brought my third-grade daughter home, I have graduated two of her older sisters and added her little sister to my little "one-room schoolhouse" at home. I wouldn't change a thing.'

Reading to Little Sis

Homeschooling hasn't made life perfect.  My daughter has faced hard times, despite being home for her education.  She has lost friends.  She has had to face new beginnings.  She has not been sheltered from hurt or struggle or doubts about faith and self.  She, like many teenage girls in the world, has struggled with self-esteem and self-image.  Homeschooling hasn't protected her from everything "bad" in the world.  Some think that homeschooling is not good for children because it keeps them from the "real world."  I am saying blatantly how foolish that thinking is.  She lives in the real world every day.  She is not immune to it simply because she doesn't go to a building with hundreds of others peers in her age group.  She has faced rejection by a couple people because she didn't fit their idea of what they thought she should be.  Would it have been healthy for her to have that pressure, times a hundred, from peers to conform to the image they see as "normal?"

Her History timeline in the Early Years

I have no issues with having had my daughter at home for the last nine years.  I know that she was spared unnecessary bullying and peer pressure.  That doesn't mean that she never faced any.  She lives in the world.  Bullies and peer pressure can be found at the park, on the ball field, in the local Girl Scout group, and at church.  At least, with homeschooling, she was spared some of the worst instances.

Learning about and drawing birds

 My daughter is a major introvert.  She has been allowed to be her, without feeling the pressure to conform to some extroverted, "normal" image.  She could dress in her black leggings and leather jacket and not be labeled "emo" or "goth," but instead be understood that she was experimenting with who she is and trying to figure herself out. She could read all about cats and volcanoes for several years in a row without being told that her interests were "less than" or " dumb."

Learning about Volcanoes... again

She could build entire worlds under the coffee table with toys during read-aloud time and not be told that she must be ADHD because she wasn't sitting still.  Instead, she was seen as creative and artistic.  She could learn about the world through a lens of the faith of her parents, but not be "indoctrinated."  Instead, she could be shown multiple viewpoints, and given sound arguments, and not be kept from one view simply because it doesn't line up with current political ideology running rampant in schools.  Her intelligence and worth hasn't been measured by standardized tests.  Her learning hasn't been decimated by texts full of dates and facts, but no personality or humanity.

When she struggled to grasp a concept, she wasn't labeled as learning disabled.  She was simply given more time, more practice.  Her brain easily grasped concepts very quickly when it was ready, compared to struggling when it wasn't ready.  And in areas where she had a natural bent, she was allowed to move more quickly, instead of being held back to an arbitrary level that someone stated every person of her age should be.

A Science Experiment

Here we are, going into ten years of homeschooling.  My daughter is a beautiful, talented, and a somewhat normal teenage girl.  She is questioning.  She is searching and seeking.  She is working.  She is quirky.  She has a quick, dry wit and a good sense of humor.  She is even-tempered most of the time, and reserved about her true feelings.  She surprises me with her sense of fun in moments that I don't expect.  Her grades are high, and she has a goal to graduate with a near perfect GPA.  She is my "list-checker" girl, with a love of classic rock music and drawing and the TV show, Supernatural.  She is naturally beautiful, but loves makeup and wears it nearly daily, even though I believe she doesn't need a drop.

math games with her older sis

She won't be this girl in five years.  The changes that happen between 17 and the early twenties are huge, as I have learned from my other daughters.  I am choosing to enjoy this girl, this time in her life, instead of worrying about the future.  She is an intelligent girl and a hard-worker.  I have placed her in God's capable hands.  I will enjoy this last year of being with my girl, having Bible time with her, and watching her grow from a teenager into a woman.  I am praying that I can pour into her life just a little more before she is off on her own in this world. 

Learning about Different Rocks

The memories are strong of our homeschooling years.

Learning to make homemade butter and putting on our homemade bread.

We baked and read good books and watched movies and learned about the world.  We grew flowers and one poor potato plant that dad kept running over with the lawnmower.

Snowflake Bentley was a fun study into the magical world of snowflakes.  That led to a fascination with the weather, and my girl spent a few weeks watching the weather channel for fun!

Sometimes our learning was a bit crazy, such as when Laura completed a scavenger hunt for literature.

Baking became a skill where Laura excelled.  She is the "cookie" expert, but she can cook anything she sets her mind to make.

Box days, the days when the next year's curriculum would arrive, were often fun days of checking out what was next in our learning adventures.

While we were learning, we were living.  We had such a good time when our studies were over, hanging out together.  Laura became known for her love (obsession) of cats.

I have been privileged to homeschool my children.  It has meant we lived with less.  It has meant that we had times of struggle.  It has meant that each year held new challenges.  It has also meant that I have gotten to be a part of something pretty spectacular: life with my girl.

That life didn't have to rotate around the seven or more hours a day she would have been gone in public school.  Learning became part of that life.  We read books together for hours.  We played store to learn math.  We used beans as manipulatives.  We have boxes of used workbooks and artwork and projects.  We have spent years going through the Bible, studying it bit by bit.  We know the Bible memory songs that drove Dad crazy, and so we made sure he heard them often that year.  We still have the paintings from the year she brought Robert Frost poems to life with acrylic, watercolors, and paper.

 I wouldn't trade these past few years for anything. 

Homeschooling isn't easy.  It is, however, very worth it!