I’ve been asking myself what I need to do in order to be ready to start homeschooling this year.
It’s time. I’m actually excited about getting started again.
But not too excited. I am still enjoying the summer.
This is my 18th year of homeschooling. I cannot believe that I just typed that.
Seriously.
I have really felt the need to reflect on our home educating experience lately.
- What has worked? What hasn’t?
- What are the needs of the children still at home?
- Are we covering the important things that we focused on with the older two?
Where is our focus?
Before going forward, I believe that we have to remember the priorities that we chose for how we were going to do school at home 18 years ago. For us that meant building character through relationships.
Many many many of our most important lessons were learned from real life.
Forgiving others when we were hurt. Seeing a job and doing it without being asked. Never hurting others intentionally. Meeting challenges that come our way with courage and kindness. Being responsible with things & time. I could go on and on with examples that just sprang from LIVING life together day in and day out.
We are a close family. We play and work together. Many of our activities are done together although the activities have changed over the years. We’ve taught the kids that they are best friends and will be together for life.
Even after I am gone. It is a precious thing to have your brother or sister as your best friend.
Honestly, we’ve drifted a bit from our focus. Life gets in the way and we’ve had a lot of life happening in the past 3 years. It’s time to refocus and make sure that these last two kids in our home get our attention like the first two did. It’s easy to get tired of trying because we as parents are older but it’s so important to guard against letting that happen.
Momma needs to be more organized
Earlier this month I took almost a week to empty my work room and fight the chaos that had been living there.
NOTHING gets me more off track than when I can't find a book or CD that I KNOW I have.
In an effort to head that off, I reorganized our books, supplies and curriculum. When our homeschool group held the kick off for this year I was able to take books that we were done with and either sell them or give them away.
I went from 6 boxes down to 3!!!! I use these 3 ways to sell used homeschool curriculum and books.
There are many things I am doing to organize & prep for our school year but many of these ideas from A Work of Grace have worked their way on to my list of to-dos before we start. I plan to post my own Top 10 as I finish my prep work in the next week or two.
We are in the HOME stretch
We’ve had so many different stages of homeschooling. The current one is really pretty easy. Joshua is the only kido who is home full time for school. I blinked and my babies aren’t babies any more.
Two have graduated from high school.
One is married and has a new baby girl.
One is still in college.
One is a senior taking college classes.
One is almost ready for high school.
5 more years God willing and I will have worked myself out of a job. It is a happy/sad thing.
But I'm grateful that I have these years coming up to give my best towards developing Godly character in my children. We've all got areas that need work.
What better place to do that than at home?
Past Homeschool Posts
