I began homeschooling long before I realized that’s what we were doing. My oldest loved to snuggle and read as a toddler. He loved to show off the new colors, numbers, and letters that he learned. As Kindergarten drew near, I realized he was going to get bored very quickly if I enrolled him in school. He loved challenges and I hated to see that fire for learning doused.
Some dear friends introduced me to the concept of homeschooling, an idea I had never even heard of before! It sounded like something that must surely be illegal! Then I found out my parents were homeschooling my much younger sister. My mom introduced me to The Well Trained Mind and I fell in love with homeschooling. I researched my little heart out and we embarked on this fabulous journey when he was five years old. I now have four wonderful children and have enjoyed teaching them all at home.
Learning Together, All the Year Round
Our move to schooling year round occurred rather early in the homeschool journey, and I confess, it stemmed from sheer chaos. At the time, I called it laziness, but now that I can look at it through the lens of time, I realize that any mom attempting to teach two young boys while holding a toddler and nursing an infant is not lazy. She is doing the best she can to survive.
Out of that effort to survive, our school days were not always filled with organized hours and tidy notebooks. We read and we learned and we played and we cried. Daddy worked insane hours, so any day he was able to be home, we dropped the schoolwork and had family time. Bit by bit, we abandoned our schedule.
As that first May approached, and my friends were sharing their school-free summer plans, I realized that we were only half-way through all of the things I wanted to teach. I decided to extend our year. I was embarrassed to tell anyone my plans; I didn’t want them knowing that I was too lazy to maintain a 36 week schedule.
I was so relieved when I found out it’s a real thing! I’m not alone! Choosing to homeschool year round brought instant relief. I can take off all of December to do Advent activities! We can visit family and friends! We can stop and pursue random interests without feeling guilty!
It’s been a decade now and we’re still schooling year round. I organize 36 weeks of assignments, but we are flexible with their application. Math is never on the rotation. We just do math every day, moving on to the next book when ready. Reading and Writing are similar.
Though I do organize them to go with our core curriculum, we never stop reading and writing. Most importantly, we never stop learning. We’ve made learning a part of our lifestyle year-round and I pray they never stop.
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