When I started homeschooling, I came to schooling from a former public school mindset. I had never envisioned homeschooling, let alone thought it was a path I would be pursuing and loving for my children. Eight years in and shifting a few things around, we thrive in our homeschool. None of these are of more importance than another, and not all of these changes happened simultaneously. Looking back on the things I have changed along the way, I can say that these five changes have only made our homeschool time together so much better.
Focused on Building a Foundation of Reading
Due to my background as an English major and secondary education, I spent much time obsessing about reading, writing, grammar, and all that encompasses language arts. I worried I would mess it up. During our early years, I tried a lot of different approaches and curriculums, but none of them seemed to fit. My wonderful husband often reminded me of his struggles in school with a missed dyslexia diagnosis, and it finally made me stop and think. So, I stepped back and thought about what he said to me. I saw not a dyslexia struggle with my daughter but still an effort. I took it all away and examined what our oldest needed. The other thing my husband reminded me of was that as long as our girls could read, they could do anything. So, that is what we did. I took away all of the writing and grammar and allowed our daughter just to read. I wish I had done it sooner, but now she is thriving, and our next daughter is doing the same.
Switched to Year-Round Schooling
Our traveling lifestyle messes with traditional lesson planning and a traditional school calendar. We have travel days and set up days, and sometimes those travel days and set up days can take several days. Or, in traveling, we stop somewhere to visit grandparents for a week. Also, while traveling, we like to try to take advantage of exploring and experiencing the new area around us. Before changing our school calendar to year-round, I constantly felt we were behind and playing catch-up. I was looking at what to cut out, so we could fit it into the school year. Then my mind shifted. Our school year doesn't have to end; we could keep going. Now, we roll on to the next subject and the next level of our curriculum. I'm no longer worried about fitting it all in, and we still get in our required days and hours according to the requirements of our state.
Combined Subjects for Our Girls
When our second daughter entered our lives, I knew something would have to give. No way could I teach every subject two times each day. So I had to think about what I could do to ease our school load. I got the idea from other homeschoolers and several curriculums I have researched over the years. Some subjects are better combined, and we combine science, the bible, geography, and extracurricular subjects like art, music, and ASL. Our girls are farther apart in age. I chose no longer to combine them in their History and Literature cores (in Sonlight), but that doesn't keep them from listening in on each other read-alouds. However, if they were closer in age, I would have gladly combined them in this area too. I place different expectations in the areas I combined them in. My requirements and expectations of them are based on their skills and their ages and what I know they can do.
Adapted Our Curriculum to Suit Out Needs
I loved how our core curriculum was all planned out for us. However, we live a crazy, ever-changing life. Some days we cannot do it all; some days, we don't want to stop. So, I stopped being a box checker; well, I sort of stopped. I allowed myself to treat our instructor guide as a checklist over the entire year instead of a daily list. Also, with several other curriculums, I learned to follow the guided lessons, put them into our timeline, and set our expectations. You can see how I do this in this blog post (How We Do Sonlight Work for Us). It got to the point where I needed to do what worked best for us. I love our curriculum choices, but sometimes the way things are structured doesn't work for us. You can see how I adapted several of our curriculum choices to work for us in these blog posts (How We Make All About Reading Work for Us and How We Make Math U See Work for Us ).
Developed Daily Routine Over Strict Schedule
I think that there is always a debate over this in homeschool. I always see other parents asking in homeschool groups and other parents asking about everyone else schedules. A day outlined by the clock felt too rigid and structured to us; this was not enjoyable. For us, we naturally flowed into a rhythm. When something comes up, we can easily adjust and adapt to changes in our day. We also don't feel tied down to a clock, and if something takes longer than it should, it's okay; it doesn't derail us. Our girls naturally know what to expect and what's expected of them.
I just briefly explained five of the changes I have made over the years that have allowed our homeschool to thrive. Over the next several months, I will be diving into each of these five changes and then further explaining them. I will go more in-depth should you want to pursue some of these changes in your homeschool.
As always, keep following our journey on our Facebook Page or Instagram. Suppose you are looking for more in-depth conversations; check out our Facebook Parent Group.