adminWritten by Kelsey K.
To introduce my family a bit here, I am a mother of 5 children, ages 8 down to 7 months. I don’t have any special qualifications for homeschooling and I am currently working part time. Our life hasn’t perfectly aligned for homeschooling, but we have made it work!
We started our family homeschool journey in August of 2020. My husband was homeschooled as a child, and I always had the desire to homeschool, but the typical “worries” of homeschooling really kept me from making the plunge.
Reaching the Decision to Homeschool
When Covid hit, I knew I didn’t want to make my kids go through the drama of being in and out of school, back and forth, with no consistency for them. That’s when we decided it would be best to pull them out. I always had the comforting thoughts knowing that if things got less messy with the school system, we could always put them back in school if homeschooling was a total disaster. Fortunately, it has been anything but. We have had so many encouraging moments along the way that have made me confident with our decision.
Currently, I homeschool my son Jaxson, and my daughter Grace. A little about Jaxson: while in 1st grade, his teacher mentioned the areas he struggled in. He would do the work, he just would take longer to do it. He lacked motivation for “school stuff” and would rather play. He was on the verge of needing an IEP, but she was confident that as he aged and matured a bit more, things would catch on better for him.
As a mother, it made me anxious to hear things like this, and I wanted to help him figure out his own learning path and style. In August, 2020, he was set to start 2nd grade. We decided to put both children at the 2nd grade level to make things a little easier on us. While Jaxson takes a little longer to figure things out, Grace is pretty quick to catch on. It has worked out really well for us. We have definitely had our ups and downs, but the benefits we have seen overall have been incredible.
The Window Homeschooling Gave to My Children’s Learning
One of my favorite moments during this journey has been seeing my son enjoy learning and watching things click for him. As I mentioned above, he’s a typical 8 year old who would rather spend his days playing than learning double-digit addition. I have been trying to figure out areas that are fun for him and use those for motivational tools to learn in the less fun areas. One of those fun areas has been learning about the United States.
One day while we were driving out of town, the song “Fifty Nifty United States” started playing and my husband sang along. He had it memorized from when he was a kid. We all laughed and had no idea that was something he knew. Right then, Jaxson decided he wanted to learn the song too.
From our little road trip, we played that song over and over and he had the whole song down by the time we got to our destination. Now he can sing all 50 states alphabetically! He was so proud of himself. The best part was that Grace and our 4 year old also learned the song with him. They all request the song frequently and I catch them singing it here and there.
Using Homeschooling to Dive Deeper into Genuine Interests
With that, we decided to use Miacademy’s state game lessons and help him learn where each state is located. I was shocked when I walked in and watched him clicking the mouse so quickly. I just assumed he was messing around, rather than doing his lesson. To my surprise, he was reading the state and finding it on the political map game, getting them all correct!
After that, I knew this was an area I wanted to really explore more with him. We bought him a fun US states facts book. Each night we picked a new state and learned all about it. Not only was he learning important history and information about America, but he was really enjoying it at the same time.
My favorite part about this is that we decided to really go all in and do a road trip across the country and see these things that we have been learning about first hand. Some of our favorite stops have been St. Louis and seeing the arch, where we learned that it’s nicknamed “The gateway to the West”. Visiting Mount Rushmore and learning about how and why it was built was another favorite. Oh! And seeing the Grand Canyon in our home state.
We make sure to visit the capitol buildings in states when we can. My son is such a sweet boy and appreciates the beauty of our country while also geeking out about the cool buildings and structures. I never expected this to be an area he would so thoroughly enjoy.
I love that homeschooling gives us the flexibility to really slow things down and nurture areas that our children enjoy, while also helping them individually in areas they need more work in. I could go on and on with the different moments that have been so amazing during our first year. My daughter has repeatedly said things like “I’m really good at this, right?” And it has made it all worth it. I wouldn’t trade our year of homeschooling for anything!