To homeschool or not to homeschool. That was the question for a lot of people in 2020.
I wanted to homeschool number 1 before Covid was a thing. My husband grew up in rural Indiana (see the fried dandelions post) and was under the impression that homeschooled kids were the weird kids that couldn’t adjust to normal social life and got bullied in public school. By and large that was my experience in suburb Ohio too. But in our community here, I had friends that were homeschooled that seemed, normal, they were successful. They had careers in the medical field, the military and so on and their kids were being homeschool and they were actually cool kids. Like normal kids, arguably better than normal, they are the kind of kids you enjoy being around. So it got me thinking, maybe the “weird” homeschool kids we knew would’ve been weird regardless of how they were schooled. Maybe being socially awkward is a learned behavior or a result of not learning a certain behavior.
Humor me, kids are a lot like their parents most of the time. So if the parents doing the homeschool are what you consider “normal” they are probably going to raise “normal” kids even if they are homeschooling. At least, this is what I told myself as I purchased our homeschool curriculum for kindergarten.
Selecting a homeschool curriculum is overwhelming to say the least. I listened to podcasts, read a few articles and talked to every homeschool mom I knew. It’s complicated. The super into it homeschool moms will asked you questions like
“what kind of learner is your child?” (Ummmm the 6 year old kind?)
”what style of teaching do you prefer?” (hmmm the kind that takes the least amount of experience?)
“Do you want a good biblical foundation?” (Yes)
”like Baptist, Protestant or Mormon?” (well they all are pretty decent human beings but let’s go with whichever curriculum teaches what the Bible says and leaves religion out of it)
“Do you want to incorporate tea time, basket time, extra curriculum or co-ops” (what is half of that?)
As you can see, there is just so much out there. But really I think people over complicate it. There is a type of homeschooling style called “unschooling” which from what I can gather it’s essentially taking a topic your kid loves and expanding it to make it incorporate all the subjects. Say your kid loves art and technology. Then you make their entire year focused on motion graphics design stuff, that includes math, reading about how to do it, science and so on. This could either be amazing because you research grade level requirements and state school mandates orrrrrr disastrous because like me you will not plan that much. Unschooling... who knew.
Well I figured it out, sort of. It was a bit of a journey for both 1 and myself. We’ve gotten into a rhythm And found what works and absolutely doesn’t work for us. I haven’t decide if I as a mom love it and 1 hasn’t decided if she does or not either. For those of you wondering, here are some pros and cons to homeschooling that I’ve come to know:
Pros
- You set the pace. Sort of, I mean depending on your state you have to “attend school“ for so many calendar months and what not. So sometimes if you’re going too slow you have to catch up. But with us, 1 is incredibly smart, we finished kindergarten in 2.5 months and then rolled right into 1st grade, but we are doing 2nd grade health, science and history because the 1st grade curriculum was too similar to the kindergarten and she would’ve been bored with it. She’s reading at about a 4th grade level so she does most of the work independently. It makes teaching incredibly easy because usually it only takes one explanation. It helps that the curriculum we use teaches in a spiral technique. That’s an entirely different discussion though. The point is you set the pace.
- You decide which topics to elaborate on. When her history did a single lesson on slavery but like 6 on westward expansion, I pulled some historical books from Amazon and she spent the week leading up to that history lesson reading about slavery during her “reading” lesson. This was two birds with one stone. It’s nice to be able to make sure she gets a well rounded picture on topics that some curriculums tend to gloss over or just don’t have the time built into the school year to expand on. - You get to be with your kids and watch them learn. You see their progress and it’s exciting!
- You’re never tardy, and you can take vacations whenever you want! You can homeschool from wherever you are. The flexibility is so refreshing.
- It is as easy or complicated as you make it. With covid we didn’t have a lot of field trips. We did go to a strawberry patch and used that as a hands on learning lesson about the anatomy of a plant. But the sky is the limit with how creative you want to get!
- You have the ability to set the pace for how quickly your child matures. Meaning, you know what they are and aren’t exposed to. They don’t hear things on the bus or in class that isn’t age appropriate, or you weren’t ready to discuss with them yet. This was really important for me.
- This is my favorite part, the school projects? You don’t have to do them! We did not do a 100th day of school craft, I didn’t feel pressured to dress her up like a 100 year old woman. We celebrated the milestone by letting her pick out a new book at the bookstore and getting a special coffee. And for Halloween? We still did normal school, BUT we did it at IHOP and she got to eat a mummy pancake while we discussed phonetic rules. Again, it’s as big and elaborate or as basic as you want it to be. I am grateful I don’t have to make any last minute runs to the store for poster board because I am the teacher, I know what’s coming up and I can plan accordingly or just not do that particular learning activity.
Cons
- You’re with your kid all the time. This is a pro and a con, as you may have noticed. It’s awesome to build that strong close relationship, but it’s also hard. Sometimes I wonder if maybe 1 and I would get along better if we had time apart. But then I see her sitting next to me as I’m pumping just to sit by me and I realize, I love this. It’s a catch 22. There are days that I want to lose it, days I really do lose it, and moments when I think surely this isn’t healthy for our relationship.
- It’s sort of a lot of pressure to have your kids education in your hands when you don’t have a degree to do it. Most curriculums make it stupid simple and easy but you have to make sure you’re meeting state requirements. If you move around a lot you have to double check every time you move to a new state. - It takes a while to adjust from being “mom” to being “Teacher” for us I can’t be both at the same time. We have a designated school time, attitude and location in the house to help eliminate any confusion.
- Sometimes I don’t want to teach. I want to catch up on housework, go on a long run, meal plan or whatever. 1’s school has to come first. It’s easy to be tempted to push homeschool to the back burner then rush through it.
- Your traditional school friends won’t get it, My friends want to meet for coffee dates or go shop and I’m like “sure! After we finish homeschool and I’ll have all my kids with me”. Because we learned quickly that homeschool has to be completed in the morning, afternoons are a fight and it’s just a no go for us. I also learned I need to run before homeschool, it helps me be a little less stressed. My homeschool mom friends get this, it’s sort of understood yes we are home but no we are not available, not until after 1200.
- It is expensive. I want to say for 1st grade we spent around $800. And that wasn’t including any field trips. I will say when 2 does kindergarten and 1st grade, it will be much cheaper because I’ll already have all the teacher manuals. But 2nd grade was looking to be about $860. It’s not cheap. I don’t know how much I’d end up spending on public school fundraisers, parties and spirit weeks but I don’t think it would be that much. Some states do have tax credits for homeschooling families though!
- I find myself expecting perfection assuming her performance is a measure of my performance as a teacher. I fear I may have inadvertently created a perfectionist. She gets very upset if she gets anything less than an A on tests, but has also come to expect hard grading on handwriting because I’ve told her if she gets an A then there is no way to improve from that.
- It does require a little bit of preparation. Again depending on how elaborate or simple you want to make it.
- It is hard with multiple kids, especially when they aren’t all in school but toddlers and babies that want and demand your attention. It is a balance and it’s hard.
I am sure there are more. I think we may give it another year, hopefully we can do more field trips and really enjoy the flexibility of homeschooling. I also fear 1 would be bored in public school, I know everyone says their kid is smart but this girl really is advanced.
It was on my heart to homeschool before Covid but the pandemic really made it a no brainer. I have certainly learned a lot through teaching phonics and I wouldn’t trade the time I’ve had with my kids for the world. We probably won’t do it forever but for now, I like cuddling up on the couch for reading lessons and hearing their laughter as they play during breaks.
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