5 Lessons I Learned This Homeschool Year

A couple of weeks ago I finished out another homeschool year and, just as I do at the close of every year, I’m reviewing and analyzing and figuring out just what worked and what didn’t.  I’m always learning lessons of my own as I work to educate my kids, and I try very hard to apply what I learn to my future homeschooling plans.

So what did I learn this year?  A lot of things, really, but here are the 5 biggest lessons I’m taking away from the 2017-2018 school year.

 

1. Some homeschool years present uniquely challenging circumstances.  But just because one year, (or even TWO!) is really tough doesn’t mean they all will be!    

You just have to understand what school was like for us in the 2016-2017 year.  That last year was CHAOS.  We searched and searched for a new home, put our old house on the market, endured a mostly miserable selling/closing process, and then went through the utter pandemonium of moving to a new house in a new town — all during the school months. 

Though my kids never stopped learning through all of it, I will confess I often felt like we were surviving homeschool, certainly not thriving at it.  And, can I be honest?  The year before that may have been even worse for other, very different reasons.  

But you know what?  Crazy years don’t last forever.  

This year we settled right into a new school year in our new house and things went much more the way I had hoped to see them go.  They weren’t perfect, (no school year ever is!) but what happened last year didn’t keep us from being able to establish a routine this year and come to a (mostly) successful end.

 

2. Reading out loud is important to our homeschool, no matter how old my kids get.

In last year’s chaos we got out of the habit of daily read aloud.  Letting it go for a time was at least somewhat necessary, and there’s no question it freed up a fair amount of time in our homeschool day. 

But I forgot how much we all enjoy it!  

This year I wasn’t certain I would go back to regular read alouds for the sake of time.  My kids are plenty old enough to read for themselves, after all, but we had one book we had started reading together and never finished, and so I thought we should at least complete it.  We did, and it made me want to start another book.  We read that book and the kids loved it!  I chose another book then, and we may have enjoyed it more than any other book we’ve ever read together!  

Sharing books as a family, no matter how old my kids are, is a beautiful thing.  Yes, older kids can read on their own and they should do so, but reading out loud together is such a fun family activity, not to mention the way it seems to fuel their interest in books and benefit their comprehension and vocabulary.  

This year has taught me that reading out loud is really worth the extra time it adds to my homeschool day.

 

3. A homeschool group can open up a whole new world of information and opportunity.

Is it okay to admit I was a little afraid of involvement in a larger homeschool group?  For one, I’ve heard some scary stories about cliques and even bullying in homeschool groups that reminded me an awful lot of my days in public middle school.  But maybe even worse, I’ve also heard tales of rigid participation rules, attendance requirements, and academic rigors that made me cringe.  

Seriously?  Where’s the homeschooling freedom in all of that??

But I decided to really step out of my comfort zone this year and join a large area homeschool group.  And it has been a wonderful experience!  While I’m not shy, I am introverted, and so this was a big step for me, but I’ve met some great moms and been made aware of events, activities, and opportunities for me and my kids I may have never known about any other way.   

 

4. Incorporating a regularly weekly activity into our routine was very doable.  And it was so worth it!

Honestly, my routine is my sanity.  When I learned about a local Community Bible Study class in our town, (through the homeschool group I just mentioned,) I was intrigued, but petrified to commit to anything that might throw a kink in my beloved routine.  It was just one morning a week, but how would it affect school the rest of the week?  And the study itself had to be done daily as a part of regular schoolwork.  How would I ever manage to get everything done?

But our first year of CBS was a wonderful thing.  I loved it, my kids loved it, and it wasn’t nearly so difficult to fit it into the schedule as I first feared.  When you enjoy something and consider it worthwhile, you really can find a way to make it work.  

Studying the Bible together in this way was priceless, and making new friends and enjoying Christian fellowship was a blessing to our family.  Not to mention it counted as an elective for my kids!

 

5. For the most part, I can trust my instincts when it comes to pushing encouraging my kids outside of their comfort zone.

I come face-to-face with my kids’ weaknesses on a daily basis, but I’m pretty familiar with their strengths, too.  When I see a certain aptitude in my child, I’m usually right to give them a gentle shove in the direction of something that might encourage and grow it.  

Through that awesome homeschool group I mentioned before, I learned about TeenPact, and every little detail I heard did only more to convince me that this was something my oldest daughter needed to participate in.  

She was not unwilling, but she was petrified, and yet somehow I knew it would be an amazing experience for her.  Honestly, it was life-changing.  And she loved every minute of it!

Sometimes I forget it, or perhaps I just doubt it, but I really do know my children.  And more often than not I am attuned to what is good for them — what exercise or opportunity might push them beyond themselves and help them discover strengths and capabilities they didn’t even know they had!  Saying no to things because they are uncomfortable or unfamiliar to them, (or to me!) is a grievous mistake.  

Were there more lessons I learned than that?  Oh, absolutely!  But these are the areas where I feel I’ve learned the most this year.  Now to enjoy my summer and start looking ahead to my 10th year of homeschooling come fall…