3 Things I Learned My First Year of Homeschooling

Our “official” first year of homeschooling went down in the books in the fall of 2013.  Our final day of school was May 22nd, 2014.  Whew!  What a year!

I started off strong and full of ideas that required a lot more planning on my part. I was trying to find and do a craft every day to go with either our history or science lessons.

Yeah, I was being an overachiever. Add all my lesson planning for my co-op and a baby on the move, and this mama got burnt out!  So, all the extra plans got thrown out the window by Christmas, even attending the second term of co-op.

From there we took a nice, long 3-week winter break. We celebrated birthdays, read books, enjoyed the holidays, and just spent some quality family time with each other.

Once we got back into school, we took things a bit slower and we weren’t as rigid with our schedule.  We learned to work around and take advantage of when little brother was napping.  We embraced snowy days and played.  If needed, we took a day off during the week and used the weekend to catch up.

And in the end, we did it!  We successfully completed our first year of homeschooling and we all survived it.  And go figure, we did it again the next year and are still doing it!

My Biggest Blessing: My son. God blessed me with a child that loves to learn and who was always ready to jump into his school work.  He enjoyed all his lessons, nothing bored him.  The only complaints were few and far between and usually were related to copy work.

My Biggest Struggle: Me, plain and simple.  I’m a planner and can quickly become frustrated, irritated, and impatient when things aren’t going according to plan.  I get a mindset on how things should go and miss out on the freedom of homeschool.  The freedom to stop to dig deeper, to pause and see the wonder, and to soak in moments of time God has given me with these boys.

All in all, I learned 3 important lessons this year:

• I don’t have to do it all.
• Flexibility is a must.
• Patience is a virtue…and I need more of it.

How did your year go?

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