Last week, I asked my daughter to reflect on our homeschool year and give me some of her thoughts (always a risk). She quickly responded wrapping up the entire year with the memory of me saying to her “Mila you are NOT even trying!”
Granted, those words were spoken over the course of the year. A handful of times. She copied the tone, as well, which was spot on. Frustrated and annoyed. For the record, she really wasn’t trying.
It doesn’t shock me she looked back at our year like this- although rationally I know we had a million more wonderful moments together of learning and growing.
But the truth is that there were some really hard points, some harsh words occasionally, and days I thought (and said to my husband) that I couldn’t do it anymore.
To be frank, I was not looking forward to the season of homeschooling. I enjoyed the glory days of my “Stay at Home Mom” toddler and baby years to the fullest.
I am confident in this decision for our family, but I viewed this as being the year I lost my freedom in a lot of ways.
Things around here had finally started feeling easier! My youngest was 2 and much more independent. My kids sometimes played together!
I have shared with some people that in some ways, the first few months of homeschooling felt like adding another baby to the family. The baby was named Teaching Your Daughter to Read While Parenting a Toddler at the Same Time.
Over the last 5 years of “just” being Mom, I loved to pack in things to fill our days. We did play dates and museums and zoo trips. I hung out all morning in friends’ living rooms drinking coffee. We went to every park we could and took on the world together. Our schedule was ours and we did whatever we wanted!
And of course, that hasn’t completely changed; we still do all of those things! The flexibility of homeschooling is amazing and I could technically fill our days exactly as they used to be, but now the priority needs to be educating her. I have learned to protect our schedule in a way I didn’t have to before. The name of the game was enjoy our day and mess up the house as minimally as possible in those early years. Now, there’s reading and spelling and writing and math.
Our first year was incredible and the first year was hard, but mostly because of me (lol). Technically, I did a preschool program with Mila when she was 3, and learned some micro versions of these lessons back then, but to keep things exciting I apparently decided to forget that being a stressed out lunatic even back then didn’t benefit anyone and I needed to learn it in a deeper way!
I am going to write a few posts about this first official year, but wanted to start first with the parts of the year – the lowlights if you will- that I found to be the most challenging and as my sister-in-law says, “character building.”
- My own rigidity
This summer, I was so stressed about scheduling our days. I tried to imagine where art and gym and Spanish and Bible lessons would fit in along with our core subjects. Art could be Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 10am! Spanish lessons after lunch 2 times a week. Planned PE activities!
What I quickly learned is that while there are definitely things I schedule and plan for (math and language arts and recently science), the rest of the things happen so unbelievably naturally. Instead of Art class at scheduled times, Mila draws a portrait for 20 minutes after breakfast and turns a mistake into a masterpiece. She fills the driveway with chalk art. At 6:15 on a Friday evening, the kids get out the watercolor. We paint and listen to music. She loves art tutorials and makes her own comics with little stories. This is a huge passion area for her, so in the future I would love to find ways to support her with something more formal, but for now, her interest and excitement in art has been cultivated completely naturally.
Chasing the homeschooled neighbors around the trampoline and going for walks in the neighborhood – gym. Playing Floor is Lava in the living room, moving our bodies to workout videos, uncountable park trips. So much movement and time to play!
The teacher in me wanted art to be Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-2:45. The homeschool mom in me realizes art is getting out the paints with no instructions Friday before dinner counts, too. I had to release myself from my own rigidity- and that was really challenging. Once I did, I found there was so much more freedom!
2. Figuring out the schedule
There are a handful of ways that being a former educator has actually been a detriment to me. I was told to prepare for this! My kids and I do have a rhythm and routine we typically follow, but I found I was allowing it to master us. I was a drill sergeant, trying to get everything done before 11 am so we could “enjoy the day”. The “finish school and play later” hung over me like a cloud. Saving a part of school for later in the afternoon and going to the store or a friend’s house before finishing up felt so scandalous!
This mindset took away so much joy and peace from my home in the mornings. The kids both needed breaks but I would push us to complete it all instead of pacing the day to work for us. I also just tried to do too much in general, but that “I tried to do too much” could be added to my list of memoir titles.
We have adjusted and adjusted and adjusted again, but by the end of the school year, we have a wonderful rhythm worked out. We do math, read aloud and science in the morning, and reading instruction and writing in the afternoon after they’ve eaten and had a long stretch to play. After lunch, my son is more apt to play independently, so Mila and I will get a chance to do her reading lesson and activities.
I also quickly realized I had to cut back on commitments, which was hard for me. If I see a few open days on the calendar, I feel lazy and like I should plan something. But often, those days were the absolute best days. We did lots of things this year, but I realized that I cannot plan play dates multiple days and museum and zoo trips and park visits and errand afternoons all in one week. The best days really were the slow days without plans and spent mostly at home. That meant slowing down. And a much messier house.
3. The toddler
I want to preface this by saying my 3 year old son has done AMAZING. He has exceeded my expectations in every way this school year as I focused way more energy on his older sister during school time, but it has looked different than I thought.
At the beginning of the year, I imagined my son, who was 2 at the time, would play with Magnatiles quietly and do “independent toddler activities” while I did school with my daughter. The internet said the toddlers play for hours with those “busy baskets!”
But as we started school, we quickly realized that my son was going to school with us every single day. Anything else was of UTMOST disrespect to him. He was truly insulted thinking he wouldn’t be joining us at the table.
So during math, I gave him one of Mila’s old workbook and he colors in it aggressively and adorably. He sometimes participates if we are doing something that interests him, but often he just joins and chats and makes himself a part of the whole thing.
We started the year with a plan to have my husband go into work late once a week during the school year to occupy my son so that I could do more focused work with Mila. We quickly realized that would not be needed. How dare we insinuate he could play in the basement with Dad and that he doesn’t have important school work to do? “I do school, too!” he protests.
There are desperate times this does not go well and Mila and I are frustrated and overstimulated, and we allow him to watch a show, but most of the time he hangs with us all morning.
During our phonics time in the afternoon, James does usually play somewhere in his room or the living room. This is a time Mila needs to concentrate deeply and I try to protect it. So far, this has worked after lunch when he’s full and more ready for alone time after spending all morning with us!
4. Not giving myself rest
I did know it was going to be an adjustment, but I was not prepared for how it would change the structure of the day and my role in the home. I had a very strong routine I was used to and homeschool changed it. Like when I brought my second baby home, my days suddenly looked and felt different.
Homeschooling has shifted what our days feel like, how much and what I can get done around the home, and often it is hard to know I just cannot do what I used to be able to do. It didn’t stop me from trying, though!
It is hard to homeschool when I see crumbs on the ground and a sink full of dishes. The standards for my home have had to change. How much I can produce and do, and what kind and how many close relationships I can maintain has also changed.
Just like bringing a baby home, my capacity has been lowered. I have less free time than I have ever had, yet I am trying to do more than I ever had. I have been living in a constant state of productivity…always pushing myself to do more.
As I reflect back on the year, this is actually the number one thing I am going to pray about and figure out for next year, when I will also be doing preschool with James. Something has to change internally, and the Lord is currently teaching me a lot about what it means to truly rest. I did not rest well this year and my body and my brain feel it as we finish the year.
5. The Pressure I Put on Myself
At the beginning of the year, the idea of teaching my daughter to read felt like climbing Mount Everest. I was so overwhelmed by the enormity of this task. Yet, even when she started reading, the pressure wasn’t relieved- the topic just changed. Was I doing enough subjects, enough time, enough experiments, enough fun, enough joy, enough writing?
Enough, enough, enough.
It was never enough, and I was never enough. The only person putting pressure on myself was me, and I was ruthless. My friends told me to chill out. My husband told me to take it easier. But I was a train barreling down the tracks of DOING ENOUGH and wouldn’t consider another way.
This is tied in to my lack of rest this year, but this is another area the Lord is working on in me. I want to be able to homeschool with joy and peace in my heart, and while this year was incredible and my daughter learned so much, I can’t say I homeschooled from a place of peace, and ultimately that is my true lowlight. I want to spend the summer truly resting and being restored, learning new habits and mindsets so when I go into next year, that will be different.
I am so grateful for the beautiful children God has entrusted to my care, and for however long I educate them, I want it to be a time of peace for all of us. And while my daughter is known for some unhinged opinions, years down the road, my hope is that our homeschool memories will be full of joy and fondness as we look back. I do feel like I learned the “hard way” this year, as I dealt with a lot of overwhelm and stress. However, they were lessons that needed to be learned. I wonder if the “hard way” was simply the start of something I had never done before and the near unavoidable growing pains that come with something new. Or, I could have just listened to my husband and chilled out and avoided all of that. We will never know!
Anyways, Stay tuned for a post full of the HIGHLIGHTS! of our first Homeschool year 🙂 For now, here are some pictures of some of our moments learning together.
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