Things I learned though our first year of Homeschooling.

1. Less is more

In the beginning I felt like I needed to stock up on everything. I needed more curriculum, more books, more projects, more, more, more. That was a huge mistake. I ended up with a ton of stuff, and a ton of expectations put on myself. Not to mention a lot of unfinished books, projects, etc.

Over time I became more comfortable in my ability to teach my children, and realized I didn’t need so much stuff! I was over compensating for my own insecurity. We have far less stuff now, and my children finish their lessons more happily, and remember more, because we are less stressed and more organized.

2. Everything is educational

Lessons don't end when the books close. There are lessons everywhere. You name it you can make a lesson out of it. Cooking is not only math but science, home economics, and health.

Laundry is not only home economics its math, science, engineering, (if your dryer breaks like ours did…LESSON!) You get the idea. lessons are everywhere, not just in the books.

3. Use what they love

My kids love Legos. This makes math, read-aloud, science, even dictation more fun. Incorporating Legos into our homeschool has been amazing. We build and listen to audio books, use mini figures to show characters from books and recreate the story in my kid's own words to show their reading comprehension, and search for fun lego electronics to build during our electricity unit in science.

4. Combine as much as possible

Combining subjects has allowed us to incorporate more without seeming like more. I think of it as sneaking vegetables into my kids food. They get what they need and they don’t even know it. We combine literature and handwriting by assigning copy work from what they just read or listened to. This also helps with reading comprehension. We combine Bible study and art by letting the kids doodle or paint while we read a few verses and discuss them. Our curriculum combines Language Arts, Art, Poetry, Writing, Spelling, and Geography into short memorable lessons.

5. The schedule is loose

This was the hardest part for me. I am a very ridged scheduler. If it's on the list it must be done! Well this doesn't work well in our season of life. I have actually come to enjoy a "loose schedule" or a loop schedule. I tend to forget that one of the blessings of homeschooling is being able to allow my kids to experience life on a daily basis not necessarily bound by a strict schedule. My personal catch 22 is that I like a strict schedule. With a loop schedule missing a music lesson doesn’t mean that we are behind and need to add another week onto the end of our "school year" it just means we will pick up where we left off, and the sun will still rise tomorrow. It's not the end of the world.

My thoughts of what our homeschool life would look like before we started compared to what it actually looks like is much different. I'm happy to have tried approaches throughout our first year to find what really fits us.

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