Laura's Life

Tell Us About Your Homeschooling Life and Experiences

What have you learned about yourself through the process of homeschooling? To be humble! To find that there is joy in just being with my kids, going through life’s routines.
What have you found the most difficult within the home/outside influence or comments? I find most people extremely supportive of homeschooling. I’m happy to be surrounded by so many people who have experience at this.
A typical day in your life goes something like this..... The following is more or less “typical” for us.
November 4, 2009
Gymnastics this morning with friends. Both kids really enjoy the class and are responding well to their instructors.
We read a bunch of paperback library books back to back. Ryan will do a Click N Read phonics lesson before he's allowed to watch Treehouse this afternoon.
They watched Bill Nye on Germs. Ryan chose a science book all about sharks, so we read a few pages and saved the rest for later.
Ryan is building complicated Tinkertoy structures complete with rigged catapults.

I take both kids with me to get groceries and do errands. They love to help with cooking and cleanup. This is more complicated of course, but it’s important for them to find satisfaction in routine chores and tasks.

What has been your biggest surprise/enjoyment in homeschooling? The surprise was how easy it was to include a younger sibling in school activities. Kiana loves sitting with us and working on her own little projects. And she catches on to things that I’m teaching Ryan, and he loves teaching her from his vantage point as “big brother”.
What do you wish someone had told you when you embarked on this process? I wish I’d either gone totally traditional or else signed up for a curriculum where all you need to do is the assigned pages for any given day. I’m sort of in between and I have no past experience to gauge our progress.
What general category of schooling does your family fall into? We are aiming to meet provincial standards, but our school time is rather informal. We might be reading books in front of the fire, making things out of math cubes, perhaps doing some workbook pages – whatever works for this day.
Describe your first year in the trenches? This is our first year trying to meet provincial standards and I would say I’m a little uncertain about “where we are”, as we haven’t had a formal meeting with a facilitator yet. I am working on the balance between “doing enough school” and letting Ryan just be himself and play like the five year old he still is.
What were some main factors to why you decided to homeschool? I saw the difference in quality of life between my two homeschooled siblings and us three older kids who went to school. Not that there was perfect peace and happiness at all times, but there were so many REAL LIFE experiences they enjoyed because they weren’t tied to a school bus schedule and the confines of a classroom.
How long have you been homeschooling? Officially since September 1 of this year, but unofficially since my kids were born.