Year One: A Blessing
By Alison Stoner
Our first year of homeschooling is coming to an end and that has left me in a very reflective frame of mind. For years I dreamed of homeschooling my children. The 2020 pandemic school closures were actually a beautiful time for my family. As the new school year inched closer and talk of what school life would be like upon reopening, I had decided I wasn’t going to send them back. I didn’t like the idea of my little people being in masks all day and not being able to hug their teachers or classmates. Plus, I loved the time we got to spend together at home.
But then I got pregnant. And with this pregnancy brought intense morning sickness. I vividly remember lying on the couch and having to ask Emma (who was only 7 years old at the time) to make sandwiches for dinner and to look after Kate (age 2) until dad got home.
Because I was so sick, I couldn’t justify keeping them home. It wouldn’t have been a great time for us to begin our homeschool journey.
But then God kept them in school for many years longer. Each year I’d pray about homeschooling, and year after year, it was a clear “not right now” answer in response.
I was frustrated and annoyed with the Lord. “Why does so-and-so get to homeschool but you’re not letting me?” I whined to Him like a baby more times than I’m proud to admit.
Looking back on all that’s happened the last few years I can see why He was making me wait.
His timing is always perfect. Our testimony to homeschooling is yet another reminder of that to me.
So, now that we’ve got a year under our belts, how do I feel?
Blessed is the simple answer.
This year was beautiful in so many ways and I will always be grateful for it.
The flexibility that has come with homeschooling the children is the biggest blessing from the year. We got to take time off when we needed it the most - for vacations, time with family, and when we needed to take an extended time off in the winter to care for my husband’s medical needs. I was able to be flexible with their curriculum as well; taking more time in certain areas and skipping over some other areas that they had already mastered. Our mornings have been gloriously slow with later wake ups, finishing a hot cup of coffee, and it’s been our favorite time of day for family chit-chats and imaginative play.
This flexibility has been key in preventing burnout for both my students and myself as a teacher. The ability to break when needed provides us with times of refreshing according to our body’s needs rather than when the calendar dictates it. As a result, we all feel it’s best to continue on schooling in the summer! I was shocked when the kids didn’t meet me with tons of grumbles when I suggested it, and actually agreed it would be a good thing to merge wrapping up current curriculum, shifting to review, and easing into our new lessons even before the “start” of the new school year.
The main reason I wanted to homeschool was that I wanted us to make more memories together as a family. This has certainly been a huge blessing this last year. Despite spending months taking it easy, we took memorable trips to Lake Superior, the Outer Banks, and the Holland Tulip Festival. We spent extended periods of time up north (Michigan) with family. We were able to go on field trips to Sauder Village, the Toledo Zoo, Legoland, and more. These outings will be times that my kids think back on often as they grow up. I can hear the “remember whens” already…
Aside from the trips, so many memories were made within our four walls. We kicked off the school year with matching sweatsuits and the kids still wear them (all together, of course) all the time - it was such a little thing that was a crucial bonding thing for them. My kids have also all grown closer with one another and it’s such a beautiful thing to watch. My two oldest have often battled with one another (and was a concern of mine as we stepped into this school year), but I have seen them start a new chapter in their relationship this year and I am so confident that they will be lifelong friends.
Lastly (at least for the sake of this blog post), taking control over my kids’ education has been such a blessing for me.
I wasn’t unhappy with the education my kids were receiving at the public school they were at.
The school had wonderful teachers and administration, and honestly, they were doing well academically. But I still recognized there was a disconnect. The most glaring thing they were missing was a Christian education. We attend church every Sunday, pray as a family, and have read the Bible with our kids for years, but it still wasn’t all I was hoping for in discipling my children. Through attending Community Bible Study, my kids were able to take a deeper dive into the Word of God both at home with me, as well as with their peers.
Additionally, right out the gate, I recognized some gaps in my kids’ confidence in some areas. While my kids were doing well enough in school to pass along to the next topic, it was clear that some areas hadn’t been mastered. Because of this, we spent a lot of the first month of school reviewing some key areas, and then took it slower throughout the year when I saw that they needed more time with something. The beauty of homeschooling is that I get to design their day-to-day lessons and I don’t have to feel the same stress and pressure as teachers to check all the boxes and ensure everything dictated by the state gets taught in a given timeframe. They are by no means falling behind their grade levels, and I’m not skipping over anything crucial.
I do believe that moving at a slower pace and reviewing as we move along is setting them much for much greater success than they would have experienced working at the pace they were going at while in school.
While this year was successful in many ways, there are still some areas I’d really like to improve on as we start year two! Before we started homeschooling, we did a lot of family read alouds. I envisioned this being a huge part of our homeschooling, but it got cast aside by all the other curriculum. I have greatly missed this read aloud time and am making it a goal to incorporate more into our schooling next year. We will also be making changes to some of the curriculum we used because it was clear that some stuff worked really well for my kids while some curriculum did not suit us well. (I won’t go into detail here but if you’d like to discuss curriculum options more, don't be afraid to reach out!) I will also be making it a goal to plan holiday parties for our homeschool friends this next year. Holiday parties are a big deal in the public school system, and my kids LOVED the parties (and I did too if I’m honest). Some holidays I did up more than others, but none of our celebrations included friends and that’s something we plan to change for next year!
My oldest children were reluctant to start homeschooling so I started this school year out by simply asking them to give it a shot for one year. If it went horribly bad, I wasn’t going to be too proud to tell them that they were right and send them back to school. But, as we wrap up this year, the questions I received were not “can we go back to school next year?” but rather, “can we do more of this (insert their own brilliant suggestion) next year?” This alone tells me that this year was a success. This is the blessing.