Transcript- EP12: Quick Tips to Encourage You to Homeschool

Amy: Well done, parent of a homeschooled child. It’s not easy.

Hi friends, and welcome. I’m your host AmyElizSmith. I’m a homeschool mom of three and have homeschooled each from the start. While I have a master’s in elementary ed, I want to teach other mamas that you don’t need a fancy degree to have the passion and knowledge to successfully educate your children from home.

I hope to bring you encouragement to jump in and start your homeschool journey and provide my absolute best recommendations to help you begin your homeschool journey. Thanks for joining us along for this crazy, messy grace-filled homeschool ride.

Hi everyone and welcome back. I am so thrilled to be giving you some quick tips to encourage you to start homeschool today. So let’s start with asking for help and finding a community of women who can encourage you. This is vital. We talked a little bit during our series of 10 Reasons Why You Can Homeschool that sometimes your family or friends might not necessarily agree or understand your decision to homeschool.

So finding a group of women who have gone before you and can become your peer group can be so vital in supporting your choices, you can ask them questions, get some answers, just get support and community. It can be such a wonderful time. So this is when a group can transfer from a playgroup that you’ve maybe used for your babies and toddlers and early preschoolers into a homeschool peer group.

And I’ve experienced this in my own journey that we had playgroups, many friends, some of those friends have chosen to homeschool and we continue to homeschool alongside them today. But some went off to government school and we don’t see them as much. And that’s, and that’s sad for us. But those playgroup, that time was so wonderful and I am a huge advocate for play before six years old.

Not pressuring our children into academics, but having some time, and it doesn’t have to be weekly, it could be monthly. Maybe you gather together for coffee or an evening out. I love having evenings out with the girls, but also if you’re not ready to have a group, if it takes too much of your time, if it becomes a stressful thing, know that you’re able to say no.

Don’t overcommit yourself just yet, or ever. And it truly is empowering to be able to say no, because every time you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. And that thing that you might be saying no to might be much more important than the thing you said yes to. Having a community or having an older woman who has walked before you just on a quick phone call or a text, can be so, so important. I do encourage you to at some point, and in some way, get in touch with that type of person.

Next for another tip on starting homeschool today, and just some things you should do is taking care of yourself. You want to make sure that you’re getting enough rest, make sure that you’re eating healthy.

These things can sometimes be forgotten. As moms, our children get all of us, and then there’s nothing left for ourselves. But I just encourage you to, while sleeping and eating is number one, taking that outdoor time that you’re giving your own kids, sitting outside and opening up a book, having those reading breaks can be so, so vital.

Those reading breaks can be done in the middle of your kitchen or your living room. I always like to have several books. And those times when I maybe wanna reach for my phone, I like to have my book there instead. And even if I only get through one sentence or half a page, that was better than the scroll, the dreaded scroll.

But that’s a way I’ve been able to take care of myself and adapted that mother culture that Charlotte Mason talked about. That can be so, so important. Billy Graham has a great quote. He said “Mothers should cultivate their souls that in turn they may cultivate the souls of their children.” That is so true.

If you are not being edified by something beautiful and wise and good, then it’s going to be hard for you to give that to your children and give your all to your children in whatever you’re learning. Now, I should also say that if you’re homeschooling and hopefully you’re homeschooling with beautiful living books and stories, then you’re going to be enriched by all of those things.

And that’s another reason why to homeschool is that you learn alongside your children. But apart from the learning with the children, and Karen Andreola talks about this in depth in her amazing book, The Charlotte Mason Companion. She said, “Besides my Bible, I always keep three books going that are just for me: a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel, and I always take up the one that I feel fit for.”

And that is kind of what I’ve done. I like to have a so-called stiff book, whether that’s Jane Air or Men of Iron by Howard Pile. Those are some of the things I’m picking up right now. I’d like to read fun and fast novels, but I also like to read books that help me in other ways. I’m reading Own Your Life by Sally Clarkson.

Or Overcoming Oppositional Defiant Disorder has been a reread for me constantly. I read a page of it every morning, giving myself some notes for how I can improve my parenting, and that’s been a challenge in my own life. But, A way that I’ve been able to overcome is to cultivate this mother culture for myself.

Also, of course, reading our Bible. I also have a book called Prayers of an Excellent Wife, which I highly recommend. In addition to having loads of books on Audible or Hoopla. Hoopla is an amazing app that I discovered way too late. I wish I had known about it sooner. Probably many of you know about it, but it’s attached to my local library and I’m able to rent out books for three weeks at a time.

And many of those books that I would’ve wanted to maybe purchase on Audible, I’m able to get for free now. So I’m thrilled about that. And reading a lot of great, great books, and I always have a book going. Again, a better way to spend our time than scrolling at our phones, and that can give us a break in taking care of ourselves.

Another quick tip is to have fun with learning and to go places fun. This can be museums in your community. It can be nature walks. It can be some of the places that you may never have thought of or sought out. Many community parks put on programs, or they’ll do special programs for homeschool groups.

Even if you’d only have two families, two or three families involved, you can make history come alive with some of these things. But I do wanna encourage you that you don’t need to do too much. Being home for your walks, walking around your backyard, walking around your neighborhood is valuable. So don’t feel like in order for your child to have this amazing educational experience, they have to do all the things every day.

Make sure to take those days off. So this is another tip– take days off. The grocery trip can be learning, your days of no planning can actually just produce so much fruit. Our family is reading The Wing Feather Saga via Audible, and Andrew Peterson does such an amazing job with narration. My girls are doing painting or creating beautiful art projects or my daughter is knitting right now.

My son can listen and it’s just a wonderful time. Sometimes if we get done with schoolwork early, we often try to do our schoolwork in the morning. We will just listen to a book all afternoon and it’s just a great, great time. We don’t have to go somewhere to have a really highly educational and fulfilling day.

Having fun with learning can also include a fun picnic or having a spontaneous trip. All learning is not just seat work. Also I should add that boredom is fine and it is good, and it is so important for children to have that masterly inactivity so that they can rule their own lives sometimes, and embrace the boredom, embrace good choices while they’re young, while you are helping them cultivate those decisions.

Another quick tip is to compliment your children. Tell them how much you love them. Tell them how much you enjoy spending your days with them, that you wanna be there with them. And sometimes I will admit this has been hard but I’ve been wanting to do this more and more to compliment my kids. Even having a gratitude journal, writing those things down that we’re grateful for and saying them aloud can be so valuable.

My high needs child needs constant compliments and working with that child is every single day. Cultivating that relationship of fighting for that relationship, fighting for that child has been so important. Also just shaped me as a person and not only as a mother. Sitting down with our kids, playing with them.

That’s not my strong suit, but that is so valuable and those memories will be brought with them into their adulthood. So next tip is just a reminder. You will mess up, but you will learn and you will keep going. You will make big mistakes. Guaranteed. I have made big mistakes. But you can walk in knowing, that you will overcome those battles and you as a family, as a knit family, are stronger for those mistakes.

Jump into homeschooling. Do not feel like everything can be perfect or will be perfect. It never will be. You will make mistakes. Your kids will make mistakes, but you are walking alongside together and that truly is so, so beautiful. You can be proud of that and our God in heaven is proud of that too.

Next tip is that all education does have so-called gaps. So please do not question everything that you’re not gonna cover, everything that your child might need to know with this said or the other. Now, math, math is important and it’s black and white. It’s a, it’s a subject that they need to know, but other things, you don’t need to worry.

Okay. Don’t let the naysayers point out that your child won’t know everything that they’ll learn in public school. Well, that’s the point. That’s why my kids aren’t in government school because I don’t want them to learn everything they would’ve learned in public school. But they will learn the great wisdom of old, they will have a liberal arts education that will be a foundation for the people they’ll become into adulthood. For example, reading biographies and history learning for our Charlotte Mason curriculum has really built them up and will be just that strong foundation. Again, all education has so-called gaps. You don’t need to fit your state’s content level expectations. Now, different states do have different laws, so you do wanna look into those, but you get to decide what your child will be learning.

Next tip is what your child needs to know is up to you. Like what I just said. They do need to learn other things that aren’t taught in government schools right now. That solid math curriculum is so important, but the things of old that have been tossed to the wayside, like proper penmanship and cursive is so foundational to actually brain development and those neurons being formed.

You get to decide the importance of each of those things. All education will be different, but now know that that’s actually up to you. I love this. I love that I get to decide and there was a time when I thought I could get through so, so much and that I thought I could read every single book on every topic that we were going through.

But instead, we’ve gotten and we’ve learned to go slower in our journey and savor things more. Read less books, but read more of them. And I’m gonna go through that more with our educational philosophies and some things that we’ve chosen, which is primarily the tenants and the core philosophies that Charlotte Mason put out.

But truly, you get to decide, please take counsel. What I mentioned firstly, is to talk to someone about it, whether you have questions, but learning along the way is fine and that’s normal. And know that, if any mentor that you take on, she has gone before, she’s made those mistakes, but yet even knowing that there have been gaps she’s been able to choose and her children were certainly probably grateful for.

Next quick tip is to know homeschool does not look like public or private school, so do not feel like it has to look that way. Your school can look any way you want. I always like to recommend to jump into lessons first thing in the morning because we are fresher in the morning. Our brains work, and this is scientific.

I don’t have a study to quote for you, but our brains work best in the morning. So have that morning meeting, have their lessons in front of them. However they work. For my children, I put their workout at night so when they wake up, they’re fresh and they’re able to choose that work. And they know that when they finish their work, they’re able to go on to their own personal choices and what their interests are.

We also have a morning meeting. We also have our Bible time and history and science that we do all together. And I love that multi-age learning, but again, it doesn’t look like school because they’re not sitting in desks. I’m not in front of a chalkboard or a whiteboard telling them what to do or write or think.

You don’t have to recreate a school vibe because your child isn’t in a classroom with 30 peers, so that’s impossible. Now, some educational philosophies that are more traditional, they will have more desk style workbook style textbooks, but I would argue, and it’s fine to do those. But I would argue that education can be more than just sitting down at a textbook.

I would argue living books and narrating things rather than question answer could be more valuable than just answering workbooks and textbooks. But we’re gonna go over more educational philosophies in more detail. But again, you don’t need to create public school at home.

Second to last quick tip. Your child is being homeschooled perhaps because you don’t want that influence of a belief system that is not your own and that is secular humanism. You want them to learn the core subjects. You want to be that primary spiritual influence in your child’s life. You want to give them time to move, time to eat.

All of these things are reasons why you don’t want them in the government schools, and you can be proud of that fact. Again, we’re going back to being confident about our choices and just really having that mindset of this is what’s right for our family, and being able to not only defend it, but to be proactive and when we’re talking about it.

Lastly, if you are letting the Holy Spirit guide you and ultimately be your child’s teacher, then that is what homeschool is all about. Charlotte Mason said, “God, the Holy Spirit is Himself, the supreme educator of mankind.” And this according to Charlotte Mason, is what she called the great recognition. She goes on, “We as parents and teachers find ourselves in divine cooperation with the Holy Spirit in the direction teaching and training of the child, and when practiced, our feet are set in a large room. There is space for free development in all directions, and this free and joyous develop. Whether of intellect or heart is recognized as godward movement.”

Charlotte Mason stated that we do not merely give a religious education because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example, but we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above. That the culmination of all education is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection.

Charlotte Mason expressed that a liberal arts and classical education was all true knowledge, and that’s from the Holy Spirit, regardless of whether or not the person recognizes it. This is from divine inspiration. She quotes Isaiah 28:26 which says “His God doth instruct him and doth teach him.” Philippians 1:6 states, “and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

And Matthew 25:21 says, “oh, that one day we may hear our Lord Christ say, well done by good and faithful servant.” Well done parent of a homeschooled child. It’s not easy, but hopefully these quick tips, these quick encouragements were helpful to you today for you to start homeschool, for you to make that decision, and for you to keep going because you can do this friend.