Homeschooling

Where to even start with this topic? When my husband and I first got married we were determined that we were going to homeschool our children. Fast forward 7 years, 1 year of homeschooling a kindergartener with 2 toddlers underfoot, and we were done. Into school for her the following year. That’s where I thought our homeschool journey would end.

Then COVID hit… we were mid-renovation in our yellow house and suddenly we had 4 kids at home (3 school-aged) and we were thrown full speed into homeschooling. Our school was a small private one and did print-off sheets for the kids to do at home every week which I preferred to the larger schools that did virtual learning. Boy was it stressful and a change of pace from puttering away at home on renovations. I absolutely hated it, like most parents I’m guessing.

With the pandemic came a big move for us from Alberta to British Columbia. We enrolled the kids in a smallish school for the area and sent them for a year. The following year was finally our year of freedom, ALL FOUR KIDS IN SCHOOL! We could both finally work and become a 2 income family. We’d been waiting for this day for many years!

Then came along those pesky mandates. Masks for kids in school. Sorry, but that's a hard no for us. I wouldn’t want to wear one for that long and it wasn’t fair to expect the kids to. We managed to do mask exemptions for the kids the previous year but our oldest was heading into middle school where they were crazy about masks and we didn’t want to send her into that environment. We decided that just pulling one kid wasn’t fair so we pulled them all, just until mandates were up...

1 month into homeschooling we found out we were expecting another baby. Now this was quite the SHOCK. Like I’m talking 5 years post vasectomy shock! 5 YEARS! Like what in the actual? We didn’t know this was a thing until we did some research and realized IT WAS entirely possible. Plans changed that day. We knew I would be tied down at home again with a baby so decided to just keep the kids home. Honestly, the biggest blessing ever. In the past 3 years, I cannot believe how bad the school system has gotten. We hold conservative values, while not being religious, and the agenda being pushed on the kids and families, heck all of society, is outrageous. Homeschooling is now in our plans for the rest of the kid's school life unless something changes drastically.

It’s actually great! We do so many fun things. The kids know how to communicate properly with adults, gone are the days of awkward and anti-social homeschool kids. The homeschool community here is HUGE and full of like-minded families. We get to embrace the kid's interests. Our oldest daughter, Rebekah, is co-writing a novel with another homeschool friend, our 11-year-old son has a YouTube channel where he shows his dirt biking and bike trick videos, Brooklyn loves to cook, bake and draw, and Jessika loves to sing and draw. I never knew my kids as well as I do now.

Their school journey honestly hadn't been great from split classes, teachers not fulfilling the grade level curriculum, bad experiences at the small Christian school they were at, and the list goes on. The summer after their last year in the school system I started seeing signs of our daughter having ADHD and it opened my eyes to why she was struggling in school and socially.

Nevertheless, homeschooling isn’t for everyone. It went hand in hand with our value system. It’s both a privilege and a HUGE sacrifice. My husband had to go work away for 2 years to have a high-paying job to support 5 kids and me not working. It was hard, to say the least.

It’s the journey we are on and we are embracing it. It doesn't have to be hard and you need to give yourself a LOT of grace the first couple years. A lot of my friends said it takes about 3 years to get into a groove and I feel that we are finally there. We even run a homeschool co-op at our house every Friday where I teach 9 kids Spanish and Science.

So there’s our little story. Stay tuned for curriculum picks in a future post!