I'm now nearing the end of my second year of homeschooling, something I NEVER NEEEHHHEEEVER thought I would do. Ever. In fact, if you'd have asked 17 year old me if I would ever subject my children to homeschool, I would have vomited in my mouth.

Never.

I loved the atmosphere of school. School worked for me. I loved playing, recess, friend circles, projects and mostly extra curricular activities.

So why am I homeschooling?

Lots of reasons, I guess, but here are my top 3:

1. When I was filling out Logan's dual-immersion kindergarten registration form, I received a very distinct prompting telling me I needed to homeschool. After that, not much more could be said.

This was my only reason to begin, besides a little bit of a curiosity after seeing some homeschooling friends and what their kids were like. These next two have followed as I've jumped headfirst into this lifestyle.

2. I want my children to love learning.

Not that public school squashes love of learning, but in many cases it does. And I don't want my kids to learn to read, I want them to love to read. I don't want them to learn math, I want them to love math. I loved learning until 8th grade, and then I hated it. I hated science and my p.e. teacher's worksheet-driven history class. In high school I loved friends, extra curriculars, but I hated most of the books I was required to read and I definitely hated math and science. I don't want the same for my kids.

3. A homeschool lifestyle is a less stressful one.

This sentence depends a lot on how one homeschools, but think about it. I don't have to wake my kids up at a certain time (although they wake up at seven every morning on the dot no matter what, merp), I don't have to nag them to get dressed, pack their backpacks, remember their homework, eat faster!, comb hair and get out the door for a 30 minute bus ride to a 7 hour school day. Nor do I have to pack or plan lunches. I'm also not sitting at the dinner table enduring hour-long (or more!) homework sessions only to be followed by rushing to sports, music lessons or parent teacher conferences. Trust me, a homeschooling lifestyle is a less stressful one, and I've learned to really enjoy full days with my kids.

Now, I'm not advocating homeschooling for everyone. It's not for everyone and had I not had such a strong spiritual conviction to do so, I might have quit my first year, because there are hard things about homeschooling. But it must be said that I spend less time actually "schooling" than my friends do just on homework with their children.

Here's a little bit of what our days look like:

7 am - When I sleep past my alarm, I hear the kids first stirring and playing and try and get a few more minutes of sleep before they come in and jump on me

7:30 am - Either Shane or I start breakfast, the kids help. Breakfast for us changes every day, as we have a schedule that Logan is strict about us adhering to it. The schedule inlcudes oats, eggs and toast, whole wheat pancakes, french toast and then Shane cooks special things like crepes or german pancakes on the weekends. Cold cereal on Sunday mornings.

8:00 am - Shane leaves for work. The kids and I work together to clear the table. I help the girls empty the dishwasher while Logan has chicken chores outside.

8:30 am - If we don't have an outing planned for the morning, we start our school. The kids get their books and coloring packets out. Every schooling session starts with a prayer and a few stories from our Bible reader. As Logan learns new phrases, words or concepts he's not familiar with, he writes them down with their definitions on strips of paper and puts them in a bowl on our table so we can draw them out at dinner time and discuss them with Shane.

Next we pull out the history book (currently I'm using Story of the World, book 2) and the kids color as I read. We then do our map work and review questions. Emmie sometimes will sit through a whole session with some playdough, but mostly she's either whining and sitting on my lap, pulling my hair or stripping off all of her clothes and getting into mischief. Clara will color in her history coloring books while I read until she's annoyed and then will either join in Emmie's mischief or play with some math manipulatives.

Lastly, we use our Cuisenaire rods and play with them a little bit. Logan has some simple worksheets to use with them, if he's in the mood, but most days they create patterns or houses or organize them in random variances.

If Logan's still in school mode, I'll pull out some handwriting for him to do (he's really into learning cursive these days, so he's pretty focused when learning) or he'll ask to read a few chapters from his Life of Fred books. He'll stay at the table and do this while I help the girls get dressed and clean their room and think about getting out of my sweats for the day.

9:30 - 10 am - We're all upstairs now and on most days, we get ready and get out of the house. Once a week we venture to the library. Sometimes we run an errand or meet a friend for lunch. On nice days we'll hit up a park.

Noon - We start lunch. Twice a week, Logan's in charge so I go upstairs to veg or sleep off pregnancy exhaustion while he and the girls plan and carry out their meal.

1-2 pm - Nap and quiet time. Emmie naps in my room while Clara and Logan are banned to their own rooms for quiet time. When I introduced this they HATED it, but I stuck with it and now they ask for it. At first, I got real idealistic (as I'm accustomed to do) and thought I'd make them read the whole time. Fail.

Clara plays quietly doing who knows what. Whenever I check on her, she's in her closet talking to herself with a stuffed animal in her hand.

Logan either reads (he's been really into comic books and Beverly Cleary lately), builds with legos, designs snap circuits, draws or writes little books and lists. We bought a CD/cassette player for him for Christmas so lately he's been listening to books on tape, too.

I set my timer for one hour and when they hear it ring, they rush into each other's rooms to show off their quiet time creations.

For the next hour or so until Emmie wakes, they play together.

3-ish pm - Emmie wakes up and we head outside in nice weather, or I'll read them our family book and some library books in bed. Or meet with friends. Or play games. I wish this time were a little more structured, but I'm usually scrambling to think of something to make dinner and trying to make my house presentable. I try and plan for Logan to have a friend come over once or twice a week. I start dinner, the kids beg to help. On good days, I'm patient and let them. On bad days, I send them outside to chase chickens and catch lizards.



5:30 pm - Shane's home, we sit down to eat.

7 pm - we all head upstairs, the kids get ready for bed and we meet back in our room for nightly devotional. We start with a song (we're currently learning some Spanish primary songs) and then recite our memorization. We use the Charlotte Mason memorization method, but I've expanded it to include not only scriptures, but poems, famous paintings, famous quotes and music. This method works wonders. Then Logan and Clara do some spelling and phonics flash cards, we read out of the Book of Mormon together and end with a family prayer. I think our kids learn more from this 15 minutes every day than they do from anything else.

After devotional the girls get a few books in their room and then are put to bed, which for them means play time. We still haven't figured out how to maneuver this whole sharing a room thing.

Logan and I read together out of one of his library chapter books he's picked or another classic I've picked (we're currently reading Little Men) or he works on some math with Shane, and then he's off to bed.

This is the longest post I've ever even attempted, so if you're still reading please stop and do something worthwhile.

I've always been a part of homeschool coop, mostly for my sanity and group activities. It was so hard to leave my amazing Utah homeschooling group, but I've found some fun groups here in NC. We just joined a new coop a few weeks ago. The kids meet once a week, Clara goes to a preschool class and Logan rotates between Art, Science, PE and Writing and they love it. They also meet regularly for field trips and other activities.

Now that I'm in my second year, I'm beginning to see how heavily the homeschooling pros outweigh the cons, but there are cons to consider, which I imagine are different for everyone. For me, homeschooling is hard in that:

- Very few of my close friends homeschool, which also means that very few of my kids' close friends homeschool. It's a little bit lonely because homeschooling is such a life shift and I have nothing to contribute to public school or charter school conversations or the woes thereof. My kids don't need new clothes and supplies every September. I have a lot of close friends whose children are all in school all day. And there I am with my three in tow all of the time. I still have really little kids, but I can see how this will get harder and harder as my kids get older. All of my friends will be alone all day and will I ever be alone? Again?

However, I see this as such a vain, selfish problem, so I won't entertain it. At least I try not to.

- Some states have awesome homeschooling laws, like Utah and Idaho. In North Carolina, if you homeschool, you need to stay out of the schools completely. That means if Logan wants to join a public school sports team in the future, he'll have to be fully enrolled. Neither Shane or I have decided whether or not we'll homeschool indefinitely, but I do want to always have the option. Therefore, when that time comes, we need to be living in a state that will allow my kids to be able to participate in any public school program or class without having to be fully enrolled.

- This is both a pro and a con, but there are more ways to homeschool than there are to skin a cat. Every homeschooler is different and there are thousands of different methods, curriculum, websites and lifestyles to adhere to. It can be a little overwhelming at first, trying to find your family's groove. I would call myself a Thomas Jefferson Education / Charlotte Mason / Pray every morning I'm not screwing my kids up homeschooler, but every month I feel like my methods change a little bit as I learn and pray more.

Phew! If you've made it this far, congratulations. I get questions all the time about homeschooling, and it's hard to put into words how I fully feel about it. Like I said, homeschooling is not for everyone, but I'm glad I was told it would be for me, because the longer I do it, the more I love it.