It's Been A Long Time

As most of you know, we homeschool our kids, and they are doing a fantastic job this year.

This is the first year where the two oldest are actually doing some independent study and absorbing information faster than we can supply it in some cases. Because they are so eager to learn this is also the first year that we have depended on any form of online homeschooling.

When we first started homeschooling we paid for several different curriculums which were supposed to be the best in the industry (at the time). There were only two problems with those curriculums. The kids got bored quickly and mommy got overwhelmed with all the instructions.

Last year we started looking at alternatives to supplement what we were doing and settled into a few different progreams and curriculums. Online curriculums like Global student network are a great resource for all homeschoolers, which we didn't have access to when we began homeschooling.

Although the first few years were quite rocky, and we wanted to give up at times, we stuck with it and our homeschooling routine began to evolve. We found early on that our kids were sending clear signals regarding the amount of information they could absorb in the day, the approach which they found more conducive to learning, and how long they could sit at one time for each subject.

It took a lot of tweaking, some schedule adjustments, and the addition of homeschool online resources, but we got there, and now that we are there, things are really working well.

They start their day a bit later than regular school children, they study different subjects for different lengths of time, and some days they stay in the classroom far longer than other kids in public/private schools, because they find something interesting to keep researching or writing about.

I have one recommendation for anyone that homeschools. Just because it works for someone else, that doesn't mean it will work for you or your kids. Don't set your routine in stone until you're sure it's best for your family, no matter what the "experts" say.