Homeschooling

In my last post, I mentioned that we homeschool. We are just about to start year number seventeen, and I feel quite a sense of accomplishment having graduated my older two! Homeschooling is something that a lot of people say they could never do--but, like traditions, I think anyone can do it if called to. (I'd be more than happy to talk about homeschooling if it ever crosses your mind.)

I'll be honest--there were countless days when I was sure I couldn't survive one more day. I'd see the school bus going down the hill, and I'd want to run out the door screaming, "Stop!" (I'm not kidding.) My patience wore thin on a regular basis, and I lost my temper more times than I want to admit. In my head, I had an image of what a homeschool mom looked like--and it wasn't me.  

I had to pray my way through a lot of lessons. I asked God if I could quit many times and, in my heart, I always heard the words keep going. Each summer, I would once again get excited for a new school year, and I knew it was the right path for our family. Even if I didn't always love it.

The best part was the honeymoon phase--the start of the school year when I had excited and diligent students eager to start the day earlier than I was prepared to. Some years, that lasted a few weeks, and sometimes it was over by day two.

Without a doubt, homeschooling gave us a lot of time to do things that I may not have done if my children were in school all day. There were days when lessons were done, and we just had to find something to do. 

Many days, that led us to the kitchen, where we did a lot of cooking and baking. They helped with the house cleaning and weeding the garden. Whenever Tom was out of town, my children went with me wherever I had to go - the bank, post office, DMV, grocery store, or to vote. When our business, The Soranno Group, was getting off the ground, we would run errands for Tom. We spent a lot of time at Lowe's and Sherwin Williams. I have pictures of my boys loading supplies in my van and helping Tom work on his homes.

There were many things they learned when we were not doing lessons. Sometimes part of homeschooling was just doing life, and although I'm not the perfect homeschool mom, doing life was something I could pull off--at least most days.