For those who are just starting to get into homeschooling, it has been one of the most rewarding journeys I’ve had as a mother, even in this short period of time. I didn’t expect it be this rewarding this soon, at all!

1. BALANCE

The exciting part: the level of balance homeschooling has brought to our home with four different schedules and four different people. It has given us a level of stability vs. having to manage much more than someone else’s schedule that we have to maintain.

When your kids go to school, they have their own schedule that then gets force fed into your schedule. Homeschooling has, hands down, been a plus in regards to decreasing the amount of stress in our home. That has been the biggest save for our family. During the pandemic there was so much going on. School districts tried to improvise a hybrid type of home school learning, and that was not effective!

The main reason why it was so ineffective is school districts are not designed to homeschool. When a school district attempts a homeschool structure, it’s drastically different than any type of hybrid you can do. A traditional school has their own schedule, own benchmarks, own things they have to accomplish by way of the school district. With homeschooling-it’s your show. You’re running how it goes from beginning to end. We chose to use a host homeschool and that by far is the greatest number two.

2. HOST HOME SCHOOL

I can’t imagine doing this without our homeschool. When you use a host homeschool, what happens is there are tons of structured events and activities that you can participate in. Even though we’re continuing to learn, what we have seen and noticed so far is the structure for a host homeschool is whatever you wanna plug into.

Some things are specific that have to be done or are required because they are a public school (if you’re not choosing a private host). Like with any public school, the state has particular mandates that have to be met. However, there’s flexibility within your host homeschool so you’re able to implement what you want for your children. For us, we chose our host because it was highly recommended, but also having a host homeschool gives us a greater ability to keep our kids on par with their peers who are in a traditional school.

From state and regular testing to meeting benchmarks, those are things that we are able to implement in our chosen curriculum. Many parents choose many different curriculum. However, what’s most important is to be able to not just keep our kids on par with their peers, but above par in the areas they want to exceed in.

We have the opportunity to allow them to exceed, the school day is much shorter and because it’s shorter, we have the opportunity to do a lot more enrichment activities that enhance the learning they’re already getting through their curriculum. One of the most exciting things about this these past few days is we have been able to get them involved in clubs and activities. We’ve been able to take them outdoors to different organizations and companies that supplement their education creatively.

And there’s a whole host of other things that we’re able to do. The host homeschool, provides those same funds that are given to your child in a public school environment, but they go specifically to your family and you specifically choose those activities and learning tools. We have an allotment of $2,000 over a year. We have a first drop and then we have a second drop.

Our first drop is $1,800. Then we get our second drop in December, which is $1,000. We’re able to use those funds to buy things that our kids need on Amazon, things they need to progress them forward in areas that they’re challenged in like math, reading, writing. Whether that’s through an external learning program, like a Kuman, Silver Learning Center or something like that.

Our oldest daughter has been in an immersion program and because she’s been in a French immersion program, it’s been very important to keep up with her French. She likes it but she didn’t necessarily like the structure she’s had the last two years because of the pandemic. So it’s very much altered how she wants to engage with French.

However, we can still keep up with it by purchasing a French curriculum that works for our family to do at home. There’s some great resources and some great materials, but that’s what makes a host homeschool a very strong number two. I could not imagine knowing all the ins and outs of how to gauge where our girls are and how to support their learning and learning style.

If we did not have a host homeschool that provided resources and opportunities to come alongside us with a host homeschool teacher (HST as the call it)is what they call…if we didn’t have those resources, I just don’t know how strong we would or how confident we would feel about what we’re able to provide our girls on a peer level.

We want to keep them on par. Some families aren’t necessarily concerned about that, but our daughters are geared towards higher learning and higher education post high school. So we have to be sure that whatever we’re doing, we’re not pulling them back but moving them ahead. Having a host homeschool like ours really is, hands down, going to dramatically change what our homeschooling processes is going to be.

3. FLEXIBILITY

A strong number 3 is flexibility! It is by far one of the things that we’ve learned in these last few days. We have a very structured morning. It works for our family when we get up. We still put our kids to bed at a particular time that works for our household, which allows them to kind of mosey around, get up when they want to do their regular morning routine.

We know, within a certain framework, when everybody’s gonna be dressed. Everyone will have had breakfast and boom, we’re ready to start for the day. We start with a morning song that helps them get engaged and know: we’re getting ready to start learning. That’s our day to start our academics.

My husband and I work in tandem. Jay gets an opportunity to do French with one while I might do math with the other one and then we switch subjects every 30 minutes, take a break, and by the time lunch is here, we’re pretty much done. However, it doesn’t work like that every day. It didn’t work like that every day this week and a couple of days that we started last week.

For example, my dad came to stay the night because we had to take him to the airport in the morning. That threw everything off from the time the girls went to bed to the time that they woke up. It threw off our own personal timing as well because we had to wake up at four in the morning in order to get him to the airport. We have the flexibility to say ‘okay, you’re gonna go take a nap. I’m gonna go take a nap. We’ll alternate.’

That flexibility is important. The structure is very important but the flexibility is important as well. When you have the flexibility, it teaches your kids to understand how to live life. Not how to be in school. They’re not going to be in school their whole life. So for the times they will be in a school environment, it’s better to understand how to educate themselves and how to be within a framework that helps them get the education they need. When they’re no longer needing a school environment, are school age or around the age where school looks like the option for them, how they get their education won’t matter. They can learn within the framework of life, beyond “school.”

They will know how to get their education and how to block out the things that needs to be blocked out in order to get the education they need. Their focus on education, therefore, becomes very different and very early on in life. Your child is able to allow ebbs and flows of life to come in, switch up and then get back on track. Knowing how to get back on track through life’s obstacles is what they’re learning. We are really big on that.

As a family, my studio is about art and life planning as an artist. You absolutely have to be able to know how to go with the ebbs and flows, the feast and the famine. It’s very important for the society today’s children are going to be adults in, to know how to handle ups and downs.