Finding Our Path

One day, out of the blue, my husband came home excited about a podcast he had listened to where the host gave his own family’s reasons for homeschooling and the freedoms they gained by choosing that lifestyle. He spoke of less time working and more time for play. Time off when it worked for the family, not based on a school schedule. The possibility was intriguing to us both. What would life look like for us if our family rhythm, schedule and time together was dictated by us, instead of someone else? How would our relationship with our children change if we brought them back home? What would our families think? Could we really do this well? We prayed, listened and eventually had to make a choice. Would we take the risk to step onto an unknown path that we thought had the possibility for a better life for our family? Would we take the step of faith? Within a month we had made the decision we wanted to try homeschooling out. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

I started doing research on curriculum, state laws, reading books and listening to homeschool podcasts. When I felt I had done enough research to start, we pulled our oldest from school and started on a new road for our family. In retrospect I regret not deschooling, but that is for another conversation. Our ideas of education were still being framed by our school experience and we found a combination of curriculums and got to work. It was a huge, wonderful and disorienting change for our family. It was wondrous to see how every part of life was transformed by this decision. Our mornings were no longer rushed trying to hurry out the door, and we could cuddle on the couch reading instead. Breakfast and lunch became an opportunity for our family to be together around a table. When afternoons were too hot to play outside, we would do early morning walks to the park instead. Our oldest enjoyed how quickly she could get all her work done, and the resulting time for free play. There were still complaints about math, but it was a much more tolerable experience than her homework had been. History came to life with stories we read, projects and coloring pages. We spent time drawing the roses in our garden and reading books about ocean life before waking up before the sun for a visit to the tide pools. I continued to soak in information regarding homeschooling, longing for a homelife that would draw my children’s hearts to God and bring joy to the learning experience.

Pretty quickly my daughter number two came to kindergarten age and so it was time for her to join in. I had started to learn a little about the benefits of waiting to teach reading, so I had wanted to wait until she was a little older. Because we were part of a charter at that time I was told she did have to be being taught to read. Reluctantly I agreed, but didn’t feel great about starting earlier than I would like to.

As we traveled on our journey through life, I continued to do research on how children learn, and how to foster meaningful learning. I read books like Grit by Angela Duckworth and Mindset by Carol Dweck, which look at commonalities that successful adults have. I started to reflect on my own schooling. I was a very successful student, yet felt it didn’t translate into a work environment. I read books by John Taylor Gatto about how students opened up to learning when they were able to learn about their own interests. I read Julie Bogart’s The Brave Learner as she shared moments when she brought learning to life for her own children through various experiences. Better Late Than Early by Raymond Moore frustrated me as I saw the adverse effects of pushing reading at younger and younger ages. As I was reading, unschooling began to make sense to me as a legitimate way for kids to learn.

I spent a period studying the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling, which has so many aspects that I appreciate and spoke to me. Reading aloud to my kids was already a huge part of our rhythm, and I loved the concept of habit training, spreading a feast of ideas, handicrafts, rich literature and time outside. As someone who loves both learning and structure it seemed like a beautiful education.

I tried to shift to using aspects of unschooling and bring them into a Charlotte Mason inspired education. I feared that if we went fully into unschooling that it would produce kids that were self-centered and entitled. I was much more worried about the character traits than the education gap that may happen with unschooling. Most unschooling resources I could find were secular.

Then one morning, I was asked by our pediatrician if my youngest would be starting a kindergarten curriculum in the fall. I answered yes, but felt such a sadness about it as she still had this enthusiasm to learn in a way her older sisters did not. I saw my older two beginning to look at learning as a chore, and forget things they had recently learned, so I took a second look back into unschooling. I found that unschooling is a spectrum, with some families choosing radical unschooling with few rules, while others unschool with more structure.

I became excited. Could I unschool while still continuing to parent in the way I felt best? Could I unschool in a way to raise my kids to love what is true, noble, lovely, and praiseworthy? I began to see a new path forward where my children could play and learn who God made them to be, and listen to what He created them to do. I saw a path where as their mother and father we could still guide them towards those traits we see as nobel, while preserving their curiosity and love of learning. Where we could be free to introduce them to real life situations where knowledge is needed and therefore valuable. For them to learn what it means to have a passion, and to work hard to reach goals.

To be honest, when I brought the idea of unschooling to my husband, he thought I had lost my mind. We agreed to try it for 6 months, a time where we could really give it a chance without losing too much ground if we wanted to go back. Spoiler alert we are not going back. It has been such a joy to see them continuing to grow and find their own interest.