“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars, to change the world.”
― Harriet Tubman

Jumping into Change – Without Fear

As our children get older, the years under our homeschooling belt increase and therefore, we get older – and hopefully wiser! As many of you generational and wise homeschool families know, after so many years, starting a new chapter is inevitable. We have found it necessary to make those changes as we have watched, observed and gained experience in what our homeschooling journey has been over the past decade.

What does this new chapter mean for our family of five?

Over the last year especially, we have experienced many losses, many struggles, stresses and changes. What family doesn’t? However, the joy has been that homeschooling has tagged along with us and we have not faltered in our ever challenging and ever evolving homeschool journey. It has been with us through it all. Though very messy some weeks, what we found is that even when we were at our best, our homeschool system struggled. We thought we had all the right options set in place, the right systems and the organization to match. We were wrong. That’s okay. After time to evaluate, we pressed go for the change.

A Few Highlights to Encourage a New Chapter of Change:

• Our children are getting older
• Our children are messy
• Our children have very different, defined personalities, interests and traits
• Two of our children have undiagnosed ADHD and variations of it
• Our children are busy, energetic and they all have friends and aspirations
• Our lives have many interruptions
• We are trying to save money and prepare for years ahead

So what do we do?

Make a change and not fear it, just embrace it and try it. What do we have to lose?

Setting more achievable goals and being realistic- what we WANT our children to learn vs. what we can ACTUALLY do

• Buckets for each child -with their books only in each
• In and out folders for documents/worksheets completed and incomplete
• Labeling everything with names, dates etc.
• More cubes organizers and shelving
• More buckets, baskets
• Resource organizing
• Trying out a more focused curriculum schedule
• Testing what subjects work or don’t work per week
• Reevaluating our classical education content
• Testing and trying a night/day subject balance system
• Trying to teach more practical day to day tasks (more home-ec & practical life skills)

We don’t know yet what will work and what won’t. But as our son watched us put up new shelves, sort out more baskets, gather books, order textbooks, find resources, plan out our week, he said, “I just want you to know that I love being homeschooled.”

That is the purpose and meaning to it all. Here is our journey. Come along for the ride.

We will keep you updated as we make more changes, try and (fail!) and provide tips or ideas along the way. Maybe nothing will work or maybe all our changes will work. That is the beauty of homeschooling – we can make a change or many changes without fear. Here comes the next decade of learning for us all!