By the public school’s standards, my homeschool is very, very behind. We have only completed 14 of the 49 phonics lessons in All About Reading Level 1 and we’ve only completed the first of two books in our Horizon’s Math K! We are behind. Very behind, because it’s already March and there are just two months of school left!!

God had already been stirring the contents of this blog post around in my head and heart for several weeks now. When I read that post on one of my favorite homeschool blogs, The Unlikely Homeschool I knew I would never again in my homeschooling career say that we are “behind”.

Like Jamie said, “Behind what???”

I am right where I am suppose to be and my children are right where they are suppose to be.

I wrote this in the comment section of Jamie’s post:

I LOVE this. It perfectly describes the mentality I am trying to have for our homeschool. After our FIRST week of our official 1st year of homeschooling, we got a phone call and found ourselves adopting our son 2.5 hours away from home and then spending the next 4 weeks with him in the NICU! Needless to say......we are VERY "behind" in our homeschool this year. However, God has been teaching me everything you wrote about in this post.
Being a former public school teacher and Type-A personality, it is HARD to let go of being on schedule with the public school system & the curriculum guides!
My oldest, a Kindergartener, has had what I describe a very "choppy" homeschool year since we started school in July, got the phone call about our son in August one week into our full load, were in the NICU September and then he required around the clock care until Nov/Dec which meant school was put on the back burner basically until the New Year.
This post is confirmation to me that it is okay & has confirmed my thoughts about year round schooling instead of taking 2-3 months off in the summer like public school. Homeschool is our way of life. My daughter has made progress every day this year, even if we are only halfway through her math curriculum! Thank you for this post. We will continue on not being concerned about being "behind", but making progress every day in her learning!

And Jamie responded with this:

Elaine,
As a former classroom teacher, myself, I can TOTALLY relate. Although many would see a teaching background as a benefit to homeschooling, sometimes it is actually a detriment. Sometimes it's hard for old dogs to learn new tricks...or in this case, retrain ourselves to have a different mindset about education.
Be encouraged, you don't have to teach her everything this first year. And really, YOU don't have to teach her everything EVER. If you are instilling a lifelong love of learning, she will have the tools to learn anything and everything ALL IN GOOD TIME.
It sounds as if she is getting a good dose of life schooling and that is something she won't ever learn from a book and probably would not have ever experienced fully if she had been up the road at the "normal" school for 6-8 hours a day. So, kudos to you for sharing life...REAL LIFE...with her. You have given her more learning than many people get in a lifetime by allowing her to experience the ups and downs of the journey right alongside you and your new little one.

I could say that this year has been a disastrous year for our homeschool, but the complete opposite is actually true. I have learned so much. I have learned things that are going to transform our homeschool from here on out and make it better than it would have been without the crazy year we have had. What I wanted our homeschool to be and what it is are totally different.

We are no longer tied down to a strict schedule and curriculum guides that tell you that you are “behind” if it is December and you have not completed half or more of the lessons! As long as my children are learning everyday – and it doesn’t have to be learning from their curriculum – we’ve had a successful homeschool day!

Jamie is so right. My girls have had experiences in their little lives this year that most kids will never experience. They went from having a mommy, daddy and sister one day to the next day us asking them what they thought about God possibly putting a little baby boy in our family. Not the typical way a sibling is added to a family! They both embraced their brother with open hearts and open arms. Despite the fact I had zero time to prepare them for the changes coming their way, neither one of them has had any jealousy towards their brother. They simply love him to pieces every single day even though he is the cause of so much chaos in our family over the past year! They have learned much more about life this year than reading, writing and arithmetic, and, for this year, that was most important.

So, as this school year should be coming to a close, I have chosen instead to invite school into my HOME. We HOMEschool. I am not tied down to the public school calendar that was ingrained into my head after four years of teaching in the public school. I am no longer a slave to curriculum guides. I don’t have to teach x,y,z by a certain time, or else. I don’t have to begin a curriculum in August and have it completed by May or June!

There is FREEDOM in homeschool. Freedom for life to happen in the midst of our studies. Freedom to adopt babies and not pick up the books for months on end and at the end of the school year, still be okay, because there is no end to our school year.

We just keep moving along, wherever we are.

Where are we? I will share my homeschool plans for April-June next!

- Elaine