“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain

My oldest son is 13. He just finished up 8th grade last week and he’s already started on his freshman year through online high school. He’s eager for the next exciting chapter of life.

He has been homeschooled exclusively since … well? I want to say since kindergarten, but really his education began much earlier than that. It has its roots in the toddler who dug holes and made rivers in the sandbox. In the boy who stacked bricks leftover from a yard project into tall structures. We read lots of books, watched bugs, and made pancakes and bread together.

When school did officially start in kindergarten at age 6, it was an event hardly worth noticing. We would do some counting work, practice writing letters, and maybe a craft once a week. That lasted about 30 minutes a day, which even then was pushing his 6-yr old attention span. And to be honest, there were many days we didn’t even do this. Many days were simply spent outside. Children don’t necessarily have to ‘do’ school every single day to leap forward in their learning. The hard thing is getting our busywork out of the way so they can do the real learning.

This ‘method’ was born a little bit out of a philosophy of education that says that children should have short, focused lessons when they are very young and plenty of time to play. But it was also born in large part because he was a very active, emotional, hyper kid. In other words, a normal boy.  

As his attention span, his abilities, and his curiosity grew, our lessons grew a little longer, but still not by much. It wasn’t until about 5th grade that his assignments ramped up slowly. I gave him some say in what books he read for science and history, and made sure he wrote a paragraph every day summarizing something he’d read that day. By this time “school” took him a solid 2.5 hours, including music practice, math, reading, and handwriting. 

It was around this time that we took an entire year off. It was the year our foster daughter, then one-and-a-half, spent a month in the intensive care unit at Stanford Children’s Hospital as a result of an E. Coli infection. Then she got diabetes and we all needed to learn how to care for her. Then I found out I was pregnant and had about four months of near-constant exhaustion and intense mood swings.

That year our school was beach days, audiobooks, and nature walks. We did nearly nothing in the way of “real school”. And yet, when I felt well enough to resume a bit of structure and we resumed our lessons, I found that he hadn’t missed anything at all. He ‘caught up’ quickly in math (in quotes because, caught up to whom?). And when he took his first standardized test (the Iowa Assessment) just a year ago, he tested above grade level in nearly all subjects.

The middle school years were preparation for high school: He had even more say in the books he read. (One of his science books was What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained, perfect for a young physics lover who enjoys cooking.) I think because I listened to his interests, he was more willing to read the books I’d place on his stack. He learned how to budget his time. Look online for answers to math questions when they weren’t readily apparent. Persevere through a very difficult math concept. School was challenging, but he was mature enough to accept the challenge. Schoolwork took him about 3-4 hours a day.

As I reflect back on these nine years of homeschooling my son, I don’t wish we did more. In fact, I wish I’d pushed a little less and had a little more patience. I wish I could have dropped the guilt of “not doing enough”, because now I see that we did just enough. I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to watch the process of this squirrelly little boy of mine flourish into a young man ready to take charge of his own education.

If your kids are just wrapping up their school year and you’re considering what the world will look like as they head (maybe) back to school in August, consider homeschooling. It’s a suprisingly wonderful experience. It’s difficult at times, but so full of joy as you and your child grow and learn together.

Some books to inspire: 

The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child’s Education by Ainsley Arment

For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer MacAulay

The Unhurried Homeschooler by Durenda Wilson