Starting a School Year

One thing that any home schooling mom needs, this time of year especially, is support. The reasons for home schooling are as many and varied as the families who choose it (and listing them all is not the theme of this post), but I choose home schooling because I am not content with the mundane. Mediocrity is living the 9 to 5, go-to-an-institution life; we rebel against that. My husband doesn't have that kind of job, either. We don't need that kind of life to feel successful. Being forced into that kind of life would feel confining. But even after having made a very careful and conscious decision to be counter-cultural, staying steady and sticking to it can be hard without support.

That's why I am glad that Monday I received encouragement from unschoolers at the AAH annual Not Back To School party. Yesterday I received encouragement from forum friends who are relaxed home schoolers and "get me." So today at home I stayed in the background. Worked on my blog and editing, reading, researching, and giving and receiving encouragement on the homeschool forums with my e-maginary friends. At first, my tween was at a table in the School Room doing sums in her math workbook, my preteen was at his desk doing a math workbook, my teen was at the breakfast bar with the computer digging into his history software, my 3rd grader was at the table in the living room doing his math page. After a while it got quiet.

I silently moved through the house, and found my tween and 3rd grader at the couch discussing her lesson in Serl's (Intermediate Language Lessons). She was sharing an original creative writing piece she'd just written- and he was sharing one he'd written. My preteen was story-boarding for a history project. My teen was digging into his Personal Finance class (DVD and workbook). They were all learning. And laughing. And engaging in relationship.

My productive time today has been punctuated with requests to print spelling worksheets and handwriting practice worksheets. I've punctuated their time with requests to listen to me read a story to them. Everyone is happy and productive. We're encouraging and supporting each other through relationship.