What Is It Like to Be Homeschooled? | DIL | Perceptions in Homeschooling

[Music] [Music] we've started school again and we're getting into it more and more as we move on I'm going to be sharing with you all the things that our kids are doing this year at home and in Co-op different things they're involved in outside of Co-op also I'm going to be talking about perceptions people have of homeschooling and I hope to just show you give you a good picture of what it's like to be homeschooled mommy where's Mommy peek peek peek peek peek burn hard come here I am so thankful that I get to spend each day with my kids waking up and seeing them getting that one-on-one time with them yes it's a lot of work and sometimes I get exhausted in homeschooling but knowing that I get to be here for my kids childhood is something that is priceless to me if you're new here hi my name is Sherry I'm a homeschooling mom to 10 kids I'm married to my high school sweetheart Nelson we've been homeschooling for 14 years this is our 15th and I love encouraging other moms on my blog our life homeschooling and this YouTube channel we have a graduate we have seven kids in school and two preschoolers on this particular day my older kids were all gone our oldest son is is back he was gone for a year at a Bible College he's back home he's working full-time and then our three kids that are next are 16 15 and 13-year-old are at Co-op today so they take um classes at a local drop off Co-op and they go once a week and then our family is also involved in a co-op that's twice a month that they go to as well so on this day I just had my younger kids my 11-year-old and down and it was it was really nice um in most ways it was easier it was just lighter having less people in the house but in some ways it took me back to when the kids were all little and some things were a little bit harder all right Peter the coward next is Jesus before the high priest from the garden Jesus had been led by the soldiers to the house of the high priest they took him to an upstairs room who was pilot he's the Roman Governor yeah he was the Roman Governor according to Jewish law at least two witnesses had to agree before a man could be brought to trial why do you think there had to be at least two witnesses cuz one person could just we started off our day doing morning time like usual we did scripture Memory some other memory work poetry we did a little picture study so let's go ahead and say Isaiah William you can probably try to read this okay yep no right there yep top one okay all right Isaiah 402 28 through 31 have you not known have you not heard the Lord is the Everlasting God the creator of the ends of the Earth he does not Fain or we his understanding is unsearchable he gives power to the faint and to him who has no might he increases strength they shall Mount up with wings like eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall and not Fain four faints I knew yeah I know I already said that before we four faints wow in just four word four verses as my daughter Julia was reading this my son was rocking the bench to distract her something that comes so naturally to boys I don't know if you have that in your home school but we have things like this in ours what is your only comfort in life and in death that I am not my own but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ he has fully paid for all my S with his Precious Blood and has Set Me Free from the Ty of the devil he also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven in fact all things must work together for my salvation because I belong to him Christ by his holy spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me heartedly willing ready from now on to live for him okay okay good if you have a pencil you can write okay if you have a pencil you can write in the him we're doing for September which is I love to tell the story I love to tell the story where's song okay and then we're going to go to poetry today so Holland do you know the swing yeah go ahead by Robert leis Stevenson how do you like to go up in a swing some of these poems that we memorize I have been doing with my kids for so long that by the time they get down to my youngest kids they've heard them so many times they've heard me saying this whenever I push her on the swing we say this over the country or quite the other way I have to go to bed by day I have to go to bed and see or uh the birds still hopping on the tree or hear the grownup people's feet still going past me in the street the cow Julia you know that one okay this morning I introduced them to the first artist that we're going to be studying and that's Albert door I just had them write his name and then I showed them all of his artwork that I have a collection of just kind of went through it slowly but I'm going to wait to do his picture study when all my kids are here and we'll just go through one at a time cuz I know my older kids can easily write his name quickly and write down the piece and we'll just wait to do each piece when they're here but I wanted to give my younger kids just a little introduction to him I want to tell you a little bit about some of the things my kids are involved in outside of what we do at home here the kids are watching uh world watch this is news from a Christian perspective we love it we watch it every morning at the end of morning time if you watched the video I did a few weeks ago on five things we prioritize in our home school one of them is our kids friends and one of the ways we do this is through the co-ops we're involved in the main Co-op we're involved in is a family Co-op we've been in from the very beginning it's one that was actually started by five families we were one of them it's still going today it's doing great these are friends my kids have grown up with we're very close to all of them this Co-op is twice a month we really make an effort to be there for every Co-op and every time they have activities anything on the calendar that's outside of Co-op we try to be there if we can so this summer our kids were at pool parties birthday parties movie nights um they spend lots of nature days out in the woods our Co-op is pretty unique in that we call ourselves a relational Co-op we're there primarily for the relationships so the classes we offer are more for enrichment they're the icing on the cake this year are 15 and 16-year-old are taking a relationships and speech class they're also taking uh a Labs which half of the year is going to be chemistry Labs the other half is going to be biology and then their last class is a fizzed class then our 11 and 13-year-old are taking Civil War history another another PE class and a writing class my 9-year-old is doing an art with history um also a literature class and PE my 7-year-old is doing handycrafts literature and a sign language class and then the younger kids do a lot of free play Discovery um just some fun simple things for them so our family Co-op is really a perfect fit for us once every other week is mandatory and then the rest is all optional so I feel like if I want to do more I can but I'm not committed to doing something every week which just feels really relieving to me now our older kids are in a second Co-op which is a drop off Co-op they go to every week and here they get a lot of their high school credits mom I remember I on couch or floor you can do it on the floor why you that's a hard one let's try this you can take away seven we only have two yeah or what I do is I think seven how many to get up to nine seven eight N I already guess that one eight yep um five yep two two here do you want some two good uh four so our 16-year-old this year is taking chemistry Spanish Algebra 2 and a history and literature class I think it's called Uh villains and heroes something like that and then our 15-year-old is taking geometry biology French and a drawing class our 13-year-old is doing G science writing and pre-algebra so these they're getting there and um sometimes I'll have to add a credit or two at home so between our family Co-op that we're involved in and my kids my older kids High School Co-op this feels like just the right mix for us um it feels like we're busy enough but yet we're able to just keep a lowkey family life at home which I really like now I've had some people ask me have your kids ever wanted to go or asked you if they could go to public school and the answer is they really haven't um with the exception of one or two times which I'll tell you about in just a minute they haven't because we have worked and the Lord has provided this great Community for us our kids are really involved in a lot of things so that I don't think they've ever felt like they're missing anything or they don't look at what kids out in our neighborhood for example are doing and wish that they were a part of that world because they have a whole world that they're involved in um quite I I think sometimes they look at kids that are still in school in the beginning of June when they're in the pool and just feel sorry for them so it's kind of in some ways been the opposite now I did mention that there were exceptions and one is when before we started homeschooling when our oldest son was like six and we were still deciding what we were going to do he wanted to go to school because he wanted to ride the school bus and that was his reason for wanting to go to school and honestly when kids are that young uh we just I don't think they know what's best for them we as their parents know what's best so maybe he really wanted to do that but we felt like this was a good environment for him and we did what we thought would be good for him and I'm so glad he we did in addition to telling you some of the things my kids are involved in outside of what we do at home I also wanted to talk a little bit about Perceptions in homeschooling I think sometimes people have this idea um that they just can't imagine how you as a homeschool mom can teach all these kids everything that they need to learn and I think some of this I I really think a lot of it comes from the school mentality that we all grew up with and they're thinking in their minds that you have to teach 180 lessons in each subject every day to all these kids and that's just it's just impossible and it is impossible we have a very relaxed approach um I don't try to get to any certain place in the curriculum by a c certain time and this doesn't mean that I don't have high standards for my kids it just means that I don't feel limited by the curriculum I am looking at each of them individually and they're learning at a pace that fits them we have a very relaxed style of learning if you want to know more about this and how we landed here you can take a look at Kelly Crawford's course how to take the stress out of homeschooling everything she shares in that course is pretty much where we have landed after 14 years of homeschooling I'll leave that link for you below I think a second perception if you have a really relaxed style like we do is that they must not be getting a very good education if you're that laidback how can it be really good or there's got to be a lot of things that they're missing out on and for this my best answer is that I think you sometimes just have to really engage with homeschooled kids and I know there are always exceptions that that's always the case but in general I've been in the homeschooling Community for going on 15 years now and I've done a lot of evaluations I've seen a lot of kids graduate and they're just doing very well when they graduate they're getting good jobs they're prepared for the Working World they're going to colleges colleges are seeking them out um One time my son when he went for his first job the employee or the employer um when he found out he was homeschooled he said I'm going to do something I don't normally do and I'm going to hire you on the spot homeschoolers are doing very well I've always known that this is an excellent education for my kids and I feel like I have a good um thing to compare it to having been a former public school teacher I've always known it's an excellent education it's perfectly suited to um each child's individual needs plus the fact that home schooling takes so much less time because it's all one-on-one work and kids are learning it's it's a self-education in some ways because they're learning based on their interest and at their own pace so are there weird homeschoolers yes there are always going to be exceptions to the rule and I always say kids are turn out as weird as their parents when you're homeschooling and you're with them a lot they usually turn out a lot like the people they're with and that's also true in homeschooling but I think if you get to know a child who has been homeschooling you'll find that the freedom and the time that they have to learn at their own pace where you can stop and help them with their struggles an education that is values based it's just really good for kids now on this day we just kind of pulled out whatever was left over in the fridge Benjamin Had the Time of his life with this broccoli and dip he was such a mess I had a big mess to clean up afterwards but the kids went out and played and had a great afternoon [Music] we finished up our day by taking everything outside getting a blanket spreading it on the grass my big kids are home and we did our afternoon read aloud and part of it was this Pennsylvania History unit that we're working on for 14 years that I've been homeschooling I've been looking for a good curriculum choice for Pennsylvania history and I've just had trouble finding things um I just didn't think there was a lot out there so I decided to do a blog post on it and I did a deep dive I am so happy with all the great resources that I found and that's um I've shared them over on the blog I did a whole post on it for those of you who are from Pennsylvania um I'm just really happy with the Great Book choices that I found I'm going to be using them going through them slowly this year and next the one we're working on right now is keystones written by Susan ker she's a mom who I think she was a mom of nine kids um I listened to her at a homeschooling conference several years ago and she was great we finished up our day by reading the hor and his boy this is the third in the Narnia series I read The Lion the Witch and the wardrob to my kids probably at least twice but all to my older kids and I never actually read through the whole series the whole Chronicles of Narnia so I decided this is the Year this is where we are with book number three and um I think we're just going to go straight through I hope this video encouraged you thanks for following along with us I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms see you next week [Music]