This is What Relaxed Homeschooling Actually Looks Like

When I say we don't do school, I don't mean my kids aren't learning. Actually, it's the opposite. They're getting an incredible education, just not the way most people picture. We're a family first, not a classroom. So our days are built around connection and real life. We're raising whole people here, not just filling minds with information. Let me show you what that actually looks like. When I say we don't do school, I know that can sound a little shocking. It might even sound like it's just a free-for-all or the kids aren't learning. But what I'm really talking about is a completely different way of looking at education. The truth is they're getting an excellent education. It just doesn't look like what most people expect because we're not a school over here. We're a family first, and that changes how we do everything. If you're new here, hi, my name is Sheri. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom married to my husband Nelson. We've been married for 25 years. Together, we have 10 kids ages 21 down to three. I love encouraging other moms here on my channel and on the blog, ourlifehomeschooling.com. I also help ordinary parents give their kids a better education at home through my course, Beyond School, The Home Education Breakthrough. Enrollment is open now. The link is in the comments. If I could invite you over to my home and talk with you over coffee, this course is everything I would share with you one-on-one. It's designed to help you build a family first education model. I take you step-by-step in how to homeschool this way so that you don't run into some of the common roadblocks that hold so many homeschooling parents back. I'd love to have you join us. I think a lot of people picture homeschooling as just recreating school at home. Desks, schedules, everyone doing the same thing at the same time. I've even had people when I'm out with my kids, they know we're homeschoolers, and when we're out, they'll say things like, oh, you're on recess. And it just makes me cringe because we are not a school. What we're doing is completely different. It's a breakthrough in how we think about education. We're not trying to get through curriculum, check boxes. We're raising whole people. So what does that actually look like? Well, it doesn't look like traditional school. I'm not thinking about keeping up with the standards that the state sets. I'm not stressed out over grades. I care about my child as a whole person. Because I'm a mom, my interest and my investment goes so much deeper. I want them to have a wonderful childhood out in nature, connected to real things, not just learning about life, but living life. And then as they grow, I want them to be capable and prepared for the adult world. So my assessment as a mom goes so much deeper than can be measured on any standardized test. Why is the sky so blue? Seven is five and two. Salty is the sea. Eight is five and three. Hear the thunder roar. Nine is five and four. Ducks will swim and dive. Ten is five and five. So this kind of education, it doesn't look like traditional school. There are no desks lined up, no morning announcements, no bells telling us when to move on, and definitely no one size fits all schedule where every child is expected to be in the same place at the same time. I am continually amazed at how different each of our kids are. And this is why I'm convinced that their education needs to be individualized. We have two kids that are just really talented at art and it surprises me and my husband because neither of us have much of an interest in art and we're not very good at it. But these two kids are just incredibly, they pay attention to detail. They'll sit for long periods of time just drawing and perfecting what they're creating. It just amazes us. We have another child that's so into plants and her whole room is like a horticulturalist dream. She has pots of plants everywhere. Another one of our kids is really fascinated with learning languages and just asked if I could please take him to the local bookstore to buy a German Bible because he wanted to try to translate it to see if he could do it. Another one that is so athletic, a couple of our kids are really athletic. He spends every spare minute he can playing basketball. So it just amazes me how different each of our children are. So when I talk about what relaxed homeschooling looks like, it means we have a structure that works for our family and for each individual child, not the other way around. It means our kids are learning at different levels and at their own pace. When they struggle with something, we slow down. We take our time until they understand it. And when they get it, on the other hand, if they understand the lesson, we don't do 25 problems when they understand it with the first five. Relaxed homeschooling means that we have a set predictable routine in place. Everyone knows what to expect, but no curriculum, no outside standard is a master over us. We have the freedom to do what works best for each of our family members. If you want to look a little more specifically at our four step daily routine, I talk about this in another video I did on relaxed homeschooling. I'll link it for you above. For us, this kind of education looks like short, focused lessons and lessons that are varied. So moving from reading to something that's more hands-on and then maybe to playing a musical instrument, not spending long hours over pen and paper. It looks like a lot more time for real life. Some days it might even look a little unorganized from the outside because not everyone is doing the same thing at the same time. But that doesn't mean there's no structure. Relaxed homeschooling doesn't mean no plan. It's not a free for all. Since we have a plan in place that anchors us and we've been consistent at it over time, then I can decide as a mom when it's a good day to just put the books aside and go for a nature hike. Or I can decide if they've gotten to a couple things that morning, but we really are way behind on the laundry or switching our clothes over. That happened this week. We had some hot, hot days and not all of my kids had some warm weather clothing in their drawers. So we took some time to get that all sorted out. And we can do that because we have a structure in place and we can use our good judgment to do what's best for our family in each moment. Our days are built around connection. It might look like having lunch outside together, spending our afternoon on a blanket out on the lawn reading together, or the kids diving deep into their own interests because they can. Real learning is happening all the time, not just during school hours. And this relaxed way of learning is not lazy. If anything, it's the opposite. It looks like hard work. Because we're parents and we care about our kids' success more than anyone else. We will work harder than anyone else to get them the resources that they need to help them with their gifts and their struggles. It's hard work because I'm not handing their education off to a system. I'm doing it myself. And taking that responsibility on can be daunting, especially when things go wrong and you can't blame it on anyone else. The buck stops here. So it's relaxed as far as we have the freedom, we have the control to make the decisions that are best for our family. But it is not easy. It's also not lazy because the kids are taking ownership of their education. As soon as they're capable, I move our kids toward independence so that they can take more and more ownership of their work. They're not just sitting and being told what to think. They're engaging. They're asking questions. They have problems to solve. I don't answer all my kids' questions because I want them to problem solve. One of the biggest differences is that we're not rushing. If one of our kids is struggling with something like long division, for example, we don't just move on because the next lesson is ready for us. We slow down. We stop there. We work through it until there's real understanding and confidence because I care a lot more about mastery than speed. We also spend a lot of time on things that don't always show up in a textbook like life skills, cooking, managing time, cleaning up. This is a part of our day. This is not an obstacle to what we're doing. Taking care of a home is something that is learned with repeated practice. We also spend time on life skills like teaching kids to manage their time well and creating things with their hands. It may look like sewing a small project like a pillow or a tote bag or starting up a small business. Right now we have 15 loaves of sourdough sitting on my kitchen island because our teenage daughter is part of a huge bake sale tomorrow and so she's just baking up a storm. She set her alarm and got up at 5 30 this morning so she could get everything ready. These are the kind of things that we want them to have time for because these life skills actually prepare them for the adult world and again this kind of learning can look messy because real learning is messy. Creating, experimenting, when you try something and fail at it, it's just not tidy but it is meaningful. Another huge part of this kind of education is community. We're part of a wonderful homeschool co-op. Our kids have grown up with these friends. We meet up during the week, parks, playdates, field trips, just going to each other's houses. These aren't just classmates, they're deep friendships. Our kids will go to birthday parties in the middle of the day. We've met up with friends to go out for donuts in the morning. We spend a lot of our summers, especially with my older kids when they were younger, we would go out one morning every week creek stomping with friends out in the woods and this is the kind of childhood I really hope they remember. I love that they are connected to the real world around them. They notice the seasons changing. They see the birds coming and going. In our old neighborhood, our kids knew exactly where the one ginkgo tree was in our neighborhood. They knew where the American chestnut tree was. For about one week in the summer, we would walk every day to the mulberry tree so the kids could collect mulberries that were in season. When you remove a lot of the distractions that kids have, like pressure to fit in or keep up with trends, something beautiful happens. They get curious, they read more, they ask better questions. So no, this might not look like school, but it is education. Meaningful, whole person education. At the end of the day, we're not just teaching subjects. We're raising people and we're building the kind of life that supports that. If this video encouraged you, I hope you'll like and subscribe. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.