We are in our 8th year of homeschooling. Some days I find that unbelievable! What started out as a little experiment for my oldest son’s Kindergarten year, has turned into a full fledged way of life for our family.

Over the last eight years we have been through lots of curricula, tried different methods. I have read many books and hundreds of blog posts.  I have talked to my husband about homeschooling so much I’m sure there have been days he  has wanted to poke his eyes out, or at least plug his ears. I’m thankful for my many homeschooling friends -and so is my husband!

I’m at the point where I can feel as confident as I can about what we are doing in our homeschool, without actually having graduated a child yet.  I know I have written before on how I label our homeschool as relaxed. Not much has changed over the years in our philosophy, only that the children have gotten older.  There have been times we have veered off the path for a bit, but we seem to always find our way back to our center.

Often I think others view Relaxed Homeschooling as Lazy Mom Homeschooling.  I look at it as Happy Mom Homeschooling. I have come to the conclusions that there are some things that define more of what I mean about our relaxed way of learning:

Relaxed Homeschooling

1.  Big crafts and Lots of Hands on Projects – Nope. Not for me. Do I have some kids that would love that every day? Yes. Does that make me selfish? Perhaps. But the planning, prepping and implementing of those big projects make me a little nutty. I think my kids would prefer a nicer, kinder mom without a bunch of crafts than a raving lunatic and a big project all the time.  Don’t get me wrong, I love those projects – I just want to view them on Pinterest or other people’s blogs.

2. Complicated Curriculum – I’m a simple girl and I like a simple life. At least as simple as life can get while raising six kids.  I want curricula that is straight forward and open and go. I don’t want to spend hours pouring over something just to figure out how to teach it to my children. The exception to this is Tapestry of Grace. I love TOG, it hasn’t felt like a burden to use and it’s really working for us. I like the flexibility of doing as much or as little as we want each week. The key is probably that I get to be in charge of how much or how little we accomplish.

3. No Comparisons – I’m not that interested in comparing my group of students with another family’s group of students. Nor am I interested in the scope and sequence of any school system.  I want my kids to learn what they are learning, not to be pushed through a list of topics because a school somewhere says that’s what they should be learning.  We are doing what works for us and what works for my unique learners.

Relaxed Homeschool Truths

Knowing these truths about what works and doesn’t work for us takes a lot of pressure off of me and my children.  Homeschooling is a marathon not a sprint. If we don’t cover a topic this year, we have time to get to it next year. My oldest is getting older, it’s true, but we still have five years of homeschool time and if we aren’t done yet, who says we can’t just keep going?!

I want my children to have an excellent education, to be curious, and hard-workers with a strong moral compass.  I also want them to have time to do things we enjoy like field trips and being involved at church, and doing extra curricular sports. As they get older I want them to have time to volunteer, to get a job!, and do other activities they are passionate about. I’m not interested in burnout for them or myself.

I think the biggest gift we can give ourselves and our children is to, at some point, be happy and confident about the way school looks in our home.  Stop obsessing over the perfect program, stop spending hours researching and trying to fit into what we think the perfect homeschool looks like – it doesn’t exist. Enjoy learning along side your children, spend a majority of time doing activities that you love. There is a time and a place for doing hard, unpleasant things {in our house that includes math and cleaning bathrooms}, however if everything is drudgery though, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate.