Blog

What does homeschooling look like?

When people ask me what homeschooling looks like, I often tell them it looks like my boy, lying on top of my dog, reading a book in the sun.  Our homeschool room was the room with the dog and the book.  We had a rigorous, academic homeschool, and so we were often busy from about 8:00 in the morning until about 3:00 in the afternoon.  I had a schedule and an assignment sheet, and my children would work through them fairly independently so I could supervise and do household chores at the same time.  Each day I would spend a few minutes with each child, making sure they understood their assignments, reviewing math concepts, going over memorization, or answering questions.  One child could work independently while I had the meeting with the other, and it really kept them on task.

At the high school level, we started our day with math independently.  The boys would watch the video tutorial and do their assignments, while I got my morning chores done.  Then we did French together, and I read aloud from our literature book.  I read aloud to my children until the oldest was 18 years old – still my fondest memories!  Then the children would do science independently.  At lunch I would hear their scripture verses.  After lunch we would alternate between some of the shorter subjects.  They might read their Worldview books, or study for the SAT or ACT.  After that, they worked on their writing assignments and read their history and literature books until 3:00.  Then the practiced their piano before we went to sports practice.  Although I counted that as music and PE credit for high school, it seemed so normal to do them “after school” like their friends.  We often talked about being thankful they didn’t have to come home from soccer practice, exhausted, and face hours of additional homework.

Every homeschool will look different - and should look different!  Each homeschool is unique, and that is why it's such a successful way to educate!