Let me just first say that never in my wildest dreams did I ever see myself homeschooling my kids.
For one, I have a Ph.D. and find my sweet spot in more rigorously intellectual matters than whether a blob of paint is blue or green. I am also fiercely passionate about proper educational systems, supporting teachers and more.
Yet, here I am, currently a stay-at-home mom of a toddler with a little baby girl on the way, and I’m homeschooling my son.
What changed? How did I get here?
The short answer is: my son.
It’s no surprise that in many ways, he is his mother’s son, and he loves learning as much as I do. His favorite activities are reading, writing and spelling, of all things. More than that, he constantly wants a new challenge. He wants to be exposed to new ideas, new subjects, new perspectives (and he’s not even three yet!).
I finally found myself no longer feeling like the books we were checking out from the library were adequate enough stimulation for him. He wanted more.
So, I started off slowly. I went through a series of homeschooling sets that I found on Amazon called “Teach My Baby”, “Teach My Toddler” and “Teach My Preschooler,” respectively. I used the baby one when my son was about one years old, progressed to the toddler set at age two, and are now transitioning to the preschooler one. These sets are simple, short and fun. They have a book to read, activities to do and then a set of (very kid-friendly) output assessments.
For me, starting off homeschooling with something like this was easy and not stressful. And, I’m happy to say that my son loves them too. I don’t think rigorous academic training is really required at this age anyway. It’s more about having fun, building a bond as mommy and child, while also slowly exposing your child to new concepts.
Granted, homeschooling does require that you make your daily schedule a bit more organized. For example, I try to do our school time at the same time each day (or, at the very least, have our day follow the same pattern), namely breakfast, clean-up time and then school time. At first, I was nervous about sticking to a routine, but thankfully this is not a huge stretch (it’s not like I’m holding class for 3 hours a day), and I’ve also found that my son really enjoys the routine as well.
Now that he’s turning three, I’ve also upgraded our school time to include some other sets, including the preschool curriculum for My Father’s World.
I am enjoying this latter program alongside of the “teach my…” sets as it focuses more on character and virtues than on things like math and reading. For example, the first unit in My Father’s World was on love and the second unit, which we are now in, focuses on obeying your parents (win!).
I usually do these two programs back to back since they are both so short, and my soon-to-be three year old certainly has the attention span for it. All in all, it probably takes a total of one hour.
I know that homeschooling is not for everyone. But I have found that it works well right now for me and my son. I honestly wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t show such early signs for enjoying school and, who knows, our second child could have a totally different temperament. But right now, my son is loving his school time and so am I.
