Thoughts on Homeschooling

Are you considering the idea of homeschooling your children?  Welcome to a whole new world! There has never been a better time to look into it—so many states are very favorable to homeschooling families, many communities have excellent homeschool co-op opportunities and activities,  the current choices of curricula are rich and varied, and families of all shapes and sizes are finding that a homeschool life is a great option for them.  

There are a growing number of parents who were homeschooled themselves, and for that demographic the choice to homeschool is much easier than it is for those of us who had no personal experience.  My own educational background is quite eclectic—my father was in the military, so I began Kindergarten in a Baptist private school and graduated from a Catholic high school, with several public schools between.  I studied to be a teacher, first at a small private university and finishing at a large state university. Finally, I have been a teacher in two different public schools, a private academy, and spent many years teaching our own two daughters at home.  I feel that so much moving around and so many different experiences have afforded me a good understanding of what different schooling situations can look like. I am not bound by only one way of thinking about the subject of educating children, and for that I am grateful.   

There are many reasons people shy away from schooling their own children. The idea of being fully responsible for educating your children can feel quite intimidating and out of reach, especially to parents who are not highly educated or specifically trained in education.  Many refuse to consider the option, fearing that their children would emerge illiterate, undisciplined, and strange.  Others would love to try, but face a good deal of opposition from family and friends who have negative ideas of what homeschooling produces in a child. 

Choosing to homeschool does change so many things. It commands a huge commitment of time and focus, and a great deal of discipline and unselfishness both in the parents and children.  It most likely requires one parent not to work, or at least to work from home on some level, which has great financial implications.  Homeschooling also takes the parent-child relationship to a new level—the parent is not just mom or dad anymore, but also teacher and principal which can be an interesting dynamic. People who enter the homeschooling life unwilling to be disciplined and to serve as disciplinarian will most likely struggle in effectively teaching their children, which is certainly not ideal. 

I remember thinking, fearing, and wondering about all of these things when we were considering homeschool.  The what-ifs and unknowns can feel so intimidating and overwhelming. This booklet is a collection of thoughts and encouragements I can offer to you after eleven years of homeschooling. I began jotting down these thoughts years ago as our older daughter was just entering university, and have been adding to the list as time passed. It was an incredibly rich and positive experience and way of life for our family, and we are all so glad that we made the plunge—in fact, our older daughter is enjoying beginning the homeschool journey with her own children now. And of course the fictional family in my Booksellers Mystery series are a homeschool family!  I hope that the following ideas give you the encouragement and insights you might need as you make your own decision.  

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Forty Great Reasons to Homeschool Your Children 

#1 The First Day of School
Today is the first day of a new home school year in our house.  We follow the local ISD calendar, so everyone in town is starting school today.  I was up early to get a little reading in while my husband and older daughter left for the gym, and smiled to myself as the public school bus rumbled by at 6:30.  Our younger daughter slept an hour longer than that—it is so nice not to have get up and get everyone going at the crack of dawn to get on that bus.  Even nicer than that, though, is knowing that my children will not be gone from the house for eight hours or more every day—I have noticed that the school bus doesn’t come by again until 4:30 in the afternoon!  I know, lots of jokes are made about how parents rejoice on the first day of school when the kids clear out of the house, but I don’t happen to feel that way at all. Homeschooling your children is an excellent means of radically changing the amount of consistent quality time your family is able to spend together.  

#2   Late Night, Late Morning
Sometimes school nights don’t cooperate.  For example, we have a 9 o’clock meeting every Wednesday night, and that makes for a very late bedtime in our home.  Thankfully, in this little academy, both teacher and students can get up a little later on that Thursday morning which makes for a much more pleasant day.  If someone isn't feeling well or had a rough night of sleep, we can shift our school day accordingly.  If one of your children is a natural night-owl, they can stay up a little later and sleep in a little longer rather than fight against their biological clock all of their formative years. Conversely, if they are an early riser, they can get through their schoolwork well before lunchtime. The flexibility that homeschool affords is priceless, and sanity-saving.  

#3   Ships Passing in the Night
So many movie and novel plots for teenagers and young adults are based on the sad assumption that parents and teens just aren’t able to communicate; that there is an enormous, seemingly unbridgeable gulf between us and them.  Perhaps this pathetic modern malady has much to do with the fact that we are not with our kids very much, thanks to the public or private school day schedule.  We send them away for at least eight hours a day from the time they are five years old.  Add to that the time spent for extra-curricular activities and it becomes a great achievement for most families to spend an even an hour or two together each day.  Homeschool is a great remedy for this problem.  We can have great relationships with our teenagers—in fact, these years can be some of the richest and best together before they soar into adulthood.  

#4 Goodbye, There and Back
Before we began to homeschool, we drove the girls to school each morning and picked them up each afternoon.  There and back, there and back—we did this twice a day, every day, all school-year long. I know many public school parents reject the bus option for safety reasons, and many private schools do not offer a bussing option which means lots of driving to and from school.  We never have to do that again now that school is just down the stairs into the school room.  

If one was inclined to worry about the environment, I would say that this is a much-overlooked benefit of homeschooling!  In our experience, the trip to school took 15 minutes for one way, or about 9 miles.  At four segments per day, this adds up to 36 miles per day, or 180 miles per week.  With thirty six weeks of school per year, that makes 6,480 miles per year just driving there and back.  That is a lot of gas and a lot of wear on the car.  What about the time?  Fifteen minutes, four times a day is one hour—that makes five hours per week.  Again, with thirty-six weeks in the school year, I have gained 180 hours back in my life each year that I used to spend driving there and back.

#5 Oh, Yeah!  
Did you know which states were first to ratify the US Constitution?  Do you know which type of plant does not produce seeds?  How are your world geography and human anatomy skills?  I know all this and more now that we are homeschooling.  What a luxury it is to study and learn with your children!  I don’t recall enjoying history or math quite as much when I was a child, but I find all of it fascinating now.  I won’t go so far as to say that my children adore learning above all else—they are normal kids, after all.  But I do see that my enthusiasm seems to rub off on them, and they seem to have a healthy value for their education.  It is fun to learn and to think, and to have the luxury of time to enjoy doing so, together. 

#6 “It’s Not Thursday, It’s Grandma Day!”
My younger daughter used to say this quite often.  In our home, Thursday has traditionally been the day that the girls spend the afternoon with my parents.  In this day and age, it is beautiful to me that my girls really know their grandparents—both sets.  They spend good, quality time together consistently.   In fact, Thursday seems to be great time to play a round of golf together, so they do! And they beat the after school and work rush onto the golf course.  

#7 The Best Time
I know a secret.  The best time to shop at any mall or grocery store is right when it opens in the morning.  The only people who are there at that time are the retirees and young mothers with babies.  It is so peaceful and quiet, and you can shop without feeling rushed or crowded.  When you operate on a homeschool schedule—aka your own schedule—you can always shop at this golden time.  The girls help me with the grocery shopping, and at the same time are learning about household budgeting and smart shopping.  Plus, they can help carry the grocery bags! 

#8 Show Me the Research, Please 
Who says that our kids need to be away from us for eight hours a day in order to be normal and healthy?  I have been a school teacher, and I am not buying it.  Don’t you remember reading The Lord of the Flies?  I find it quite distressing that this book comes to mind when I think of my public and private school teaching years.  Other children are not the best teachers for our kids.  When left to their own devices they tend to act quite immature and irresponsible—maybe because they are!  Most classrooms are doing extremely well to have a 20-1 teacher-student ratio, meaning that it is impossible for even the most conscientious teacher to keep a close eye on each little darling.  We all know what happens outside of teacher’s watchful eye—that’s why there are so many movies like Heathers and Mean Girls and the like.   

Critics will say that this is good for our kids—the real world is tough, so they just need to get used to it.  I choose not to accept that theory.  Kids thrive under the care and concern of their parents, and can get plenty of good socialization without being sacrificed on the altar of the 40 hour work week.  

#9 Inks Lake State Park
And Garner State Park, and Purtis Creek State Park—any place, really.  As I write this it is a beautiful autumn Monday, and our whole family is camping out for a couple of days.  The girls are doing school this morning, I am writing, my husband is catching up on some paperwork, the bulldogs are lounging— it is so nice to get away.  When they have finished school for the day—probably right after lunchtime—we are going down the road to the Longhorn Caverns to explore.  And tonight we will sit out at the campfire and make s’mores and sausages on a stick.  On a school night—a homeschool night, that is.  

#10 Time Saved 
Homeschooled children are saved from the big-group, zoo-like routine of the public or private school.  When you have a one-to-one, or even four-to-one student/teacher ratio like in most home schools, the school day does not last from 8 until 3:30.  When we start at 8, we are done by noon or one at the latest.  We can eat breakfast together, lunch together, and then everyone is free to do chores, play, read, practice instruments—free just to be.  It certainly helps life not feel so hectic.  It helps life feel a lot more like life should—our days revolve around our family and not someone else's schedule for our kids.

#11 Homemaking School
When children are home all day, they can participate in the daily keeping of the house more regularly.  By cooking breakfast and preparing lunch and dinner, helping with laundry, keeping the floors and bathrooms clean—there is plenty of time and practice for them to learn real housekeeping.  It is nice to see a family work together to make a house run smoothly, and I know it is excellent practice for them to run their own households one day.  

#12 Let’s Try Again
I love the fact that when my child doesn’t quite understand a math concept, I am aware of it right away and can help her master it.  If the science lesson was a bit daunting, we can read it again and discuss it then and there.  We can take the time to really master the rules for capitalization.   I know from my years spent teaching in both public and private schools that it is not uncommon for some students to be left behind. When you have twenty-five or even thirty students in a classroom, it is virtually impossible—even for the most conscientious teacher—to give every pupil one-on-one attention.  Some are bound to be less proficient on a subject than others.  In a homeschool, mom and dad can give individual attention right away and can provide many excellent real life examples for application every day.  More real learning and understanding can occur.  

#13 That’s Why 
Just yesterday my girls and I were shopping, and two items we had selected were from the 70%-off rack.  The young man behind the register searched in vain for his cheat sheet which told him the exact amounts for each sale item—his manager told him just to figure it out manually.  So he grabbed his calculator and proceeded to figure out 70% of whatever the prices had been, then subtracted that from the total.  My sixth grader watched all of this, and I saw her wheels turning.  This is something we had just been working on in math.  It proved to be an excellent answer to her frequent question, “Why do we have to learn this?”  That’s why!  When you are parent and teacher, the teachable moments that reinforce concepts from school time are everywhere, all the time.  

#14 Rocks and Minerals, Up Close and Personal
My younger daughter is currently studying a geology unit in science class, and it just so happens that there are some magnificent caves to tour right in this area.  So we went!  Field trips with a group of 150 students are not at all the same as a field trip with just your own kids.  Both girls paid attention to everything the tour guide told us, as there were not 148 other kids to distract them.  In my experience, group field trips end up being a day-long exercise in herding for the teachers, and a day-long exercise in mischief and really inappropriate banter among the students.  Homeschool field trips actually can be educational—and fun.  My daughter enjoyed hearing the guide saying all of the things she has been learning in science class, and both girls were free to really marvel at the wonders of the cave.  

#15 Tomorrow’s Citizen
It’s the second week in November, and we just had a big election last week.  I love the fact that since we are homeschooling, my children can come with me to the voting station during the day when it is not so crowded.  They can see how the process really works, and I hope to impress upon them the honor and privilege of participating in representative government.  It is comforting to me to know that my children’s ideas of right and wrong, justice and government come from my husband and me—not from an institution or a teacher with an agenda.  

#16 The Best of Both Worlds  
Our country is great because it was built upon the backs of strong families.  Our country is currently suffering because this foundation is unraveling—the family is falling apart.  If we want to be strong, we need to strengthen the family.  At the same time, education is vital—we must be able to communicate and to think and learn for ourselves. We can look around at many nations in the world in which citizens are not allowed to think or make decisions for themselves and see the terrible place that leads.  Homeschooling is definitely the best of both worlds.  The family is strengthened by the amount of time spent together; communication can be terrific when parents and kids are not strangers to one another.  At the same time, education is central—that’s what happens in a homeschool, after all!  The whole family is learning and growing together, and good, thought provoking discussions happen all the time.  

#17 Add it Up 
Think about this: most children spend the 8 hours of the school day with their teachers and other students. How much time are they spending in one-on-one time with their parents and siblings?  When you throw in the myriad activities we all have—church, sports, music lessons, etc.—how much time do most people spend together as a family?  Not much.  When a family chooses to homeschool, 40 hours a week are given back as a gift.  Forty hours to be together under the same roof, interacting and discussing, laughing, reading, asking, helping…living.  The eighteen or so years we have with our children pass so quickly.  Why not spend as much as we can together?  

#18 The Homeschool Court Advantage
Several years ago, when our kids were attending a private school, we attended a volleyball tournament with our older daughter.  Their team did fine, and it was such a joy to watch her play—but the best game to me was people watching.  This was right during the time we were considering making the move to homeschool.  Some of the teams were vicious to themselves—the girls would yell and shout at one another when bad plays were made, or the players would cry or stomp off when they didn’t play well.  Some teams were vicious to the others—taunting and showing very poor sportsmanship.  But a few teams were amazing to watch, and they stood out head and shoulders above the rest—you guessed it, the homeschool teams!  The kids on those few teams were so encouraging to one another.  They laughed and had fun, and kept up a great banter as they played, lots of high fives and hugs. Even kids who were obviously siblings showed great respect and sportsmanship for one another.  The cut-throat mentality so often found in athletics was totally absent.   

#19  No Predators Here 
I love knowing that my girls are safe and free from distractions while they are learning.  They never have to worry about who likes whom, who broke up at lunch, what the horrible class bully is going to do next—or any of the numerous and much worse things that happen to children at schools all the time.  No one is going to bring a gun and open fire, no one is going to take advantage of their innocence.  This is a safe place to live and to learn—all the time. Many people who argue against homeschooling would say that we are giving our children an unrealistic view of the world and an inauthentic experience of childhood when we keep them home for school.  Is it inauthentic parenting to keep my child from the ever-growing number of pedophiles who sneak under the radar into our school systems?  Is it wrong to protect our children and to give them the gift of an emotional baggage-free adulthood?  Homeschool offers the unbeatable combination of the opportunity for a great education and a safe environment.  

#20 No Drug Dealers, Either
I am certain that there is not a single person lurking in this academy who desires to introduce my children to the evils and false ecstasies of drugs.  Not even alcohol or cigarettes.  This really is a drug-free zone, and it always will be.  The biggest substance control challenge that we face has to do with the no-more-than-two-diet-sodas-per-day rule.  

#21 Emergencies
Recently one of our loved ones had a slight stroke which ended up keeping him in the hospital for a whole week.  The flexibility homeschooling offers once again proved itself valuable for  our family. All of us were able to spend quite a bit of time at the hospital rather than being stuck in someone else’s routine.  No one wants to have to visit the hospital—and no one wants to be in the hospital!  But when someone is, all of us can show them how much we care and still not get behind in school.  

#22 Freedom of Religion
In our homeschool, I am quite sure of the religious curriculum that is being presented.  I know that when my children graduate and move out into the world, they will know and understand what their father and I believe and hold dear, and why.  I do not have to worry about anyone else with a poor motive or a political or religious agenda standing behind a lectern and speaking into my children’s lives.  When we hear or read an opposing worldview presented, it is under our own terms and with plenty of room for questions and discussion.  This, in my opinion, is one of the best reasons to choose homeschooling.  We can be free to learn and study and believe what we choose to believe—not what the minds that make an institution think we ought to believe.  

#23 School Lunch Reform
In our school, the meal plan is always healthy and it is always economical.  I know they are getting a balanced, nutritional meal because I serve it to them.  Not only that, but I know that they are able to discern what is healthy and what is not because we discuss nutrition often – in the store, in the kitchen, and at the table.  When moms and dads are rushing to get everyone ready for school in the mornings, sometimes the bag lunch ends up being less-than-desirable.  A thrown together sandwich, some chips, some cookies—whatever is there and prepackaged.  Or worse, time might run out all together and the kids have to eat what the school offers—oftentimes fried chicken fingers, pizza, and the like.  Our homeschool cafeteria is a much healthier option.  And, as an added bonus, we get to eat lunch together.  

#24 No Latch-Key Kid Syndrome
When I was a child in the seventies and eighties, someone coined the term latch-key kid.  It was a new descriptor for all of us who carried a key around our necks on a chain to let ourselves into the house when the bus dropped us off after school.  All of our mothers had entered the workforce and were no longer home to let us in and serve us the perennial after-school snack of cookies and milk.  What happened in many cases—and still happens today—is that the fridge and the cupboard became fair game.  With no one there to supervise the after school snack, the entire two hour period between the time the bus drops a child off and the time mom and dad return from work is snack time.  It does not take a degree in science or nutrition to know that our nation’s obesity epidemic is touched by this latch-key kid phenomenon.  Children are not often naturally self-disciplined.  If they are home alone with no one to tell them yes or no, they probably will eat the whole bag of microwave popcorn or the whole container of ice cream or the entire bag of chips.  

#25 Fashion Sense
Many schools today—even public schools—are embracing dress codes to keep the shared fashion sense of young people from getting out of control.  Too low, too high, too tight, too loose—the extremes are often embraced by teens and pre-teens trying desperately to stand out in the crowd.  One of the more glorious benefits of a homeschool is that the roller-coaster of kids trying to be like everyone else and also trying to stand out just doesn’t exist.  The pressure of what you look like determining your social standing and value is eliminated.  We have some simple rules about being neat and clean and dressed before we begin class each day, but no pressure on looking cool or keeping up with the latest trend.  

#26 Fashion Cents 
Along that same line of thought, another benefit is that the homeschool family saves a fortune each year on school clothes.  No one cares if you wear the same shirt twice in one week, or if you never buy the tennis shoes that everyone has to have that year, or if your jeans come from the thrift shop or are handed down from an older sibling—there is no fashion pressure in our academy.  No pressure on clothes, shoes, hairstyles, makeup, jewelry—think of all the areas that kids feel pressure to be like everyone else, and of all the money spent in pursuit.  And think of the unhealthy ideas about keeping up with everyone else that can be developed during young adulthood.  A homeschool is free from all of that drama.  And we also don’t have to spend several hundred dollars each August on new school clothes or uniforms.  Kids are free to wear what they want to wear, and parents are free from keeping up with the Joneses.  

#27 High School PE Class
PE time is great for the public or private school classroom teacher (a break!), but a bit of semi-controlled chaos for the PE coach.  Many times, an entire grade level goes out for PE at the same time—lots of kids and just one or two adults.  They try soccer, basketball, the dreaded dodge ball, running laps—all kinds of sports, but most of the hour is spent in changing out and in crowd control.  Now that we homeschool, our high school age daughter accompanies her father to the gym every weekday morning.  We found that a second family member membership was not very expensive at all.  And in one hour, she works out!  Weights and aerobic training have done their magic—just last week she found that she can do three pull ups! She ran a 10K and then a half-marathon recently, and has found the increased strength and lung conditioning has improved her abilities on the summer swim team as well.  

#28 PE for the Younger Set 
As you may have noticed by now, one of the greatest luxuries that homeschooling affords families is time.  When both parents work outside the home, and kids are in school, and then everyone has evening activities it is very difficult to find time to do extra things.  How many adults forgo daily exercise because the demands of a hectic life are too great?  Many children, as well, do not get enough exercise simply because there is not enough time in the day.  Not so for homeschool families.  On a pretty day, my younger daughter and I can go for a bike ride after math class, or we can take the dogs for a walk after history.  If she wants to go for a jog or jump on the trampoline or skip rope, she can.  A homeschool schedule makes it easy to incorporate healthy exercise habits into your family’s life—making everyone healthier.  

#29 Better Socialization
One of the big arguments against homeschooling is the fear that kids who do not go to public or private schools will be, well, weird!  The naysayers insist that homeschooled young people are not going to be properly able to navigate life in the “real world”, that cut-throat place of everyone’s future.  I beg to differ.  A homeschool life does not at all have to mean an isolated life.  On the contrary, it opens up the whole world to our kids.  Rather than being trapped in a room with twenty to thirty children of their own age, homeschool children can be surrounded by people of all ages—from the very young to the elderly and every age in between.  While most teenagers seem to have a permanent slump in their backs and sneer on their faces, my kids smile at adults! They know how to make eye contact and hold a real conversation with a toddler or a retiree, simply because they are around them often.  Rather than being an isolating life, homeschool can open the world back up to our kids.  

#30 Gardening 101
In the last century, we have forgotten how to be self-sufficient.  If anything calamitous were to happen, most of us would starve to death without our local supermarket providing the food we need.  How wonderful for our budgets and bodies to grow some of our own fresh, organic produce.  Being home for much of the day with school provides plenty of time for the whole family to be involved in the raising of vegetables and fruit for our tables, even if that means just a few potted vegetable plants on the patio.  It is a grand science lesson and a lifelong home economics experiment.  Throw in a good measure of hard physical work and discipline required in caring for a garden and you have the perfect all-year-long homeschool life lesson. 

#31 Preserving the Crop
Think of the myriad school and life lessons that go along with raising a garden and/or orchard.  Science, agriculture, physical education in the actual planting and maintaining of the garden, but then come the harvest and storing of the crop.  All of that work in the kitchen provides innumerable home economics and math lessons.  Fractions and measurements make perfect sense when your student can see them in real life.   Hands-on learning stays with young minds and helps them to really learn concepts—it goes way beyond memorizing and regurgitating information for a test in a classroom.  Not to mention the pride of helping provide food for the table all year long.  

#32 Siblings and Friends 
If you watch just about any television show, you might get the idea that modern kids are not supposed to get along with their siblings.  If you just look around when you are out in town, you might also get that idea—siblings are pretty ruthless to one another sometimes.  I am convinced that this does not have to be “just the way it is.”  The daily sequestering of our children into little pods of kids only their own age, and the daily separation from their own brothers and sisters exacerbates this problem of siblings who can’t relate.  

Living life together day in and day out in a homeschool allows makes everything so different.  Kids are much more relaxed and less possessive with their time and space.  Conversation is easy, not forced – and everyone learns to communicate by necessity.  Older siblings can take a great role in caring for their smaller brothers and sisters, the way it was for millennia before compulsory public education.  Surely kids can learn to be more effective parents one day when they have a hands-on part in helping care for one another at home.  Beyond that, siblings have time to really know each other, and to be far more than just people who live under the same roof – they can be friends.   

​#33 Craftsmanship
Almost gone are the days of apprentices and craftsmen.  We are fed a steady supply of cheaply made, disposable stuff.  In fact, there are very few people left alive who remember a less industrialized way of life.  One of the hidden gems of homeschool life is the ability for kids to really learn a craft.  My husband loves knives, and is quite interested in the craft of hand-made blades.  There is a young man who has made a splash in the knife-making world and is already becoming well known for his skill and design at a surprisingly young age.  How did he manage to get so good at this craft so quickly?  He was homeschooled, of course!  After his daily studies, he still had plenty of time to get out into the shop and learn by trial and error.  He could go to special week-long courses other kids his age could never go to because of school schedules, and he was able to spend time with other knife makers learning their methods.  The freedom and flexibility of homeschool opens up a world of opportunities for our children and their interests.  It could be anything—sewing, leatherwork, jewelry-making, woodwork, photography, writing, or the arts—the possibilities are endless.  

#34 A Little Bit of This…
Without the constraints of a public or private school schedule, a world of opportunity is opened up to homeschooled children.  There are so many things out there to learn and for them to be exposed to, far more than other schools are able to have funding, teachers, and time to incorporate into the yearly schedule.  For example, our older daughter recently took a motorcycle safety course with my husband on a Thursday and Friday.  School work can easily be rearranged around special events such as this.  The girls and I are often able to slip away on a beautiful day to make time to go to the shooting range, the tennis court, the swimming pool—anywhere we want to go.  The big museums and the zoo in the city have free entry days that we can take advantage of whenever we choose.  Far from constraining our children, homeschool opens up the whole world of experiences to the whole family.  

#35 What Did You Learn Today at School?
Almost every parent knows that the typical answer to this daily query would be, "Oh, nothing," or, "I don't know." Most kids are not as impressed by the details of a curriculum as their parents.  But that does not negate the fact that there is a curriculum, and many highly trained minds have put hundreds of hours into designing and developing it, in order to best shape and teach your child during their years of childhood and adolescence.  So, what did he or she learn at school today? The one way to know and be sure is to pick and/or design the curriculum yourself.  In the last twenty to thirty years, the options for homeschooling families have increased to an incredible selection.  You can mix and match and design the best plan of learning for your family—even for each individual child.  Many companies offer curricula, and families can choose from totally organic to highly structured and accredited options.  There truly is something for everyone and to fit every family.

#36 Volunteering
Now that our girls are older, the option of volunteering has entered our world.  So many wonderful parts of our communities depend upon their volunteer staff to make things run smoothly and optimally.  Hospitals, libraries, soup kitchens, animal shelters, non-profits of all kinds—all the things that lend the human touch to our communities need volunteers.  This has proven to be such a wonderful option for our teenagers.  Our oldest started out volunteering two hours a week at a resale shop for a local non-profit, and then built up to two full mornings a week.  She has learned so much about discipline, responsibility, compassion, people skills and the ins-and-outs of running a resale shop.  It has been an invaluable and positive experience for her, and her younger sister can hardly wait for her turn.  

#37. Purposeful Rest
One thing that is lacking in our busy modern world is a healthy rhythm of rest.  Stores are open 24/7 more often than not, media never signs off for the night - everything seems to keep spinning faster and faster.  It doesn't take an advanced degree to see that this is a huge part of what is stressing so many people out and making so many people sick.  Homeschool can help here and opens up a possibility that modern society is quickly losing.  Has it been an exceptionally crazy time?  Then let's take tomorrow off, just because we can.  Or, why don't we organize our weekly schedule so that every single Friday is just a half day of school?  We can do a little more the other days so that we can purposefully rest on the last day of the week. Modeling and teaching a lifestyle of diligent work followed by purposeful rest is a wonderful gift we can give to our children.  It will help keep them healthier all their lives. 

#38. Neighbors
It is not uncommon today for people to be strangers to their neighbors.  The widow across the street, the young family next door, the interesting international professor across the way—our own neighborhood is full of people of all ages and from all over the place.  A homeschool schedule can open up enough time in the week to actually know and connect with people again.  We are able to have lunch or coffee with our elderly friend who lives alone and absolutely loves company.  My girls have been able to babysit for a young mother who can then go grocery shopping or to a doctor's appointment in the middle of the morning—it is such a help to her.  We have all day to get school done, and our schedule is very flexible to allow for breaks between classes.  People and relationships do not have to be sacrificed when a daily schedule is allowed to be so fluid. 

 # 39 The Co-op Option
Many communities have growing numbers of homeschooling families, many of which group together to offer classes and extra-curricular activities for their children.  It could be anything from sports to academics, drama, art or music.  For example, a co-op might meet for three hours, one day a week.  A mom trained in art might teach an elementary art class.  A dad who is an engineer might teach an advanced math class.  The possibilities are endless, and some people really enjoy a little bit of collaboration and interaction with other families. Especially in larger communities, co-ops are a great option for homeschool families. 

#40 A Head Start for College and Beyond
Many community and junior colleges offer dual-credit classes for homeschoolers.  This can mean that a student can finish high school and already have a significant number of college credit hours completed.  Doing so often translates into thousands of dollars saved and a year or more cut off of university time.  Also, homeschooled teenagers have such a flexible school schedule that can allow for significant part-time jobs to save money for college—what other teenagers can take the morning shift? So many university students today end up trapped in enormous school debt and find themselves wallowing in years of waiting before entering responsible adulthood.  There are many great options to set our homeschoolers up for a healthy start on the rest of their lives. 


In summary, we have found that the homeschool life has benefitted our family in so many surprising ways.  Our kids have had the opportunity to experience a wide and interesting variety of activities, have been free to be themselves, and had the luxury of time to really be a part of our community.  We have had such a wonderful experience learning and growing together, and have thoroughly enjoyed being free to set our own schedule and to plan our own lives.  We have found that homeschooling has positively affected our relationships with each other, with extended family, with our neighbors and with our broader community.  It has benefitted our health—including fitness, nutrition and sleep patterns.  It has afforded us so much more precious time together, and so much less hectic running around over the years.  It has saved us a lot of money in clothes, supplies, gas, and wear and tear on our car. You probably have had so many negative thoughts and ideas from yourself and from others about why you shouldn't try homeschooling—I sincerely hope that our positive experience and insights can encourage you as you make your decision.