Greetings! My name is Lisa (aka Morning Rose) and I’d like to introduce you to our homeschool. We started homeschooling four years ago when Scooter, our older son, was in second grade and B, our younger son, was pre-school (age 4). My husband and I had read two books, Better Late Than Early and The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, which helped lead us in our decision to homeschool.

I always had a desire in my heart to homeschool, but did not feel ready until the time we started. We liked the Moore’s homeschool philosophy of work, study, and service, and added play as a fourth leg of our homeschooling.

Because we had no experience homeschooling (my hubby and I had grown up in public schools), we enrolled Scooter in the Moore Academy our first year. The Academy assigned us an educational counselor who designed an individualized curriculum for Scooter’s first year and answered our questions throughout the year. We reported to the Academy monthly on our progress in the various subject areas. After a semester with the Academy, I felt that I could homeschool on my own and thus we did not join the Academy again the next year. We still order most of our homeschooling materials through the Moore Foundation. As we homeschool longer, I order fewer materials online and reserve more books from our public library.

Homeschooling is a process of research and practice. It takes time to find materials that are the right fit for you and your children. Once you find that fit, the children seem to take off and amaze you with their progress, curiosity, and thoughts. We love the flexibility and the family closeness fostered by homeschooling and are blessed to be able to continue homeschooling our children. We strive to provide a Christian home where our children can grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ daily as they read God’s Word, memorize Scripture verses, and actively participate in our local church.

There are many things I wish I had known my first year of homeschooling, including:

1. There is no single best way to homeschool every child. Otherwise, we’d all be using the best approach, the best books, the best curriculum, etc.
2. You don’t have to plan everything perfectly. Homeschooling includes a lot of trial and error.
3. Different kids have different learning styles. It took me a while to get used to Scooter’s kinesthetic, creative style of learning, which differed so much from my own.
4. The second child can learn so much from the first child, and vice versa. The mom doesn’t have to do all the teaching.
5. While it was helpful to join a homeschool academy our first year, it became unnecessary after the first semester. Though some homeschoolers like the accountability of reporting to a homeschool academy every month, I disliked filling out all the forms to report what we did to an outside entity. After the first year, we stopped filling out the forms and instead relied on the children’s progress as a measure of our homeschooling efforts.
6. You don’t have to keep track of every minute of every day. The first year I kept a gigantic spreadsheet to record every minute spent on every subject every month. Now I count five hours a day when we have a school day to ensure we reach the required 875 hours per school year. I find it best to keep things simple.
7. You don’t need to cover every subject every day. Some subjects can be tackled every other day or once a week.
8. You don’t have to buy all your books. Many books can be reserved at the library and kept for several months by renewing your books online.
9. If your child is frustrated or in tears, take a break and return to the subject later that day or the next day. It’s not worth it to burn him out so young. If he doesn’t understand the subject, he may later when the light bulb turns on in his head.
10. Let your child be creative, ask questions, and spend more time on a topic than you originally planned. That’s when real learning often takes place.
11. Be more encouraging and less critical. I often have to remind myself of this one.
12. Relax! Your kids will learn because of and sometimes in spite of your efforts.
13. I should have started homeschooling earlier.

Lisa (aka Morning Rose) has been teaching her two elementary-aged sons for four years and incorporating study, work, service, and play into their homeschooling days. She enjoys reading, writing, and photography and blogs publicly at Pockets of Time and privately at Scooter and B.