Home education. Our story and inspiring my children to be lifelong learners.

Dear reader,

Ever since my first child, now 11, was a baby, I have been interested in homeschooling. By now, I have 3 daughters being educated at home. Today, I don’t want to call it homeschooling anymore because what we do is not school. It is definitely education but not school.

Home as the first school

It is a fact that the most important school is the home, whether or not we were homeschooled. I was a hungry learner who was extremely involved in exceeding expectations and big achievements, but this is something my father taught me, and he was a teacher but not my teacher. He also inspired my love for poetry and literature, and today, I’m a poet and writer. 

Similarly, when children are not doing well in school, it might be that they’re not doing good at home. Home is the first school, and parent figures our first teachers.

My introduction to homeschooling

I was an arts and crafts blogger before I had children. I then followed a lot of blogs, and many bloggers were homescholers. That was my introduction into that world. I didn’t know how to do it. At that time, my thought was no way would my partner be OK with homeschooling, yet he was thinking the same as me. We both stressed out about when our children became school-age.

Fortunately for us, we lived in Arizona, USA, when we had children. Arizona is a homeschool heaven. We moved here from Michigan, which is not an easy state to homeschool. In Cuba, where I’m from homeschooling, is illegal and unheard of. Parents would be imprisoned if they chose not to send their children to school.

My family’s homeschooling journey

Once my partner and I spoke about our interest in homeschooling, we didn’t stop there. We researched schools and were not impressed. We read the news and weren’t impressed by what makes it into the news about school. We discussed our own experiences and why we didn’t feel well in school. We were not getting anywhere, and we were most stressed.

I researched the Arizona laws for homeschooling as well as laws in other states and quickly realized how lucky we were that we could do it. I signed my oldest daughter up for homeschooling, but I mostly focused on arts and crafts, which was my thing at the moment, and we got all sorts of things to inspire learning. We got many different books and magazines, arts and craft materials, and many different learning apps and subscriptions.

This child is 11 today, and she’s an avid reader. She is also a short story writer, and she has written more stories in her short life than I have in mine. She is a very good writer. She is extremely wise for her age, and she is very self-assured, knowing what she wants in life and going for goals that are quite huge. One of her goals for her future is creating a comic book with her own story and arts. She is also a YouTuber, and that was her choice, and she has podcasted and written for my old arts and crafts blog where now we share children’s and especially girl content.

But it wasn’t always easy for this oldest daughter of mine, though we could argue that she has had a way easier life than if she would have been going to a regular school.

Choosing online school: K12

With the uncertainty and honest fear that plagued my beloved partner and I about our children’s schooling, I heard about online school and chose to put my kids in it. I chose it for the ease of it and for the help because at that point, I wasn’t sure what to do. I convinced my partner and signed my oldest and eventually our second daughter up.

In the beginning, we were concerned with following the norms and looking good, something I feel many parents choose over the health and well-being of our child and family. My child was not interested in learning, and we had to force her to do the work. Additionally, my partner and I were unhappy and fighting about the situation with the school.

We had chosen K12, and it wasn’t too bad, but we needed even more freedom. Our children needed more freedom. Our connection was suffering, and we needed a change.

A parent mindset shift was more effective than anything

What shifted our experience was a shift in our own mindsets and expectations. When we were tough on our first learner, she didn’t like school, and she didn’t want to participate, much less learn. This online school was much easier than the schooling we (her parents) had attended, but there was no way to convince our child of this.

Eventually, we “gave up” on our toughness because we realized it was hurting all of us. Our first daughter was not good at reading at first, and she had some sort of block (that we might have given her given due to our own stories of being driven by our parents). Once we decided we didn’t care if she was behind in school and we stopped driving her so hard, she learned to read from one day to the next. Soon, she was reading books on her own and loving to read. Now, she reads large chapter books, and when she loves a book, she reads it several times.

Our second daughter had a different story. We had relaxed in our style of schooling when she started, and she had a much smoother ride from the beginning.

Notice that I assume the responsibility for my children’s learning completely today, even assuming responsibility for their failures and weaknesses. We still spend more time working with our oldest daughter, and we sped lots of time, getting her to understand that it’s important to have a mindset change about her own abilities. Whenever she says something that might be based on our old and outdated way of learning, we let her know that the way she expresses a weakness might manifest as such weakness becoming stronger. This is the tough lesson we learned.

Arizona state’s ESA scholarship. Homeschooling with tutors

One day, a coworker told me about this program after I had told her of my online school experience. Arizona’s ESA program was a new thing then. The program asserts that parents know what’s the best way for their children to learn. Once a child is approved, the government gives the child a large amount of money towards their education. The funds are only to be used for learning materials and tutors and can be used to pay for tuition of private schools. The rule is that a child in this program is to be removed from public school, and my understanding is that the government is saving money also.

This program is amazing for homeschooling. This semester, I signed up my third daughter after she requested over and over that it was time for her to start. She is eager to learn and learned to read from one day to the next and learned to write while on a reading class only.

This is my first year using this program, and I still don’t understand all the costs it covers. However, we know that it covers the cost of computers, schol materials, arts and crafts materials. Our children love receiving the materials their father orders, and he does the shopping because he is the most patient and best at it. Our role as adults in charge is to use our own gifts.

Inspiring our children to be lifelong learners

I have come to appreciate the word learner much more than student!

What my partner and I believe is that learning doesn’t stop when we are done with school, and we both enjoy learning, reading, researching, books, documentaries, and deep meaningful discussions and debates. Of course, I also enjoy teaching, psychology, creative writing, and journaling while he enjoys science, exercise, technology, and computers.

Our strategy has evolved into offering many different avenues for learning and development of the self. As I write this, I noticed that my partner and I should be even more conscious of our education efforts rather than teaching by default. We need a more solud plan. Note that this writing is meant to help me most, although I would love it if the reader got some information or inspiration for their own journey.

Some ways we inspire our children to learn:

We lead by example: I write most days, and my children see me writing in my phone, computer, and by hand. They also see me creating arts and crafts, and they copy these things. My partner and I consume lots of educational material. We love podcasts, documentaries, books, and even movies about ancient history and to not bore little minds (God knows I hated history in school), I impress them with stories about queens, princesses, fashion and jewels, wonderful places, mysterious events, and mythology always impresses.

We buy lots of books on many different topics. We ensure to have variety and new additions, and we make sure to have educational picture books, activity books, arts and crafts books, coloring books, story books, actual education books, etc.

We insist on them having and using learning and art apps on their devices, and their dad gets them computer programs and subscriptions.

We listen to them. Their feedback is most important because children don’t learn when they’re forced to. They learn what they want to learn. My partner and I figure out what topics they want to learn, what art forms they’d like to explore, and what skills we think they should work on. The children choose what tutors and classes to sign up for.

The kids like YouTube. I spend a lot of energy showing them the part of YouTube that is educational. We have painted paintings from YouTube tutorials, made meals, learned Math, looked up experiments, learned about history, holidays, we have recreated crafts and they’re aware that I use it also for making garments, gardening, meditation, and more.

We make it fun. My belief is that stressed out kids don’t learn well. My main goal is to provide a learning atmosphere where my children are relaxed enough to not resist learning and to make it fun enough to inspire them to ask for more.

Interest lead learning. If you guessed that our children are choosing what they learn, you’d be correct. We do not practice unschooling, though we allow the children to make their education choices. They’re not free to do whatever they want. For example, my oldest daughter didn’t want to go to jiu-jitsu class, I convinced her to come with the other children, and now she is interested! I didn’t force her or give her an ultimatum. As a mother, I understand her, but I want to let her know she will have new interests in the future, so I ask her to explore with the understanding that she can make a choice later.

There’s so much I can talk about on this topic, and I will. Let’s talk about homeschooling again soon because I’m more serious about it than ever, and with 3 kids, I have to become more serious about it before my 2 toddlers are also school age.

Thank you for reading,

Eve