Enjoying a Simple Homeschool

Homeschooling offers the opportunity to create strong family bonds that are filled with joy because, above all else, homeschooling is about relationships. Yes, learning academic subjects is important. Children need an education that includes learning how to write, do math, and so on. But if it comes at the expense of the parent-child relationship (or even the sibling relationships) then none of our efforts in educating our children are worth much of lasting value. This is why creating a cozy homeschool can transform your homeschooling experience.

Homeschooling offers a fantastic opportunity for creating a cozy life of peace, understanding, and joy with your family. It really can be the ideal option in many ways.

• You have the freedom to create the learning routines in your home and organize your home in a way that fits with your new life.
• You have extended periods of time to interact with and study your children in order to thoroughly and deeply understand them as individuals.
• You have the opportunity to add real joy to the lives of your children as you understand who they are as individuals.

Although homeschooling is rarely easy, over time it should bring about increasing levels of peace, understanding, and joy to children and parents alike.

What If Your Homeschool Isn’t Cozy and Simple?

So what should you do if you know that your homeschooling isn’t simple and cozy? What if you look at your homeschooling and realize you are lacking peace, understanding, and joy in you and/or your loved ones?

Well, first know that you aren’t alone. Creating a cozy family and a cozy homeschool takes time. Depending on where you are in your homeschool journey, you may not have had enough time to really develop the relationships that you desire. Or maybe you need to adjust your priorities.

New Homeschoolers

If you’ve recently left a traditional schooling situation, you’ll probably go through a deschooling phase. That takes time as you adjust to your new life and leave behind the old ways of thinking about education and learning. Your children will need to adjust their thinking about what a typical day looks like now and how learning fits into all of it.

The deschooling period can be a fantastic time to concentrate on the cozy concepts of peace and understanding. You’ll be developing peace in your home as you create new routines that work for your family. You’ll be organizing your new learning life as you think through the books and materials you want to use in your educational endeavors and how learning will work in the various parts of your home.

And while you are going through the deschooling process, you’ll be learning more and more about your children. Your understanding of them will probably increase exponentially as you spend more time with them. You will discover aspects about their personality, the way they learn, how the function best, what kind of feedback they respond best to, etc. that you never would have learned if they continued to go to school each day and be away from you.

Established Homeschoolers

If you have already been homeschooling for a while or started out as homeschoolers, then your journey toward creating a cozy homeschool might already be a bit more established. You might be further along in having routines in place, creating order in your home, and understanding the individual needs of your children. (But if you aren’t, don’t panic or feel badly!)

You might discover you are further along than you think. Or you might realize you only need to make some changes here and there to see some significant differences. And there is always the possibility that your homeschool is not functioning well at all. You may need to start over from the beginning in terms of thinking through what you and your children really need to be peaceful and joyful in your homeschooling journey.

Whichever scenario you find yourself in, it’s fine! The important thing is making an honest assessment so you can move forward.

Creating a Simple Homeschool

Before you start thinking about where you are right now and the improvements you would like to make, take a minute and consider what might be hindering you. There can be a number of reasons that your homeschool isn’t cozy and what you deeply desire it to be.

• Listening to other people who have different ideas than what works for your family
• Unknowingly absorbing the expectations of others
• Trying to do too much
• Doing what you think you should do instead of doing what your kids need
• Not understanding your children’s individual needs
• Wanting to do homeschool the way you prefer or enjoy rather than what your children prefer or need
• Lack of organization
• Lack of a big picture idea of where you are going
• Poor relationships among family members

I encourage you to download a copy of Enjoying a Simple Homeschool to help you continue to think through these ideas. If you haven’t downloaded and completed my mini-course entitled Creating a Cozy Life – Getting Started, I recommend you do. This activity will make so much more sense with it already completed. 

A Quiet Simple Life Series