Thankful for Homeschooling!

In this month if gratitude, and in light of some rough days we’ve had recently, I am going to take a few minutes to dwell on why I am thankful for the gift of homeschooling. On the hard days, that will come, I need to pull this list back out and remind myself of God’s goodness!  I will just be honest, there have been more times in the past year that I have wanted to send my kids away on that big yellow school bus than I care to admit.  But, when I really sit down and think about the GOOD, I am drawn back to the heart of WHY I wanted to do this to begin with. Making this list was GOOD for me and my heart. I pray you will take a few moments to make a list like this, too.

So I have put together a list of my top 10 reasons why I’m thankful that we are able to homeschool!

10 Reasons I’m Thankful We Homeschool

1. Sleep! We don’t have to get up early and out the door! My kids get the adequate sleep that I believe they need! {You can read more about what our typical homeschool day looks like here!} Seriously, y’all. I think I might be too lazy to send my kids to public school. We struggle to get going in the morning. Heaven forbid we have to get started before 9am! LOL!
2. Flexible schedules – if we need to spend the day doing something other than school, that is perfectly fine! We can go do things, like visit grandparents in the hospital, during school hours or go do fun things when there is no crowd! Going to the beach in September and October is ideal! Off-season prices and EMPTY beaches! yay!
3. Redeeming a bad day with God’s Word. I recently wrote about a perspective change that has helped my heart on the bad days. This doesn’t make the bad days go away, but it does bring peace to my heart on those days.
4. The freedom to not use textbooks and to make learning more fun, hands-on and exciting for my children. Call me crazy but I think learning can be fun! I just can’t imagine only learning about ancient Egypt through a textbook! Look at alllll these fun ideas we did while learning about Egypt! I can tell you my kids learned and are retaining a lot more information about this time period in history as a direct result of these fun activities we did!
5. Memorizing lots of Scripture with my kids. This doesn’t make me supermom, y’all. But it is important to me. I pray every time we recite Scripture together that this Word, this living Word of God is planting DEEP into the hearts of my children. I pray that someday, when they need it most, God will allow them to recall these words that we have memorized while they are children.
6. Learning from my children. Homeschooling has done more for my sanctification process than just about anything. God has shown me the ugliness of my own sin through my children, my lack of patience, He has stretched me and grown me in ways I never would have known of had I not been homeschooling. Homeschooling has given me many opportunities to apologize to my kids. 🙂
7. Watching my children grow. I can see, right in front of me, their physical growth, but also their growth in Jesus. Sometimes I wonder if it is even there at all, but every once in awhile I get a glimpse of a mustard seed of faith in their hearts and that means more to me than I can even say.
8.  Traditions. Yes, we can have traditions without homeschooling. But, I love this time of year when we do our Thankful Tree and keep our thankful journals AS A PART OF OUR SCHOOL DAY. I know they wouldn’t be copying down thankful verses in thankful journals at school. I love that I can create these traditions with my kids.
9. The Homeschool Community. I have met so many wonderful people through blogging, through conferences, through our local co-op. I am blessed to be part of such an awesome community. Yes, there are divisions and extremes and parts of the homeschool community that will be frustrating, but I’m choosing to dwell on the GOOD today. The Teach Them Diligently conferences have blessed me so much. If you are needing some encouragement and community in your homeschool I encourage you to check it out! Another form of encouragement that I cherish greatly is having magazines, like Homeschool Enrichment, that I can glean from.
10. The knowledge that I’m in God’s will. I have questioned WHAT and WHY we are doing this. But, every time, I come back to the peace I have that we are in God’s will by homeschooling. I have prayed and asked God to allow me to send them to school – because y’all, it is hard. But, knowing that this is what He wants me to do (for now, at least) allows me to keep on keeping on. I wrote an entire series (along with 20 other homeschool moms) about REAL LIFE Homeschooling. You should read it if you need to hear some authentic testimonies of what it is really like to live this crazy life.

Happy Thanksgiving from Homeschool Enrichment magazine! Starting TODAY you can get this magazine at a discounted rate for a yearly subscription at only $17.97! Go here to find out more!