When homeschooling first became a part of my family's routine, there were many days where I asked myself " What are you doing?" Like with anything new, YOU are your biggest critic. And while everyone who finds out I homeschool my children dishes words of encouragement and expresses their own desire to homeschool... something still felt off to me. Trying to balance home life, mom life, wife life and now teacher life seemed impossible and daunting BUT one reminder saved me from feeling stuck.
Homeschooling provides the opportunity to be 100% responsible for what my children learn and how they learn it... I had to make this work to my advantage. I swept through the curriculum being taught in school and realized that half of it was unnecessary and should be an option for additional knowledge as opposed to being a requirement- therefore eliminating teaching time from our schedule. I decided what was important to me for my children to know and I included them in the decision making on what they would like to learn about. This freed up a lot of time AND lifted the guilt of feeling stuck! We figured out how to make homeschooling work for our family - not just by what they learn, but how they learn it, how they are assessed and how they retain the knowledge they learned. This made the journey a lot more fun and rewarding.
Often times we make the decision to homeschool, but still try to mirror what they do in actual school... that was one of my mistakes. So, whenever you are feeling stuck, just remember, 1: why you decided to homeschool in the first place and 2: it's all on your terms.
Shauna