Fall 2020

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FALL 2020 HOMESCHOOL IOWA 11
Maybe I couldn’t do this homeschooling thing? That is when a lovely
veteren homeschool mom told me to stop teaching her to read. I
couldn’t believe what I heard her saying! How could I stop teaching
her to read?! She explained that it was not important to put informa-
tion into her head, but to instill a love of learning. How did tears over
a letter sound instill a love of learning? It was a mind-blowing ques-
tion that I simply had to answer, “It doesn’t.” So we stopped teaching
reading.
How did she learn, then? What do youmean? How could that work?
Simply. We went to the library and checked out books she liked. We
snuggled up on the couch together
and read those books to her. While we
were reading, I pointed to words and
matched words to pictures. I said the
words out loud. Sometimes sound-
ing them out, sometimes just reading
them. One day, we were driving down
the road in San Pedro, California. Gaz-
ing out the window, she said, “Hol-
lywood Video!” That was not a store
we frequented, so we were quite amazed. We started pointing out
signs to see if she could read them. She read them all! It was all very
natural, very comforting, and very fun. She learned her letters and
she learned to read. Today she loves both reading and writing for fun.
One year later, we were thrown our next big curveball. We expe-
rienced the loss of a job in a horrible economy. After a lot of dis-
cussion, hours of prayer, and some pretty awesome miracles from
the hand of God, we embarked on a journey home to Iowa. Coming
home was a big change; one I wasn’t sure I could handle.
By this time, I was dead set on homeschooling. No way weremy kids
ever going to step foot in a public school. I feared government over-
reach and felt a supervising teacher would be oppressive. Iowa laws
required testing, which would require my kids going into the public
school or I had to have a supervising teacher. Thankfully, these laws
have since changed, but at the time, this was the way that it was.
My ways are not God’s ways. And the next curveball was pitched. He
has never really allowed me to be stuck in my ways. Our finances had
suffered frombeing unemployed for an extended period of time, and
I had to go to work for a season. We tried to continue to homeschool
through this time, but it just didn’t work out. My husband would go
back to work his 12-hour shifts more tired than when he came home
for his days off. I was exhausted and school was falling behind. Our
daughters were in 2nd and 4th grade. My heart broke as we made
the tough decision to enroll them in school. I had two little boys
at home by now as well. Thankfully my mom was able to help with
them, but school was the best option for our family at the time.
It was an experience I would not change for anything now. It was
not easy. There were good and bad that came out of it, but the good
far outweighed the bad for our family. My heart was still broken
over the loss of homeschooling. During their time in public school, I
came to understand that we all need to be “homeschoolers.” Home-
schooling is a way of life, a mindset you develop toward learning.
This mindset says our school options are just our resources to be
successful in our parental responsibility to educate our children. For
a season, our primary resource for educating our children was the
public school system. It was what we needed for a season. But dur-
ing that time, we were still of the “homeschool”mindset.
While they were in the public school, we still had many conversa-
tions around the dinner table about what they were learning. We
watched a lot of movies and documentaries together to supplement
what their teachers were teaching. We countered some of what
they were exposed to with the truth of the Bible, and spent a lot of
time praying our way through some difficult social circumstances.
We were tested and tried during that time period. And as summer
ended one year, we started discussing their return to school. Sitting
around the table with three weeks left of summer, one by one, the
three middle kids (we now have 5) decided to come back home.
Their primary reason was that they just didn’t like the social pres-
sures to do things they felt were wrong in order to be accepted by
friends. They found it exhausting.
So we were back to scrambling for resources. My attitude toward the
HSAP (Home School Assistance Pro-
gram) and supervising teachers was
completely altered. The Iowa laws
had also changed for the better. This
meant more options with more free-
dom. I no longer felt it was oppressive.
I was glad to have some support as I
scrambled to find resources on short
notice.
My heart in homeschooling my chil-
dren is to instill a love of learning no matter the resources I use. I
love having us all together learning around the table. I have used a
wide variety of resources along the way. As my kids have gotten old-
er, and curriculum becomes less about fun hands-on activities and
more about writing papers and researching topics, I have had to get
more creative in how I bring us all together. Which brings me to the
current evolution in my homeschooling journey. It’s what I like to
call Fun-Schooling Fusion. Making sure the “fun factor” is ever pres-
ent in learning is extremely important to me. I tried letting my kids
choose what they wanted to learn. I bought some games centered
on those themes hoping they would be both fun and academic. Nei-
ther one worked out perfectly for us because of my need to have
stability and planning in my life and the disappointment of a game
being academic, but not fun, or really fun, but losing the academics.
We have created our own little combination that works quite well for
us in this season.
We still use a structured curriculum for Math and Language Arts.
We do unit studies for Science and History with a variety of resources
available in our home library. Every day we start our day with an
educational game or two. I have a variety of games to choose from,
most of them from a company called SimplyFun. I found and joined
SimplyFun as a consultant because I was so impressed with the work
they put into making facts available to their customers through their
website. They have made my life so much easier as a homeschool
mom, and I wanted to share that resource with others.
So here we are now, one child in college, one a senior this year, and
my boys 13, 11, and 9. We love learning together. My kids fight like
siblings, but play like best friends. They learn well, enjoy pursuing
passions, and I feel they are well-balanced kids. My goal is not to
see my children go to college and get a prestigious degree or be the
best in a sport or other activity. My goal is to see my kids enjoy learn-
ing, seek out and refine their personal gifts and grow where they are
planted. If where they are planted requires a college degree, that is
fine. I support that 100%. If it doesn’t, that is fine, too.
We continue to face life’s challenges head on as they come our way.
Sick parents/grandparents, a kid heading off to college, a kid chang-
ing her major, change of job, an upcomingmove, change, and a little
more change. Despite the changes and challenges, we have settled
into a routine for now. The biggest lesson I have learned and now
embrace is “Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be broken.”
To learn more about Simply Fun and Gameschooling, visit Jamie’s website at:
schoolingfusion.
b
My heart in homeschooling my
children is to instill love of learning
no matter the resources I use.
b