Rest assured that although this blog's entries have slowed down, the same has not occurred for the Freeman family. It's been so long since I've logged on I didn't even know Blogger had a new format - I'm trying to figure it out, hoping it's less complicated than the Lego toys my girls have grown desperately attached to.
We finished our homeschool experiment in May. My go to response when people ask how it went is that I loved it for a year but am thrilled the girls are starting back to school (tomorrow!). It fit a need for our family and gave us the opportunity to do some really neat things like traveling (although we didn't do as much as I hoped), behind the scenes tour of the dolphin habitat which included feeding the dolphins and giving them their commands to swim and jump, visiting some museums, getting a tour of the Bellagio and have a private performance of the water fountains, loads of arts and crafts and science experiments and so on. Regarding academics, I think the girls learned as much or more than they would have in school and the flexibility to speed up an assignment if it was easy or slow it down if they struggled was ideal. Of course with an extra long summer, I'm sure they've forgotten half of what they learned so I am in no way fooling myself into thinking this year will be easy for them.
The last thing I LOVED about homeschooling was the relative lack of stress or anxiety. If a kid is sick, no big deal, just take a day off or let them sleep in and work on something later in the day. If you can't get to your homework because of the double header soccer game followed by three birthday parties, you can do it the following day. We didn't blow off work (not often anyway) but we could get to it on our time. I was a happy camper. Neither of my girls received unexcused tardies or a letter home threatening their promotion due to missed school days.
Having said all that, it was a hard, challenging year. The time commitment is great, even when the school day is only four hours and the afternoons are filled with driving the kids to art, spanish, swimming and soccer. I learned a lot about how my girls learn and when that learning process is so different than your own, it's a struggle. Some days they would pop up and do their math and other days it fell apart into tears before their seats were warm. We are all like that, good days and bad, but it's hard to watch it day in and out without missing the forest through the trees. I'd get so focused on getting this one math sheet done that I'd forget the goal wasn't that sheet but an overall understanding of a concept. Additionally, I found it hard to balance being their mom and being their teacher. I'd want to console and reason with them as their mom but as their teacher I felt like I had to crack down more. Other homeschooling moms make this look much easier than it was for me but I am who I am. At the end of the day, I'm glad we did it, I doubt we'll do it again but I can totally understand families who embrace this lifestyle.
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