Getting Started:10 Homeschool Myths

Last year I was a wreck about starting to homeschool. I never intended to homeschool the girls – it was the last thing on my mind! Now, after three years of homeschooling I believe that we made the best choice for our family and I LOVE spending time homeschooling with our girls!

I’ve had several conversations with friends in the past few months, and when I mention that we homeschool, the most common comment is “I’d like to, but we’ve never last the week!”

Here are my Top Ten Homeschool myths – debunked.

10. Homeschool is too hard. Yes, it is hard some days. There are days that I wonder why I thought it was a good idea – but I’ve learned to take a step back and just breathe. Then I breathe again,try a different tactic and usually it works!

9. Homeschool is the easy way out. Not for me. I love having the girls home with me, but I really have to plan and stretch myself each day. I think I work harder planning lessons that I did when I worked 40 hours a week!

8. Homeschool means that you are HOME all the time. We definitely are not home all week long.  At times I wish we were, but one of the best perks of homeschool is flexibility! I love taking time to go on long nature walks, visit the local children’s museum, the zoo, the art museum – you get the idea. The world is our classroom!

7. Homeschool means that your kids are not socialized. This is probably the hardest argument for me to answer. My girls are learning how to interact with children who are younger than them, who are their age, as well as older children and adults. They are learning how to speak politely, answer questions, and handle other social niceties.  They interact with the bank teller, the librarian and the grocery clerk. I think they are better socialized than I was at their ages!

6. Homeschool means that your housework suffers. I’ll be honest here, it does a little bit. I need to plan a bit more, and I have a schedule that helps keep me on track. Like everything else, once we decided to homeschool we realized that our schedule would need to be flexible, so we work it out as we go.

5. Homeschool means that you do school Monday-Friday 9-3. Ummm…no. Monday is our family day, so I try to schedule field trips, errands and just simple fun.We have our Classical Conversation campus on Wednesday mornings, and we homeschool Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday mornings.  I really like that we are usually done with our school work by lunch time.

4. Homeschool means that you can teach whatever you want. We are interest led, which means that we follow Sophie’s lead, but I still need to work on reading/numbers/letters/colors/math…etc. I plan unit studies around the topic that we are working on and make sure to hit all the major lessons.

3. Homeschool means that one parent needs to be home full time. Ken works full time and I work part time from home. Together we have a schedule that allows the girls and I to do school in the mornings, and if I have an appointment with one of our foster babes, then Ken is able to cover for me at home. I’m very thankful that we both have flexible scheduling that allows us to frame our days this way.

2. Homeschool means you don’t like the public school system. I was educated in public school. Both my parents were public school teachers. We live in an excellent school system where the elementary school is literally across the street. My husband serves on the school board. We have always supported the school district, and continued to do so even after we informed them of our choice to homeschool. The superintendent has been very supportive and we haven’t received any backlash from the school community. I really believe that by making the decision about our family, and not us vs. public school it made all the difference.

1. Homeschool means you have to have all the answers. Not in our house! I can’t tell you the number of times that I have had to tell Sophie and Bella “I don’t know…let’s go look it up” and we do. I love that we have so many resources at our fingertips so we generally can find the answers!!