#1 Homeschool Advantage You Don't Want to Miss

Hi, this is Sheri from the blog ourlifehomeschooling.com. If you are new to my blog or my YouTube channel, I like to share encouragement to other moms that are either starting out on their homeschooling journey or are in the middle of it and just need something to help them keep going. I am a homeschool mom of nine children. I am a former public school teacher turned homeschool mom. I remember what it's like to be in those early stages and to have very little support and to feel a little insecure and not sure of yourself, but really feeling like you wanna do this and that this is what God has for you. And I just needed a little bit of encouragement and support from someone. And I have started this blog and YouTube channel as a way to be that kind of support and encouragement, hopefully, to some of you who are starting out or just need to be reminded of why you're doing what you're doing and reminded that you can do this. In this video, I'm going to be talking about the number one homeschool advantage you don't wanna miss. Like I mentioned, we have been homeschooling for 12 years. I obviously have gone over and it's very well cemented in my mind why we are homeschooling. When you do something that is so outside the box and countercultural, you really weigh back and forth the reasons why you're doing this. And I can't tell you how many times I went back and forth in my mind, just questioning. I would talk with my husband, are you sure that this is good for our kids? And it's hard to be different. It's hard to step out of the box. I had gone over and over our reasons for homeschooling many times. And I've actually written two blog posts about why we homeschool. So I knew our reasons for homeschooling. I had gone over and over them. But even so, there was one huge advantage that I had kind of overlooked. And it wasn't until this year, which is, this was our 12th year homeschooling, that it hit me what a huge advantage this has been all these years of homeschooling. And I never really gave it that much thought. Our oldest son was a junior last year. So we have almost homeschooled from kindergarten all the way through having a graduate. And in all that time, I had not really given much thought to this huge leverage that we've had, this opportunity we've had because we've been homeschooling. And it just hit me one day. And I've been thinking about it ever since. So this is the story. It was lunchtime, early spring. And so we were all gonna go out on the deck and have lunch together. We had just finished our morning of schoolwork. And we usually get our independent work done in the morning. We have lunch, and then we put our nappers down and I read to the kids. So this was our lunchtime. We were outside. It was me and mostly just my little kids. So I was surrounded with just a lot of little kids. They were just jabber, jabber, jabbering. And they kept asking me question after question. And if you've been there and you know what it's like when kids just ask you questions over and over and over to the point where you are just, you just feel like you cannot take one more question. I just wanted them to just be quiet for, just give me a couple minutes of peace and quiet. They were constantly asking questions and curious about things. And as frustrated as I was in that moment, this was the moment that it hit me that I had never thought about this before. That this was a huge advantage in homeschooling. And this is something that had given my kids so much freedom and allowed them to be able to learn. And that advantage, the number one homeschooling advantage you don't wanna miss is conversations. My kids are conversing all day long. They are constantly asking me questions. They are curious about everything. And they're in an environment where they can ask those questions. As exhausting as it can be for us to be around kids that are constantly asking things, this is their way of learning about the world around them. I think the number one overlooked advantage of homeschooling when compared with traditional school is conversations. All the conversations that our kids are able to have with adults, with each other. Conversations that revolve around real things, real activities, conversations that we have from books. The first thing that is pretty obvious to me is that they're free to talk and ask these questions. If they were in school all day, you have to walk in a line quietly through the hallways. You have to sit in a desk and listen to the teacher teach. It's a totally different environment. And it does not give many opportunities for conversations, conversations one-on-one with an adult or with another child. They're gonna be in a group learning environment. And group learning, as hard as a teacher may try or as hard as they try to make it a discussion, does not lend itself well to conversations, to being curious about something, to really speaking your mind freely and asking some of the hard questions, things that you wanna know about. If you do get a chance to talk during lunch or recess, often their conversations would be just with other kids who are on their intellectual level. They don't get a lot of opportunities throughout the day to talk with someone above their intellectual level, an adult, someone that has something interesting, some interesting trade or an interesting history, something that they could just learn something new about. So they are free as homeschoolers to talk and to ask questions throughout the day. Now that does not mean that I think group learning doesn't have benefits. Our kids go to co-op. They do sit in a class. They do listen to the teacher. But it's not every day all day and they're not missing that chance to talk with other adults, with people out in the community, with each other and with me to ask questions and to just have those one-on-one deep conversations. Secondly, they are able to talk to adults who are older than them, who have more interesting information to share with them. I can just think of several times we've had people come to the house. We often will have people from out of town come and stay with us and our kids are here because they're homeschooled and we'll have older people here and the kids are just able to talk freely with them and ask them questions, learn about some of the history that older people have to share. They'll be talking with a neighbor and just able to find out some interesting things from them. Our kids have had so many meaningful conversations with adults throughout the day, whether we're going out somewhere or staying home and walking around the neighborhood, just because they're able to talk with other adults. A third interesting thing to me is that they can have a lot of conversations that revolve around real things or raw materials. Our kids are not in a building all day. They're not even in our home all day. We are outside, we're in the community, we are sometimes running errands and we live in a very real environment and they are able to have conversations that revolve around real things. Home is an environment with a lot of real things and raw materials. You go outside and there's so many plants and animals to see. Inside we're preparing meals, we are doing laundry and just doing all the normal things that happen in a home. Opportunities to cook and to bake. There's just so many real things that are happening in a home that don't happen in a sterile environment like you're gonna find in a brick and mortar school. And so when they're around all these real things so often, that's what their conversations revolve around. Our kids also have the opportunity as homeschoolers to have conversations that revolve around real life activities. So whatever you do in your normal life, going to get a haircut, grocery shopping, going to the bank, having the repairman come to your house and fix something. These are all just normal everyday life activities and the kids are there for all of them and they're asking questions. They want to know about everything. They want to understand what's going on. So they have a lot of conversations that revolve around real life activities and that gives them a lot of opportunities to learn about life around them. They're not always preparing for life. They are living life. They are in the real world and that's what their conversations revolve around. The last thing that I thought of that is an opportunity for great conversations is the conversations that we have that revolve around the books we read. One of our favorite things to do as homeschoolers is to read together. We read together for breakfast during morning time. I read to everyone after lunch again, usually just a fun chapter book and maybe a science book. And this is just something that we enjoy. And when I think of all the places that we have been and the content that we have covered over the years through the books that we have read, we've just done so many things. In a few minutes, Wendell, with my video. Look, you're in the video. Say hi. Hi. Say hi. When we're reading about a story that takes place in another part of the world, we will often get out the Atlas and just look it up, find out where that place is. And they will have so many questions and they're free to ask those questions because we're not in a group setting where everyone has to be quiet. It's just a couple of us and we're on the couch. And if there's a word that I read that they have never heard of, I will stop and ask them, what is this? Or what does this mean? Or they will ask me if they don't know what a word means. So we've had so many interesting conversations because of the places we've been in all the books that we've read together. So you don't want to miss the number one homeschool advantage you have in conversations, the conversations that your kids can have throughout the day. And they are always learning through the things that they're asking and the conversations that they're having with other adults. If you'd like to know more about this topic, I have written a whole post on it. I will link that below. Thank you for visiting my channel. You can find me on Facebook or Pinterest or Instagram. And I would appreciate it if you would like and subscribe below. Thanks for listening in. I hope this is encouraging you as you are on your homeschool journey. Have a great day.