Our Life Homeschooling:Sheri's Interview

I'm sharing from recently I've run into so many friends and acquaintances who have decided to step out and homeschool their kids many of them because of COVID-19 but a lot of them also just for personal choice and so I got this idea to start this blog of sharing the experiences of lots of different homeschoolers. I've been spending my summer interviewing moms and collecting their resources, their favorite read-alouds, hearing their stories of how they ended up homeschooling their kids and I will be sharing them in the next couple weeks. I'm excited to put them out there and to be able hopefully to help a lot of moms and dads who are looking for resources. So I thought before I put out some of those posts that I would start by sharing our story. So my name is Nelson and this is my wife Sherry and we've been married for 20 years. Just had our 20th anniversary and we have eight children and we live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. So to start off we'll just talk about our experience and why don't you explain how we kind of got into homeschooling and what led us there. Okay so this was over 15 years ago. I was a teacher in public schools in Virginia. I love teaching. I just I love kids. I loved learning. I wanted to learn about everything in the world with my kids and we both at that time had careers and we're just kind of in that path. I was frustrated because I felt so limited in school just by all the administrative work, all the paperwork. Things were constantly changing and I felt like I had so little time to do what I really wanted to do which was just teach the kids and learn things with them. That was a little bit of a frustration for me. I also in my second or third year, I had a kid come into my class in the middle of the school year. His name was Brad. He had been homeschooled up until that point and I kind of had my own idea of what homeschoolers looked like at that point and when he came into my room I had these expectations and he totally blew them away. He was very smart. He would finish everything I gave him quickly and then he would get out a book which was many grade levels above the grade level I was teaching. I would sit in the back of the room and read these books that were just for kids much older than him and he wasn't just smart. He was just well liked by everyone. He was fun. He was funny. He was just a leader in our class and it really undermined all the preconceived ideas that I had of homeschoolers and so that was kind of my first, maybe the first time I warmed a little bit to it and he just kind of changed everything for me. So fast forward a couple years, we both had our careers. We kind of had this, you know, we were both doing our own thing and we were ready to have a family. We had been working for five years. We had our first son, Ty and I made the hard decision to stay home with him which I had always wanted to stay home with but it was still a really hard decision because I had to give up. We had to cut our income in half and I had to give up the respect that comes with having a career to stay home and just stay home. Yeah and that was a big change for us but when we had first gotten married and Sherry had mentioned about wanting to stay home with our kids when we had kids, I was all for it and didn't give it a second thought. I was excited that she wanted to do that and I think a big reason for that was when I grew up, my mom was a stay-at-home mom and so she was always there at the house. She was just a constant for us which gave us stability in the home and just that calm reassurance that we could have as kids and growing up. So when she had mentioned the idea of staying home with our kids, I was all for it even though that meant giving up half of our income to be able to do that but we had kind of planned for that and before she stopped working, we tried to live on my income so when she did stop working, it wouldn't be as much of a shock to our standard of living. So I think we were able to make the transition a little bit easier because we made the adjustments beforehand. Yeah, it was a big change as I'm sure it is for all parents when they have their first child. I loved being a mom. I adored, I just adored our son for essentially all of our kids and I loved staying home but it was was a sacrifice for us at that time and but I began to feel like all those things I loved about teaching, I couldn't wait to show him things and to watch him do things and to watch him learn how you know just to do simple tasks, putting puzzles together and you know learning about all the animals and so fast forward a couple years when it was time for him to enter kindergarten, we started obviously really thinking you know what are we going to do and at that time we had three kids. I was four, Luke was maybe two or three and then we had a Jenna and at that point I you know I had already kind of warmed to homeschooling because of some of these experiences but you were working swing shifts and that was a big factor for us because if Ty would have gone to school then he would have only seen you you know a couple days a week and so that that was a huge factor for us starting out. So I think that coupled with the some of the limitations that you had as a teacher, those over the few years that you did teach and then also my schedule, working swing shifts, those those two combined were I think pretty big factors into the idea of staying home and wanting to homeschool. Yeah so we stepped out and decided to try it. It was never like meant to be a permanent thing but we just started to try it and of course being a public school, a former public school teacher, my first first thing I did was I had been a school teacher in Virginia. I printed off the Virginia state standards and for kindergarten and I wanted to make sure that we were in line with all of those, I wanted him to have an excellent education. So I started with kind of that that path for me and we were trying to make sure we were keeping up. I wanted him to be on grade level if not ahead of grade level but as it kept going it started shifting because I started finding that he was ahead of the standards in some areas and in other areas I just didn't really care about some of those things. There were other things that I felt like were more important and I wanted to spend our time on. Just what I had wanted and what became important to both of us for him just didn't exactly line up with everything that was prescribed in those state standards. So I began, I started just questioning, you know, what is education? What is learning? What's important? What do we want to our kids to learn? And we had a lot of these conversations especially in the beginning and as Christians who operate from a Christian worldview we see everything that is known and that is as coming from a creator who made us. And so all of these things that we're learning whether the relationships in math or observations in science or art or music, language, all these things are his design and his it's what he created. He created these things for us and that when we when we learn about math when we are learning about any of these things we're learning about him and his design. These are all things that he made we're just discovering them. And at that point education started changing in my mind and becoming more of wanting to show my kids what an awesome God and what an awesome design and what awesome ideas that he has planned. Let's discover them. Let's find out about them. And so discipleship really became more of a driving force for me. I wanted them to learn about our great God and his great design. And on top of that I would say we had a lot of practical skills that we really wanted them to learn about you know how to manage your money, a lot of life skills, things we wanted them to learn to be able to do around our house that really are kind of hard to teach when you're gone all day. So that's pretty much how we. And I was going to jump in on the worldview thing as well. But you know we had a class in college one of our gen ed classes in college was basically identifying discovering and identifying your worldview of what should our worldview be as Christians. And obviously it would be a Christian worldview. You know where does everything start? What's our purpose? You know what does God have for us? You know what's our purpose in life? How do we. Your worldview is a baseline for how you view everything. A lens that you view the world and how you see everything. So so the most important aspect for that would be in education where to have a Christian worldview and to be able to teach our kids that education starts with God and to look at education through the lens of God and through the scriptures. And I think that that was important for us. And then like Sherry said as far as the practical skills some things that we missed out on in our high school experience whether it be you know personal finance, knowing how to manage your money, getting a credit card, you know things like that. I had no idea. I went to college and they had offers for a credit card and I signed up because it sounded like a good idea. And I got a t-shirt and a plastic cup. So thankfully I didn't throw myself into debt. But just having the knowledge of credit and finance earlier in my life would have helped out. And also other practical things like doing things with your hands and learning certain skills that you might not get just in a typical education setting that we could provide here in our home. So if we would try to describe a typical day. You've been here somewhere. I mean I do most of the schooling in our house. The academic schooling I guess you could say. But he's been here several mornings. You know some occasionally he'll have a day off or morning off when we're doing school. So what would you say a typical day looks like? So typical day once you know the kids get up and we are able to have breakfast together which I think that we might have missed out on that point. Another great thing because when we started into homeschooling I had swing shifts. Homeschooling gave us the flexibility to teach the kids when you know I was around or to be able to flex with your schedule. Yes to be able to flex with his schedule. Right and the great thing about homeschooling is you know if we wanted to go away for the weekend we were able to do that because of making our own schedule. So that was kind of great and then also going back to our day-to-day you know what our day-to-day looks like. You know if I am here and able to get up and we can have breakfast together. And then so the kids would start into their morning routine which they would all start out with their bible reading. And so have a little quiet time in the morning before they get into their actual you know regular school work where they have their bible reading. And then they'll each start into I think start into their individual kind of self-paced stuff that they do. And then we're there to kind of give some guidance and help when they need it. You know helping out with math. The more elementary math I could help out with the more advanced math that Ty was going through this past year. Which was what algebra two? Algebra one. Okay well then this year geometry. Okay so not as easy for me to just jump in and figure out where he's at and how to help out with that. But certainly to be able to answer questions and float around and help the kids out. So they do that in the morning and then they have a little bit of a break time or there's some space before lunch that they can play and do whatever they want. And then we'll have lunch together and then after lunch I think you usually had put the youngest ones down for a nap. And then you would be doing some reading with all the kids together or whatever book you were reading through. And then I think after that that's probably when I went to work. And then they would do some other individual things that they had to finish out. Whether it be history or or science. Does that sound about right? That was pretty good. Yeah yeah. In the morning we have breakfast together and we do a couple things at the table that we can do as a group. But then kids move to their individual independent work in the morning. Which this has really changed over the years because when I first started out and you know you start with your first child in the garden you're doing a lot more one-on-one work with a lot more and then eventually. But at this point right now most of our kids are pretty independent. So their morning is their independent work. We break around 11 and go outside have lunch and then around one o'clock our youngest kids go down which is right now just and they go down for a nap and then that's when I read to them. Just a fun chapter book but also like science or any independent or any individual work that I need to do with the kids that I haven't been able to. Yeah and so if if that's going on like if I'm not home and and I would be at work by the time I get home from work in the afternoon she's pretty much wrapping up school. And the great thing about homeschooling is that they don't have any homework. So yes they are done with the school and so when I get home everybody is ready to go outside and and we can spend some time together. Usually a decent amount of time before we have to start thinking about dinner and and then of course the evening together. So the flexibility and just the schedule I think is a huge was a huge appeal for us and also again going back to to the the Christian worldview and just being able to to teach our kids from that perspective rather than having to you know have them learn different things or things that maybe we wouldn't want them to focus on that we can we can put their direction to focus in certain areas that maybe they they have an interest in and also that we feel is important rather than just a standard of of learning that the state has set forward. So a lot of people wonder how do you teach multiple kids of multiple ages and I can see how people wonder that because I think I would wonder that myself for us. How do you do it? Well for us we just started with one child. We started when Ty was in kindergarten and I started teaching him how to read. That's where we started and once he was becoming independent with reading I started teaching him to write. Of course all along this time I was reading to him a lot. So I was reading to him a lot and once he got going with reading and writing we started that and those three things he became so independent that a lot of his science and history would come together and you know the second child Luke and when he when I started working with him to read at that point Ty was becoming more and more independent. So it is it is a juggle for sure especially when you have a baby when you have a baby and a toddler and you're trying to homeschool other kids but it happened for us just like it was for everybody else just one at a time and that oldest child becomes more independent and is able to we've I've really pushed them to being more independent and taking ownership of their work you know when they find something that they are really interested in I say go for it let's learn this you know you pursue this if this is something that you're interested in and so that's kind of how it changed for our older kids they just became more and more independent and I became more of a facilitator with them as their as their independence grew and then I've always been working more one-on-one with our youngest kids who are just starting out so that's pretty much our story and can you think of anything else bad no I don't think again we'll think of it after yeah so that's our story and I I'm really excited to be able to share the posts of all the homeschool moms that I've been interviewing I hope they're a big encouragement to a lot of people and I'll be sharing them in the next couple weeks