5 Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Started Homeschooling.

Hey guys and welcome back to my channel. I'm Angela and this is our final video for the back to school series. I'm just so happy and grateful that y'all have enjoyed this series. Um, I love putting out this type of content and it's of course always wonderful when it's well received by you guys and you are really enjoying it. So today's video is going to be kind of a way that I just want to wrap all this up by sharing with you guys five things that I wish that I knew before I started homeschooling. I wanted to end the series on something that felt like an encouragement to you guys as most of you are either have already started your school year or are just beginning your school year. Ours doesn't start for a little bit longer, but when today's video, I just wanted to share with you guys five things that I wish I had known before I started homeschooling that I feel like maybe would have made my journey a little smoother along the way. Um, but also of course, just like all the other videos, there is a giveaway attached to this video as well. And for today's video, I am going to be gifting two different winners, a $50 gift card to teachers pay teachers. So it'll be a hundred dollars total, but we'll split it $50 between two different winners. Um, and teachers pay teachers is an awesome website that I use for resources. It's literally where teachers go on, they create different resources and then you can purchase it from them basically. It's really neat. There's so many different things on there, especially if you'd like to do, um, different units or different seasons, all grade levels, like so much good, good stuff on teachers pay teachers. It's one of my favorite sites for resources. So that is my gift to y'all in today's video for the giveaway and um, how we're going to choose this winner is based on three things. Very similar to the last video. You just need to be subscribed here to my channel and then you need to subscribe to my newsletter. I talked about that in my nature notebooking video, um, but I do have a newsletter that goes out twice a week and it's really, I'd send out a Wednesday encouragement email and a Sunday weekly wrap up email. I think if you're here and you enjoy this content, you'll really enjoy those emails. So be sure to sign up for the newsletter and then leave me a comment down below and tell me what is the best piece of advice. It doesn't even have to be about school or anything, but just what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given? I love hearing people's different little nuggets of wisdom that have stuck with them over the years. So share that down below in the comments. I think that will be fun for everybody to scroll through and read those different pieces of encouragement and advice. All the details for the giveaway and everything will be down below in the description box. But let's get on with the video and let's talk about some things that I wish that I had known. Um, okay. And these are in no particular order. So the first thing is that I wish that I would have known and understood that there is a difference between homeschooling and doing school at home. And what I mean by that is there are lots of options out there for literally doing school at home, doing like K through 12 dot com, different sites like that where you're taking someone else's, um, pulling together of education and materials and all that, and you're just doing it at home, which can be a great option. But I think that I felt this pressure to recreate a classroom in my home. For some people that really, really works well for them. They really just want to take that kind of school and bring it home. But for me, homeschooling, I wanted it to be more of a lifestyle and just more of a way that we, um, learn as we're living our lives. So I found myself kind of constantly in this struggle of like, well, I don't really want like all these primary color calendars and seasons and days of the week and all these things all over my walls that doesn't really feel like me. It doesn't really feel like the environment I want in here. But then I feel like, whoa, will they ever learn those things if I don't put them on a brightly colored calendar on the wall? And so it just took me a long time to really longer than I wish that it would have to learn that it's totally okay when you are homeschooling, like you get to call the shots, you get to decide how that looks, how that works for your family. And for some people that may be literally creating a classroom environment in your home. And for others that may be, um, just sitting on your sofa and not having any designated school space at all, just wherever you're living, you're learning and that's how you do it. Um, or something in between, which is kind of what I've created, which is an environment that I love to be in whether we're schooling or not. Um, but it also houses all of our school stuff and our resources and there's things out to inspire curiosity and, um, just to kind of get the kids thinking and touching and feeling different things and thinking about different things. So that's kind of the environment that I like where there's lots of resources available, but nothing feels too, um, schooly if that makes sense. So I just wish I would have known that and understood really that there was a difference and it's okay to not fit into any boxes regarding that. Uh, number two, and I say this anytime I've ever given any kind of homeschooling advice at all. This is always a top of my list of advice and that is to resist the urge to compare, to keep your eyes focused, put your blinders on, run your own race. I wish that somebody could have just like grabbed me by the shoulders and said, it doesn't matter what your friends are doing. It doesn't matter what curriculum they're doing. It doesn't matter what science class they're taking. It doesn't matter what extracurriculars their kids are in. Do what works for you and your kids. I wish that I would have known that because I wasted so much time to be honest, forcing my kids to do things they didn't want to do. They weren't interested in. It wasn't beneficial to our homeschool. Um, just for the sake of saying that they were taking extra classes here or doing this or doing that. Um, because again, I just wasn't confident in most of my decisions and I think, you know, I wish I'd known these things, but I also think that there's a, a layer that you just kind of have to go through these things, right? You have to kind of work out the kinks on your own. It's hard for anybody to ever really tell you. Um, but hopefully, hopefully what I share here is at least an encouragement to you that everybody's homeschool is going to look different. If you get on here and watch, um, some of my other homeschooling mama friends, there's so many that I love. In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to list for you guys in the description box of today's video, since I have no products to link for you, I'm going to list for you guys some of my favorite homeschooling. I think this is not an exhaustive list by any means, but some of my homeschooling mamas that I like to watch here and I'm going to show you kind of the difference, like go watch their channels and you're going to see a vast difference in the way that everybody does things. And it's just so beautiful to see that we're all just like loving our kids and homeschooling and loving our journeys, but doing it totally differently. So resist the urge to compare. It's so hard in nearly every aspect of life, but especially in homeschooling, I feel like when it comes to our kids and their education, it's like even more tempting. Number three is that it is way harder than I thought it's going to be harder than you would imagine. And in many ways, in some ways it won't be, in some ways it will be easier and you'll learn and you'll ebb and you'll flow. But in some ways it is going to be really hard. It's going to be a very refining journey and I'm not sure that I was totally prepared for that. I just thought, okay, it's just like when you have a baby, right? You have this baby, you love this baby, your motherly instincts kick in and you feel like you know what to do and you know how to take care of them. Even if you know, you're not really sure going into it when they're born, it's like your instincts kick in. I kind of thought that the same thing would happen with homeschooling. And that wasn't the case. And I really struggled for the first few years a lot. And so I wish that I would have been more prepared emotionally and mentally for the hard times of it where I feel like, I don't know if I can do this another day. I don't know if I can do this another year. Am I failing them? Is this all wrong? Am I, you know, like I have gone through the emotional rollercoaster with it and I just wish that I would have been better prepared for the fact that it is going to be hard. There are going to be days where you feel like, well, well, what was I thinking? Um, but those definitely don't outweigh the good days for sure, at least in my experience. And with that said, I feel like you kind of, it's all part of the learning process. It's all part of the process that helps you create your homeschool into the best it can possibly be. Sorry. We have a helper. Hi. Number four. And I can't say this is necessarily something I wish I would have known because I said this, I've said this from the beginning. Yeah. Hold on, baby. We take it every kid, every year. That's always kind of been our mantra. We decide what's best every child, every year. And that does work really well, but I do think that there needs to be some level of commitment with it that sometimes if you say, well, I don't know, we'll see whatever, then it feels easier to quit. And I, I'm trying to tread lightly here because I definitely think you need to evaluate and decide what's best as often as you feel you need to. Um, but I just feel like I use that sometimes as an excuse to feel like, well, maybe we should just quit. I don't know. You know, when things would get really hard or when I would feel like I just wasn't feeling certain. I don't know. I think I just, I think that I just wish that I would have, um, given myself the, the, you know, I don't quite know how to explain what I'm trying to say. Other than I do think that, you know, you need to take it every child, every year, but also having some resolve to stick with what you started at least for a certain amount of time. Because sometimes, you know, the goodness is right on the other side of the kinks that you're trying to work out the things that feel like, Oh, I don't know if this is, if this is figureoutable, it's all figureoutable, right? So the goodness of it all is on the other side of those hard times. And so at the hard times when you feel the most tempted to quit is when I would say push through a little longer and, um, just make sure that's really, you know, how you feel kind of a thing. Um, and number five would be, I wish that I would have known that if I let it, if I really relinquish all of this, like need to control every little thing, if I really, really let it homeschooling can be a really, really magical thing and a really beautiful time between you and your children of bonding. There's absolutely going to be frustrating times. I've already said that, but just hear me say that there can be so, so many beautiful, magical times and experiences and the times that you get to spend together. You know, there is something really beautiful about going through life and just living together and learning together. Like my friend Serena's mantra is like, we live and we learn. And that is really, it is like, we're all just doing life together and we're learning together along the way. And it really is so beautiful. I'm so excited to share with you guys this coming year, a couple of things we've done a little bit differently this year that I feel like have upped the magicalness of homeschool for me so much and for my kids. And it's one very simple thing. I want to do a whole video about it, but it's, it's one very simple thing. And that is choosing to read aloud to my children, books that we all enjoy, not just like school books that we're supposed to read, but just reading together for the love of reading. And it has just transformed so many things in our lives. Like I can't say enough about it. So I'm going to leave a link down below for a book that I think will inspire you. If that sounds like something that you're like, Hmm, that sounds interesting. I'd like to learn more. I'm going to leave a link down below for a book that I have been reading that has just helped me to completely open my mind to all of it. And how important it can be in our lives. Reading aloud with my kids. So, all right. So that is it for today, guys. I just wanted to share with you guys my five things that I wish that I would have known before I started homeschooling, I think could have made my journey a little smoother along the way. So hopefully you can glean a little something out of one of those. Maybe, I don't know, but I just wanted to put it out there and share it with y'all. So I hope you guys have a wonderful day and a wonderful start to your school year. Obviously this is not the end of homeschooling videos, but it is the end of our back to school week. So I just want to say another huge thank you to you guys for joining me for this week. It's been so fun and I just love you all so much and I will see you guys again very soon. Say bye. Can you say bye bye? So now you're here again knocking at my door. A little too late for, I'm sorry for. The lights went out cause you kept cutting.