best break

Our family home schools. I thoroughly enjoy it and my children say they do too. It's not necessarily something we "do" between certain hours of each weekday, but rather more of a lifestyle. This coming year we are putting one of our young children into public school. It is mandatory he attends this school in order to get the speech therapy he needs 3 times a week. When he no longer needs the therapy, he'll be home with the rest of us. While he is in school we are still going to have our more cultural activities(art, music, poetry, nature, bible/history, science) in the afternoon so he can join in. I will still consider him a home schooled child because he will be learning most everything at home still.
We are not 'seasoned' hs'ers by any means, but we are no longer quite so new at it either. This coming school year will be our fourth. And in three years we have never taken an official break, like summer break, until this year. We are just starting back up into doing designated learning activities and writing after taking about a month off. We never stopped reading, science, and some geography only because it happened to a be a part of our daily lives anyway. What I learned during this time is that breaks are important. Even breaks from good things. It's good to feel a sense of relief from pressure to accomplish something. It's good for the kids to have a day so filled with relaxing and lazy-ness that they never end up getting dressed. It's healthy for me, mom, to have a break so that I can have the time to be inspired about our future plans, so that I can remember why we are doing this in the first place, so that I never get so burned out that I put my boys in school before the Lord gives me the "go ahead" to do so.
Something else that I have learned is that the curriculum I choose is not as important as the time I spend with them. There are methods galore to choose from and I have tried many. We spend thousands of dollars every year trying new things and building up our hs library. And while I value and treasure each tool I have for teaching/learning, none of it gets my kids going the way just spending time with them does. I have come to see that with a well planned, written out year, I could home school for free at the library and use the nature park and my kitchen as a science lab and learn just as much. Don't tell my husband. I see our years getting cheaper and cheaper as I discover what's really important in our journey.
Now, just because I said I could do it for free doesn't mean that it would be easy, so I am grateful for the many curriculums that I've learned so much from. Trying out different styles and mixing them together has shown me what I like and what won't work in our house. We have found that literature based(Charlotte Mason/Montessori method) curriculum with some unit studies thrown in there is best for us. Teaching with an idea in mind about what the Lord showed me our days should look like, led us to these types of books. I began with a very structured and well written curriculum called A Beka. It was school, only done at home. It was exactly what I needed to get me started. I needed a curriculum that was familiar to me(I went to public school) and that would help me gain confidence in my home school abilities. We began to look at homeschooling as chore using these books so that was what told me I needed to move on to something a little less structured and a lot more natural and free. We need lots of wiggle room for the extra learning opportunities that pop up in everyday life!
As we ease back into the organized, official days of homeschooling I am more excited and alive than ever! I am so grateful for the chance in life to do this. I am thankful that I get to be a mommy and I have been given the desire and tools to home school. I don't forget that these days are gifts from the Lord. I know that in the school year coming up I will face the days that make me question if we should go on, but as in life, the valleys make the mountains so much taller! It's the ups and downs that create life and I've learned more from the lows than the highs. Off to spend some time with my kids... happy homeschooling!
Thanks for reading!