Emily Thams

Are you considering homeschooling during this pandemic but don’t know where to start? Read on!

The 2020-21 school year is already stressing me out.

I don’t know about you, but with all of the current restrictions and (I hate this word right now) uncertainty about what’s to come, I am reevaluating all kinds of things. Are you?

I have seen several hypothetical situations for the coming public school year. Full-time online school from home, splitting the classes in half and teaching each on opposite days or morning vs. evening, later start dates, earlier start dates, shorter or longer breaks, and even no school until 2021. And on top of that, the social distancing guidelines that might further impede effective learning will likely be in place. I often wonder how well any of this will help kids learn, or if this might just be the year that everyone backslides. 

Have you been considering homeschooling during this pandemic?

I know many parents who have entertained the idea of homeschooling, but then decided that they couldn’t do it. I’m here to tell you that you absolutely can, even with no experience and even if you aren’t a stay at home mom. To learn why we started to homeschool, read our post about homeschooling high school. 

We have 2 teenagers at home and have been homeschooling for 2 years. It is hard, but it’s also not as hard as you think. Let me tell you why.

• You get to be with your kids a lot. This is an amazing gift, and a tremendous challenge. (Teenagers…. That’s all I need to say.) But being the main influence in your child’s life gives you the opportunity to shape their character more than anyone else, and to enjoy them as people. You get to see what they are interested in, spend time talking about all kinds of important things and unimportant things, and watch them have learning moments. 
• You are in charge of what they are learning. The options for curriculum are endless. They can enroll fully in an online school or you can teach every subject. You can give them choices or they can decide for themselves what they want to learn. Or you can count things they are already doing as classes. For example, my youngest daughter’s dance class is also her PE class for the year. It is really liberating for the whole family when the kids are able to enjoy what they are doing. 
• You can enroll your high schooler in college classes if they are ready for that. These count as their high school class as well! The downside is that you may have to pay for them, BUT it will be cheaper in most cases for them to take a class at your local community college now rather than at a university in a couple of years. 
• It takes way less time than public school. Way less. So much less. Which leaves time for sports, hobbies, and sleeping in. 
• They learn at their pace.TMaybe they are finished with Algebra by February. Maybe it takes all year for them to master a few concepts. Both are acceptable. Homeschooling is also a great choice for a child with a learning disability or attention deficit. 
• They can follow their interests. Have a child who loves to cook? Make it a class and put it on their transcript. 
• Your schedule becomes more flexible. If it’s a beautiful day and you want to go to the zoo instead of sit inside and work on school, you can. You can take a family vacation in the middle of the year and not miss school. 

There are so many benefits to homeschooling and so many ways to make homeschooling work for you, with or without a pandemic.

And there is no one right way to do it. You are the expert in your kids, and you know how and what they need. Here are some helpful links to get you started. You can do this! Leave us your questions in the comments. 

https://homeschooliowa.org/start-homeschooling/know-the-law-rules/

https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/high-school-beyond/homeschooling-high-school/

https://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-homeschooling-high-school/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMbnCzutmnA

This post is from April 2018, so we have now been homeschooling for almost a year. Here’s how it all started.

We started homeschooling!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about our decision to start homeschooling our girls in high school. Our original plan was to start in the fall, at the beginning of the school year. Which is a logical time to start, rather than in the fourth quarter of the current school year…

We have a few good reasons for starting now, however. Our middle daughter (Alyssa) is the one we are currently homeschooling and definitely plan to homeschool through high school. She is a good student with good grades and test scores. But she has also had a tough year in other ways, and really wanted a change. We started to research homeschooling as a family, and now wonder how we ever thought that public school was the best option that we had.

If you are thinking about making a change, have a child struggling emotionally, socially, or academically, you should consider starting to homeschool, no matter what time of year it is.

We started now because:

• We wanted to learn how to homeschool before we actually really start homeschooling for real in the fall. There are so many choices for structuring homeschool and so many curriculum options, we wanted to start figuring out what will work for us before we commit to something for high school.
• We needed to take a break and “deschool”, which basically means disconnecting from school and figuring out what Alyssa is really interested in learning. It really is just living life like it’s summer break, getting out of the school culture and finding out what your true interests are. Learn more about deschooling here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk7MyHfrLKE
• Alyssa really wanted to start now. She had been doing research about homeschool and felt strongly that this was the right way for her to learn. She also wanted some time to figure out some of her relationships and have a break from the stress of those relationships and from school in general. And once we had decided to homeschool through high school, she didn’t want to wait (and neither did I).

I was nervous about taking her out of school, mainly because I was worried that we wouldn’t be “doing enough” for the rest of the school year. Since we have not homeschooled before, the whole process was new, so I had research to do.

This is what we did before we took her out of school:

• Researched homeschooling in Iowa: the legal issues, paperwork, options, etc. We joined the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators and found all of the information we needed to get started. We also found the Home School Legal Defense Association website helpful. The law in Iowa states that we have to complete at least 148 days of instruction for homeschool. We took her out of school at around day 143 (out of 180 required for most public schools), so we didn’t have much to do to complete the school year. She has also already taken the Iowa Assessments for the year, which is another way to measure progress, so we didn’t feel that much school work was necessary to have a complete 8^th grade year.
• We met with the school principal and guidance counselor to work out the details of leaving school, while keeping her enrolled in band and chorus for the rest of the year. This was a very easy process and our public school administrators were very helpful. They even let us borrow the textbooks that she was working on for the remainder of the school year so we could finish her subjects at home (if we wanted to).
• We started researching homeschool curriculum. If you have ever done this, you know that there is an overwhelming amount of information and choices out there. We haven’t made any decisions yet, since we are trying to figure out the best way to do school in the fall. But we started looking so we have a general idea of what we could do.

Here is what we have done in the last couple of weeks since we started:

• Lived life with no agenda (most days).
• Found a few other homeschoolers to talk to.
• Art! Mainly drawing.
• Music! Violin and ukelele.
• Went to an art exhibit.
• Went for walks.
• Cooked vegan food.
• Visited our cousins.
• Visited the library.

Starting homeschool in the middle of the year is not as scary as I thought it would be. Alyssa is adjusting and finding her interests. Once we feel like we have had time to figure out what she wants to study and how she wants to study it, we will start finding curriculum and activities for next fall. For now, we are just enjoying a slower pace and spending time together.

Have you started homeschooling mid-year? Are you considering it? Share with us in the comments!

I have a love/hate relationship with social media (don’t we all?).

I love the idea of being able to see what my friends and family are doing, especially the ones I don’t see regularly. I love finding a group on Facebook where people can support each other- as parents, homeschoolers, bloggers, students, knitters…basically anything. I love that you can create photo albums and find events near you. 

I hate what social media has done to our kids. I hate that any time of day, anywhere, our kids can be affected by a comment someone made. That they can be bullied in their own homes. Or asked to send inappropriate pictures of themselves. I hate that they can feel left out because of a picture or post. I hate that they are addicted to their screens. I hate selfies and filters. It doesn’t take more than a google search to find the ill effects of a social media world on our children. Our kids do not have the emotional strength to cope. 

What can we do about it? 

I am not going to tell you that I have the answers to all of the problems that social media brings us. I don’t think anyone does yet. I am figuring it out as I go, just like all of you. And there are no easy answers. 

I would love to parent the kind of kids I read about who don’t care about Snapchat and Instagram. You know, the articles where kids have voluntarily given up all social media and instead spend their time reading or volunteering or starting a small business. I admire parents who have avoided buying their kids smart phones. It’s too late for me.

My kids begged to have Snapchat as soon as they heard about it. They have Instagram and TikTok. They tweet. They watch YouTube incessantly. And I allow it (even though it makes me crazy).

Of course, I don’t want them to have all of these distractions in their lives. I want them to be more interested in their Bibles and school work than their phones. To care less about what is happening on the internet and more about what is going on in their own family. But I also want them to learn how to use these things responsibly, because I don’t think they are going anywhere.

And I know that if I forbid social media, they will just create accounts that I don’t know about. 

I think that we need to focus on influencing our kids’ interaction with social media, rather than force them to get rid of it altogether. It seems like every day there is a new way for kids to be harmed by what they see. We can’t anticipate what is coming next because it’s all so new. At least once a week I read about some threat to our kids- some challenge (remember the kids eating Tide Pods?) or a post or video containing horrible images and messages. We can’t stay ahead of it! We don’t know what will be next, and by the time we do know about it, our kids have known about it for weeks.

Let’s teach them how to be smart social media users.

Let’s do it together as parents, and with the help of our children, because none of us really know what to do yet. I am starting by accepting social media as part of their lives, and trying to teach them about using these apps responsibly. It’s a new type of social media challenge, I guess.

Here are the 5 ways I am trying to influence my kids’ social media habits:

1. Talk to them about relationships. Talk about how social media relationships are not always healthy and honest. Encourage them to actually call their friends and invite them over to hang out in person. Explain how easy it is for a person to manipulate them with social media, give them examples of what they might see and how to respond, who to block and what to report. 
2. Be a good role model. Don’t obsess over your own Facebook likes or look for attention on social media. Don’t check your phone repeatedly. Don’t engage in arguments or drama online. The more you do, the more they do. 
3. Listen to them. Kids are telling you things even when they aren’t saying much. A comment about what someone said online might mean that they are looking for advice about their own situation. Be aware of these moments and make them teachable. 
4. Check, but not obsessively, their social media. They are going to hide things from you. They know how. And if they don’t know how, they will search Google to find out how. There are times when you just have to confiscate the phone and check it all out. But doing this habitually creates sneakiness. Ask to see their accounts, ask what they are looking at and who they are talking to. When you ask, don’t be judgy. (This is my kids’ biggest complaint. They think I am judging their friends, comments, pictures, you name it.) Be matter of fact and try not to freak out about what you find. Talk about the long-term impact of their social media accounts. 
5. Set limits. Time limits, have them plug the phone in in a public location at night, don’t allow phones in bedrooms. Talk about when it’s inappropriate to use their phone. Password protect their ability to download apps. Put filters on your internet and their devices. You will have fights about the limits you set, but it’s so important that we don’t just let them use the internet unsupervised.

In order to figure out this social media puzzle, we need to keep the conversation ongoing. I don’t know that we are ever going to be comfortable with our kids use of social media. We need to help each other and keep each other informed, and we need to help our kids be part of this conversation. 

How do you influence your kids’ social media habits? What works for you?

We just finished our first semester of homeschool with my 8^thand 9^thgrade daughters. Actually, this week we started the second semester, and I am really hoping, praying, and planning that some things are much different from last semester. Having never homeschooled before, I had no idea what to expect, and I ended up both frustrated and overjoyed with our first semester. 

Our first semester was wonderful. We were able to spend so much time together, laugh a lot, and learn together (a few things, I think). Alyssa made great progress with Geometry. Sarah got to recover from her years at public school. We had field trips and movie days. The girls got a chance to catch up on some sleep. We did some fun projects. 

Our first semester was also frustrating. Some days, no one wanted to do any work. Some days the girls fought about everything. Some days we had to run around from activity to activity. I gave them too much to do one week and not enough the next. I bought lots of curriculum that no one liked (including me). We gave up on several (what I thought were) great ideas. I let them sleep in, then got annoyed with them sleeping in. I changed my philosophy several times. Some weeks I was all “let’s unschool!” and some weeks I was scheduling our every moment.

I haven’t got it all figured out. I suspect all homeschoolers have these struggles, I just don’t know because we are so new at it. 

A wise homeschool mom3 told me to make a list of all of the things that went well to remind yourself that you have done good work with your kids, even if it feels like the opposite. I will start with that, but then share the things that didn’t go so well, so that you can learn from my rookie mistakes. 

Things that worked well:

Starting at 9:00am. Or later. Teenagers do not function well early in the morning. Especially when they know that I’m not giving them “detention” for too many tardies. Most of our best work has been done in the afternoon. And when it only takes about 3 hours a day to complete their work, why make them start early? 

Having a homeschool location away from home. We have an empty office space next to my husband’s office that we have made into what we are calling “the studio”. There are couches and a small kitchen and some game tables and bookshelves. It’s homey and it helps us separate our homeschooling from just hanging out at home. Sometimes we would stay home, but we stay on task better if we have a place to “go”. 

Enlisting help. My dad is meeting with us once a week or so to help me teach. We started with ethics/morality topics and are now doing literature studies. He is a natural teacher, wise and patient, and we love spending this time together. 

Dual enrollment. This might end up in each category. Having the ability to participate in our local high school allows the girls to be involved and see their friends, but the schedule is not conducive to being as spontaneous as we would like. For my kids who have always gone to traditional school, seeing their friends was the one thing they really missed about being home. So, we make do and schedule around classes.

Things that didn’t work well:

Our first geometry curriculum. BJU distance learning is what we started the semester with and it was way too difficult. Alyssa is good at math, and the way the course started out was over both our heads. A friend loaned us Math U See Geometry, and Alyssa is almost finished with the whole year already.

Most of the rest of the BJU curriculum. It’s very traditional, prescribed, and like doing school at home. We wanted our homeschool to fit us, and what we started the year with did not feel like us. We struggled to figure out the girls learning styles at the beginning of the year, so we bought things that appealed to us, but not to them. 

Life of Fred math for Sarah. This book would have been great for me as a student (which is probably why we tried it). However, Sarah needs repetition of the same skill over and over, rather than a few problems of several different skills. Plus, there is a lot of reading in LOF, and she is not a reader.

Too many subjects! We started with each of the girls having their own separate curriculum for each subject. This was way too much for us to manage. Now we are all doing the same language arts and history curriculum.

Too much real curriculum! Really the only curriculum that I decided we really needed was math and science. Everything else we are making up as we go along, and it’s working. 

A daily schedule/to do list for the girls to follow. This led to many arguments that started with “did you get your school done today?” and ended with me yelling or taking away phones. Now I make a list for the week and they can work on whatever they feel like that day (or not). Alyssa is close to finishing geometry for the year, so I decided she can just work on that whenever she wants and we will have a final exam when she is done. Maybe next week, maybe in May. 

My goal for this semester is to simplify and at the same time keep us on tas

I’m back! After an incredibly busy summer, making the decision to homeschool and preparing to teach two of our three daughters (our oldest is a senior and doesn’t want to homeschool), I am returning to the place where I have been longing to be, Radical Motherhood.

The last couple of weeks I have been learning how to homeschool teenagers. Let me tell you, it is way more difficult than sending them to public school. There is a considerable amount of preparation each week (even though sometimes it is fruitless-we don’t stick to the plan), constant navigating the waters of teenage moodiness, juggling activities that we chose to incorporate in our school, volunteering, socializing, not to mention someone still has to make dinner every night (and that’s still me). It has been a steep learning curve.

My biggest struggle has been internal (which, Alyssa could tell you, is a type of conflict found in literature, and that her favorite character Holden Caulfield is experiencing). I am torn between two separate worlds. The one where I want us to dig in and get school done as efficiently and orderly as possible, on a schedule, focused and organized, filling all of our time with learning, and the one where I want to let the girls sleep a little later, study a little less, paint, draw, laugh, and play games.

I have moments of panic looking at their weekly assignment schedule and not seeing enough items crossed off at the end of the week. I start to think about if we are as far as we should be and if we are doing enough. Then I scold them a little, pointing at the list, asking “what have you been doing all week”? We argue, I win, they do the work grudgingly.

Then we have other moments, when none of us wants to learn about supplementary angles or edit a sentence from the workbook, but we all want to listen to music and paint, or play a game of ping-pong, or talk and laugh. Those days we just enjoy ourselves.

This week I have been thinking a lot about the sermon from last Sunday. It was based on James 4:4, and all week I have been noticing the message playing out in my real life. (I think I had another AHA! moment if you will, like when I quit my job to be a SAHM again.)

Anyway, James 4:4 says

“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

How do we avoid being friends of this world?

We are surrounded by messages that tell us to invest ourselves in this world. That we should have a big house and nice cars, that it’s ok to spend all of our free time watching Netflix, that our kids should be involved in an after school activity everyday, no matter the cost or time commitment. We start to believe that God is for Sunday’s and holidays, not every day. Everyday is for the world.

For teenagers especially, homeschooling allows us to ignore a lot of the things of the world. We avoid so many things that draw kids into worldly temptations- boy-girl relationships, competition, comparison, alcohol and drugs. That’s not to say that we are living under a rock not socializing with anyone. But the difference in attitude in my girls when they were going to public school versus homeschool (not absence of attitude-just not as constantly aggravating), the openness and communication, and their innocence, which was slowly disappearing, has returned. Our days are more lighthearted, calm, quiet. There are fewer tears, less yelling, and more hugs.

We don’t feel like it’s necessary to be involved in everything and don’t feel like we’re missing out on everything (because most of the time we are unaware of what everyone else is doing). Feeling like you are missing out is a huge, terrible thing for teenagers that often leads to bad decisions.

I am reading “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World” for my Monday Bible study, and in it I found another great example of why I need to learn not to be a friend of this world. The story of Mary and Martha resonates with all women of course- the desire to be a perfect hostess for the Lord versus the desire to ignore the world and sit at his feet. It certainly speaks to me. I love this passage from the book:

“The world clamors, “Do more! Be all that you can be!” But our Father whispers, “Be still and know that I am God.”

The world tells our teens to ace that test! Be in every sport! Do that activity so it can go on your resume! Buy that outfit! Look like her! Fit in! You’re too old to play! You need to be busy!

I think that God whispers through Christian homeschoolers to be still, take the time, know each other, love each other, focus on truly important goals. He shows us that busyness is a distraction and waste of time. He tells us, as he told Martha, that she need not be worried and upset about many things, that “few things are needed-or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:42) He keeps us away from the destructive things that face our teens in schools. He shows us where we need to grow and allows us the time to do so.

Back to James. I love the book of James, for one, because it’s short and I can read it in one sitting. But I also love the no-nonsense writing, the urging to do what is right and good. It’s an instruction manual for how to persevere through persecution. James reminds us that we will have problems, but that we need to commit ourselves to Godly living and persevere.

As a homeschooler, I sometimes feel persecution (sometimes just from my own mind). Sometimes I doubt whether we are doing the right thing. Whether my girls will get enough from being at home. If they are missing out on something at school. Whether they are learning enough and checking off enough of the boxes.

I just need to remember that the goal is not to measure up to the standards of the world. I need to listen for that whisper.

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The link to the planner we are using is at the bottom of this post. 

You may remember that we made the decision to homeschool our daughter Alyssa for high school. Making that decision was pretty easy, but then we had the monumental task of choosing curriculum. Let me tell you, there are so many options to choose from, you can get overwhelmed! If you are looking for curriculum for the fall, first of all, I pray that you find what fits for your family, and second, read on to see what helped us decide how to choose.

I spent weeks researching, reading, searching for reviews and scanning Facebook groups for information about high school curriculum.

Our requirements were pretty simple:

• Biblical worldview– I wanted to make sure that the texts aligned with our values and that we could incorporate our faith into her education.
• Academically rigorous– She wants to be challenged and often felt bored at public school. I was looking for something that would keep her interested and that she could move through as quickly as she wanted.
• Online math– My math abilities are limited to basic algebra, so I wanted to have a video or online math teacher that she could watch.

Teaching high school can be intimidating.

You may be a math person, but struggle with science or writing. Whatever your strengths, there is a way to fill in the areas where you feel you are lacking. There is also nothing wrong with learning right along side your child. At this age you are more of a guide or facilitator, you don’t have to have all of the answers. You have to provide the resources and be willing to take the time to help your child find the answers.

All of the online research I had done left me stumped. Every publisher and online program I found had some parents who loved it and some who hated it.

What ultimately made our decision was attending a homeschool conference and seeing and talking to the vendors. (Alyssa and I went to the NICHE (Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators) conference.) She was drawn to one publisher, and they had almost everything we were looking for.

Some of the subjects that were included for 9th grade either didn’t interest her or she had already studied (Algebra I), and we were able to mix and match what courses we chose.

Here is what we chose:

English: BJU Press Fundamentals of Literature and Vocabulary, IEW Student Writing Intensive Level C. We chose to combine these two rather than use the whole BJU package for English because Alyssa is very interested in writing and I have heard such great things about IEW’s writing program.

Math: BJU Press Geometry Distance Learning. We were able to see a demonstration and Alyssa liked the way you could see the teacher demonstrating on paper how to do the problems. Sold!

Science: BJU Press Biology (10th grade). This course includes a lab. The publisher recommends one lab per chapter and all chapters have a couple to choose from. One requires more equipment than the other (this is just my initial impression) so I won’t be purchasing all of the lab equipment they recommend.

Social Studies: BJU Press Cultural Geography and World History (for when we finish Cultural Geography. Honestly, I bought both in error, but we will just hold on to World History until we are ready for it.)

Bible: We are currently studying “Who Am I To Judge” from Formed. My father is coming over once a week to teach this. We haven’t decided when we will start BJU Press Bible Truths, but probably once we are done with the current study.

Foreign Language: Alyssa would like to study both Japanese and American Sign Language. Our public library gives us access to a language learning website that we will use for Japanese. Lifeprint.com has a homeschool syllabus and gives free access to their ASL lessons.

The BJU and IEW courses come with teacher editions of the books, handouts, tests, and answers making it easy for parents. In fact, Alyssa was so excited to start, we just opened a book and got started before I had prepped anything.

We also purchased this planner from Amazon:

I think we are ready for the fall. The great thing about homeschooling is that we can start any time and we can add or subtract a course as we choose. (So I am not stressing about the massive amount of information that comes along with these courses.) We haven’t settled on a schedule for the year. Right now Alyssa is just starting to work on what she is interested in, and we will add to it as we are ready.

Remember, when you are choosing curriculum for your own homeschool, there is no one size fits all solution!

There is only what you think is the best for you and your student. And it you find that something really doesn’t work for you after you have started, you can switch to something better suited to what you need.

Do you have a curriculum that you love for your high schooler? Tell us about it in the comments!