The year is coming to an end....

But the work is just beginning.

We spent the majority of this year stumbling and trying to find our way through this journey of homeschooling. You would think that this being our 3rd year that we would be good to go... yeah not so much! The first 2 years we didn't really homeschool, we were living life with the illusion of homeschooling while still adhering to all the rules and regulations of the public school system. So in essence, this was it... I took the plunge and we began our homeschooling journey.

Now since I was such a novice at this, uhm... new found freedom, yes that is what we will call it, I was eager to get advice form EVERYONE that was currently homeschooling and especially those that had been doing it for a while. I got sucked into the whole concept of "you can homeschool for free". I can assure you now that homeschooling for free is NOT POSSIBLE! You will always have some sort of expense, there are ways to cut costs, so homeschooling on the cheap is possible - just not free!

We started our year with grand delusions of having all this enrichment time for hands on learning as well as the book lessons. Uhm, whoops I didn't purchase the right books for my kids. So we had a number of meltdowns and well most of them were by me... and the "school" days went from fighting for 2-3 hours a day just to get through the monotonous lesson that I had gotten for free (which wasn't really free, because I had to print it out - and ink ain't cheap!) to me finally just being satisfied if the kids finished 1 10 minute lesson in math.

I know... right now you are freaking out thinking - THOSE KIDS HAVE LEARNED NOTHING ALL YEAR!!!!!

Not true! While I don't really subscribe to the "unschool" style of homeschooling, that kinda is what we had going on from September 2012 until February 2013. Because that is when I found my groove! I spent countless hours scouring curriculum websites and asking questions and downloading samples and and and, well you get the point. What we did learn is something that no one could ever put a price on.

1. If it looks too good to be true - oh good golly, it is!
2. Sometimes too much advice is a bad thing.
3. Cooking, cleaning, and household chores teaches A TON OF STUFF!!! Like fractions, multiplication, spelling, life skills. All my children aged 8-13 know how to wash their clothes in the washing machine and how to fix themselves a meal :-)
4. Watching historical movies is a great way to get kids excited about history.
5. Baking is science!
6. Love fixes most things, even crappy attitudes.
7. When all else fails - fall to your knees and pray, because God will always light the way for you.

So instead of freaking out while putting my kids portfolios together for our end of the year review (my first EVER!) I am placing my faith in God - because this crazy road we traveled this year, sometimes he was the co-pilot, but alot of the time he was in the drivers seat.

So that's it... it's the end of the school year, but I have so much work still ahead of me! I have picked out all the marvelous things we will be using next year, and I am vowing now to write something about each and every one of them :-)