Today I homeschool my daughter "standing on the shoulders of giants", including my incredible mother who homeschooled her four with unstoppable verve and a resourceful creativity that was off the charts. She would tell you, though, that certainly if she could homeschool, anyone could. I believe that, too.
First encouraging thought: Y
ou don't have to replicate the academic environment, pace, or progression of the school system at home to have an educated child. That's good, because
you won't be able to replicate school at home, even if you use all the textbooks (or apps? Do students still use actual
books?) your district assigns.
As a homeschooling family, via exploring books, taking trips, initiating projects, engaging in apprenticeships, and making observations, you will develop a firm foundation of understanding of the many facets of how the world works: those facets are what are labeled as school subjects such as Math, Science, History, etc. Homeschooling parents have the incredibly exciting opportunity to guide the exploration processes: and everyone learns to enjoy the related discoveries as well as the fact that all in the family are growing in knowledge, abilities, perception, and skill during the homeschooling years. Not just knowing more, but becoming more, especially through the years as each student takes more ownership of the exploration process.
This is probably my favorite part of homeschooling: I learned who I was as well as became who I was because of these explorations. The process of being a word nerd (a.k.a language teacher) began for me in 2nd grade when we studied ancient Egypt and I became obsessed with writing messages to my dad in hieroglyphs. (I'd pull out the World Book encyclopedias and flip to the first page of each to find the hieroglyph drawn there to represent the letter of that volume. Big books! Lots of fun.) I also started stapling together handwritten workbooks I made for my sisters to practice their math problems in at that time. Aaaaand...writing lessons is something I spend hours and hours on every week these days. (Not in hieroglyphs, though, alas. But it's still very fun!) I learned who I was and became who I was through the foundation coupled with the
freedom the homeschooling years gave me. I would not trade it for anything, and I would do it all again with great joy. I wish that kind of
experience for everyone!