Episode 10: Freedom to Learn Anywhere
Episode 10: Freedom to Learn Anywhere.
We love this new theme on our blog - stories about homeschooling told from real moms. These posts are to encourage you along your homeschooling journey, share experiences and connect with other homeschooling moms all over the world.
This week's homeschooling story is from Sandra Smart, a homeschooling mom of three living in San Diego.
Hello everyone! My name is Sandra and I'm a mother of three. I have a 17 year old fresh out of high school, a six-year-old and four-year-old. We live in sunny San Diego with my husband who is in the Army reserve. This year will be our second year as a homeschool family and I'm so excited for whats to come. We decided to homeschool because we wanted the freedom of teaching our kids at a slower pace and really soak up the joy of childhood. I have a friend who has been homeschooling for years and I just loved seeing her kids' happy learning about all things nature, art, things that today's kids don't really get to experience in public school so we wanted to change that. It's been really tough because I get constant criticism from my family which at first almost made me stop because I felt like I was doing something wrong for wanting to teach my children. There have been many hard days where I thought of giving up simply because I thought I wasn't good enough. Not having the support from your loved ones can also be hard on you. But I managed to get over our first year and now going into our second year I'm more confident than ever. Plus I get to "meet: so many amazing mamas on Instagram who are going through the same homeschool journey and the offer the best advice and boost I sometimes need.
I absolutely love that I get to experience this homeschool journey with my youngest kids. We love that we have the freedom to learn about anything we want and I get to learn right along with them. Our favourite thing to do is nature study. The kids will see a new bug and will run to their book to try and find it. We love spending ours in nature and one of the best things about homeschool for us is that we have the freedom to learn anywhere. So a lot of times we spend the afternoon outdoors under the trees reading and learning.