We have had several seasons where even though home schooling was important, it was not our focus. I have learned during this time to have grace with myself and be ok with what lessons get done and do not get done.

Our oldest is currently, nearly completed with the Gama level of MUS and has completed all the other MUS levels up to that point. Our youngest has completed Primer and is almost all the way through the Alpha level of MUS. At this time, I feel confident in sharing a few tips and tricks we have learned or are using to help us complete this program. We are however still learning and developing, so in the years to come I will probably add to this list.

This is only 3rd full year using Sonlight (well 4 if you consider the half year when we were still following a traditional school calendar and hadn’t switch to year-round schooling yet). Our first year with Sonlight was overwhelming, but there was finally a point and amazingly it happened when I added a second core to our day and our youngest joined us in a more official capacity last year. I have learned a few tricks for not only doing 2 cores at once, but also simply not letting myself get overloaded with it all and making it work how I want it to work.

For the last two years we have added into our home school routine, what I affectionately call, “Supplemental Saturday”. I first started it because incorporating the “fun” side of home school was lacking on my part, because I don’t really like the mess, organizing and implementing of “crafty” type things. I always had big plans, but life would happen. I tried to do the fun things in the afternoon, but by that point the girls were usually involved in outdoor play most days, or deep into something else or we had different errands to run on any given day. I also had a few subjects that I did not want to do daily and felt weird only doing as sporadic as I was attempting to do them. Thus, Supplemental Saturday was born.

Let’s face it, home schooling, school at home, virtual schooling, all schooling is different right now. Just because we already home schooled, doesn’t mean that our life hasn’t been just as affected as those in the public schools. My girls are resilient (most kids are more resilient than we often give them credit for), but they notice the different and are just as out of sorts with this all as everyone is.

I would like to take a moment, now to compare what is typical for us for home schooling versus what it is like home schooling during Covid-19.

I have been homeschooling our oldest child now for three years. In that time, I have, unfortunately, had a lot of trials and errors, as far as how we run home school in our home, and the curriculum we have chosen. When looking back on it I have come across some reasons why things have not worked for us. This post deals with how I failed had to reexamine home school life in our house and decide what was not working and why and the changes I made to start making things work for us and get that “ah ha moment” of home school bliss.