It’s that time of year! Back to school is here! While many families across the nation get ready for the back-to-school shopping, remind their children that the alarm clocks will be going off early again soon, and make plans for school bus drop-offs and pickups, our family prepares for the season in a slightly different way.
As a homeschooling family, we too roam the store aisles neatly lined up with practical yet fun notebooks, colorful pens, and all the necessary supplies to make our children’s school year as smooth as possible — though no matter how many erasers and pencil sharpeners we buy, when the time comes that we need either one of them, they simply disappear in what must be the abyss of doom governed by the pesky gnomes that unquestionably live in our household and who find joy solely by stealing these precious school supplies from us.
Our back-to-school routine also involves waking our children up earlier than we did during the summer months, though my husband and I spend most of our time preparing for the upcoming school year by establishing the curriculum we will be following that year and finding ways to lift lessons off the schoolbooks.
Even though we love homeschooling and are proud to play such a pivotal role in our children’s education and future, we found ourselves somewhat forced to make this choice during the pandemic. When in 2020 schools across the nation turned virtual, our military family received orders to move cross country during the holiday season. When we arrived at our new duty station in Florida in January 2021, we quickly noticed that the way virtual schools operated in our new state and the way they operated in the state we had just left were strikingly different and both our children — who were then in kindergarten and third grade — struggled from the very beginning.
Quickly, my husband and I decided to start homeschooling, a lifestyle we felt confident we could sustain, as he only had six more months of active duty before retiring after 20 years of military service in the Air Force, and I have worked from home for years as a ghostwriter and editor for my own company, The Military Editor Agency, LLC.
Living in Florida has also afforded us great opportunities to turn static lessons into fun, outdoorsy, and dynamic ones. Art lesson? Let’s go to the beach and paint what we see! Studying the history of the Semonile? Road trip to the heart of the Everglades where we visit the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum! Learning about the crucial role that railroads played in the social, political and economical development of the country during the Gilded Age? Day trip to the Henry Flagler Museum with a guided tour! Finding it hard to picture the Roman Empire while reading about it from a book? Let’s get on a plane and go to Rome — and eat some delicious gelato while we’re at it!
Of course, homeschooling also has its challenges, such as peer interactions for our children. However, thanks to the thriving and supportive homeschooling community we have found here in Florida, the state we now proudly call our home, our children have been successful in keeping an active social life.
As our family prepares to begin yet another fun homeschooling year, my husband and I know that the one thing we will always cherish and appreciate of this decision we made out of necessity during a difficult period in the history of humanity, is the precious time and the lifelong memories we are able to make with our children.