Do You Homeschool During the Holidays?

We don’t.

Well, we didn’t this year, but then again, this is our first year. We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year, we participated in NanoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month), we went out of town the weekend before Christmas, did our traditional family things at home the week before Christmas and we hosted a New Years Eve party for quite a few people.

We’ve had no time for school. I beat myself up over it at first, but I got tired of that pretty fast. I let that guilt creep up. You know, the kind that tells you your kids are falling way behind, they’ll never catch up, what are they doing if they aren’t learning from a book, what do we tell dad when he asks what we’ve done all day…..You know, the usual stuff.

But then I read a few things that put my mind at ease. I also talked (and by talked, I mean I saw a Facebook discussion about it), to some homeschool moms who have done this for many years before me.

Here’s what I learned.

We are fine. The kids are fine. They didn’t fall into a deep Sleeping Beauty sleep for the last month, so they still absorbed and learned things. They got a break. Even public school kids get breaks of two weeks or more this time of year.

They will “catch up” in the end. They’ll be just fine. I don’t need to compare them to the

public school kids or schedule. See, I always have that thought in the back of my mind that for some reason, my kids will have to go back to public school for some reason and will be tested to see what they know, and that they won’t know anything. My fear is that they’ll test for fourth and fifth grade and end up being put into grades below where they should be.

That is what we call an irrational fear, ladies and gentlemen.

I have absolutely no plans whatsoever of sending my kids back to public school. At all. Ever. Okay, maybe high school, IF they beg and plead and cry daily. But even then, I doubt it.

Whatever they didn’t learn this last month, they will definitely get back on track and learn in the next month. By this time next year, they’ll be right where they should be, no matter how that compares to public school students.

And finally, what are we homeschooling for if we can’t set our own schedule and take breaks when we want to? Just kidding. Kind of.

Oh, and the thing I read that helped put my mind at such ease was a book I picked up a while back on Amazon. It’s called “Teaching from Rest” by Sarah Mackenzie and it’s awesome. I didn’t even finish it yet, but I already feel so much more comfortable and at ease about a lot of things.

You should check it out. Definitely worth the time.