My friend and mentor, Christy Gandara (of Happy Hive Homeschooling), recently asked me what I love about homeschooling, and I thought that it would be worth sharing here. The basic answer is “the freedom that homeschooling provides,” but I’d love to share what that means to me on a deeper level.

Homeschooling Equals Freedom

When your child attends school, they have to follow the prescribed curriculum at the pace the teacher determines is appropriate for the class as a whole. If they miss a day due to sickness (or another personal reason), then they miss the lesson and have to try to learn independently. If the curriculum is too easy, too challenging, too anything, it doesn’t matter because they’re stuck with it for the entire year. There are a lot of other things set in stone, like their daily schedule. But homeschooling is completely different!

Instead of following someone else’s pace, homeschooling allows you to follow your child’s pace and make sure that they understand things before moving on. Sick days, personal days, and snow days each can be treated the same – just pushing back the lesson without missing anything since you make your own schedule. And if the curriculum doesn’t fit your family, you’re free to change it as many times as you need to until you find something that works for you and your child. You don’t need to use the same curriculum for each child either, and you can choose to follow a child-led learning approach to their education. As long as you meet the state regulations, you are free to choose how you homeschool.

Freedom to Travel

We recently returned from an “epic family vacation.” We were away from home for almost four weeks. Even though my daughter is only in kindergarten, I’m pretty sure the district would’ve frowned upon her missing that many days (weeks!) of school. I would worry about a child missing that many consecutive days of school at higher grades, but that’s not something I worry about as a homeschooler. Many homeschool families will stop homeschooling for the entire month of December, or they’ll set up their schedule for the year with a number of weeks on and then a week off. We are year-round homeschoolers and haven’t taken a summer off since my daughter turned three, but we keep it relaxed and don’t worry about missing a day or two here or there. Our family vacation meant that we took a break from our curriculum, but we didn’t take a break from homeschooling.

One of my favorite parts of traveling is learning about the places we’re traveling to and visiting historical sites when we get there. This is perfect for homeschooling! Our vacation included cross-country train rides which gave us time to talk about the trip, where we were going, and the places we planned to visit. Since we took a cruise to Hawaii, there were plenty of fun activities on board that shared Hawaiian culture. My daughter especially loved taking the hula classes and performing with everyone in the ukulele classes. We also got to try foods from a variety of cultures. Upon reaching Hawaii, we were able to walk around and explore, as well as take Ubers to a variety of places and learn about the islands from the drivers. Even if it wasn’t from a curriculum, we were all learning for the majority of time on the trip. Just think of it as a long field trip.

Freedom to Choose Child-Led Learning

This year, we are using a Catholic homeschool curriculum that has been really great for us. My daughter is enjoying it and I am loving how well she remembers the things that she learned even one to two months later. In addition to how much she enjoys her curriculum, she also loves being a new Girl Scout Daisy. Just like she used to always ask for homework (to indicate her desire to homeschool) and often still does, she now will also ask for Girl Scouts or STEM Sisters, which is a virtual Girl Scout program she joined this year. Instead of feeling like I need to push her to do too much each day, we can use her Girl Scout learning opportunities as part of her homeschooling alongside her curriculum.

STEM Sisters is (obviously) STEM-related. In that program, so far she’s been learning about NASA, space, and robotics. We also ordered a STEM box through the program and she learned about monomers and polymers and made jelly soap. In Girl Scouts, she’s been working through the petals (which is basically character-building and social and emotional learning), observing animals (science), and starting her cookie business (entrepreneurship and math). We’re also working on her Safety Pin, so she learned about stop, drop, and roll (fire safety) and some kid-safe first aid (health education).

Even if it wasn’t Girl Scouts that interested her, we could still grab onto the topic and find ways to turn it into a unit study. My son likes bears and dinosaurs and apples. If he’s still interested when he’s older (he’s 2.5 years old), each of these can be a unit study. We can learn about bears from birth to adulthood, what they eat, where they live, different types of bears, and learn about hibernation. We can make math problems using bears or honey or fish (“there are 3 trout swimming down the stream. A bear catches 2 trout. How many trout are still in the stream?” or just math using pictures). We could choose bear-related books for reading practice and bear-related words to practice spelling. The opportunities for learning are endless.

I Love the Freedom that Homeschooling Provides

Homeschooling provides freedom for kids and parents alike. As long as you follow the regulations for your state, you are free to follow them in a way that is authentic and unique to your family. If you’re unsure how to do this, I recommend joining Facebook groups for homeschooling in your specific state, county, or district. What’s your favorite thing about homeschooling?