This year is shaping up to be a good one for our family…and its quite exciting!!

We decided at the end of 2014 that we would be making a massive change in 2015.   There are numerous reasons for this decision, but our Bethy is the main reason for making this change.

Bethy struggles academically, and has done so since she started school.  She’s always been young for her age, and this year she’s in year six (the last year of primary school).  School life has been challenging for Bethy, and we have had many friendship issues along the way.   On many occasions, over the years, Bethy would climb into the car at the end of the day and burst into tears.  Her confidence was battered, she felt inferior to her peers, and we’ve reached the place where enough is enough!   I have spent hours over the years helping Bethy at home with her school work, not to mention all the time we have spent calming her school and friend related anxieties!

This is why we made the decision to do something different this year.

We have become a homeschooling family!

Its amazing what you can do when you love someone!

I’ll admit I was slightly nervous leaving the kids school on the last day of school last year, but the school holiday excitement helped me get over that quite quickly.  I have a plan B for if it all goes belly up, but I don’t think we will need that plan B because I am already seeing the benefits of our new homeschooling lifestyle.

We have just completed our third week of term.  It hasn’t been all smooth sailing, but we are enjoying the process, and the benefits of homeschooling out way the negatives. I’ll admit though that we are enjoying this new life of ours.  We have only had one really hard day in 3 weeks, so I think we must be doing something right!

I am so proud of the girls.  I haven’t had to nag them once to come to the table to do their work.  They work hard every day and we are covering the workload systematically.   I see the girls confidence growing – even on the days where we struggle with maths. I’ve noticed positive changes in all three girls over the last month – especially Bethy.

Bethy is a completely different kid these days.   She’s calm.  Relaxed, and happy.  We feel as though we got our happy Bethy back.  Its so nice to hear her laugh again.  Both hubby and I have said to each other a number of times over the last couple of weeks how great it is to have our happy, funny, relaxed Bethy back.

We are going through a school in Brisbane who offer a Distance Education curriculum.   The girls all have a teacher looking after them and all three girls have a curriculum based on the results of their diagnostic tests.   The school is in contact with us numerous times during the week, and they are only a phone call or an email away if we need help. What I specifically love though is that the girls are all learning to self-learn, plan and take responsibility for their workload.

Earlier in the week, we got a phone call from the college to say that Amy was invited to be apart of an art class on a Wednesday afternoon via a google hangout.   The teacher and 10 kids will all take part in this hangout.  Amy was so very excited to participate in the hangout.  I love seeing the girls excited about learning.  Amy has realised that she can use this homeschooling lifestyle to her advantage and learn things she is interested in, she has stumbled across the Udemy site where she found online courses. I’ve been given a list of courses she is interested in doing on top of her year 7 workload.  This morning she emailed her assigned teacher and later in the day had a call with her teacher chatting about an assessment query.    She’s becoming an independent learner.   To see your kids learning to become an independent just makes your heart smile and dance all at once.  All our girls are rockstars, they have embraced homeschooling and haven’t looked back.

How long will we homeschool for?   I don’t know, but for now I think we made the right decision!   🙂     Am I crazy – time will tell!  🙂