”Am I doing enough?”
“I lie in bed at night and dread the thought of starting school
 the next day.”
“A life of drudgery is not what I envisioned a few short
 months ago.”
“It’s such a struggle to get the kids to do anything.” 

“All my kids do is fight and whine.”

The only time I disliked homeschooling was from 1980-83, the first
 three years which we formally homeschooled. That was when we were following a rigid 
correspondence type curriculum. There was a pile of workbooks to get
 through each day, a long list of subjects to check off on my notepad, a
 schedule to keep, and all in addition to the normal things which must 
be accomplished in the home, such as changing diapers, cooking, and
 cleaning.


By 1983, I was so thoroughly tired of the schooling routine, and our oldest 
had become so reluctant to do school, that we threw out the 
school-in-a-box, and the Lord began to show us a different way.

The first 
change I made was to start reading to the children — not just the baby 
picture books (although we still read those), but the long chapter books — 
the books I wanted to read, like Treasure Island, the works of 
Jules Verne and the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. At 
the beginning, the babies didn’t get anything out of the reading, but the
 older ones loved it. Yet, I suppose the person who loved it the most was 
me. Through the years I read to them all the books I had always wanted to 
read but never had the time. And I certainly paid no attention to grade
 level. I read to my own grade level, and the children learned to love reading 
because they saw how much pleasure it gave me.


I soon learned to apply that same philosophy to other areas as well and
 pursued an education for myself, bringing the children along side me. Many 
days were spent in libraries, both local and university level, with the
 children helping me do research on our current topic and the baby playing
 beside us in a laundry basket (strollers weren’t allowed). We must have
been a strange sight to the college students.

Yes, we did the grammar and
 math like we were supposed to, but we majored on projects — history and
 science projects, learning writing skills and much more in the 
process. 


If you are not enjoying the adventure of homeschooling — and it truly
 is an adventure — but are rather seeing it as a job which must be 
endured, perhaps you might consider changing your perspective. Look on
 homeschooling as primarily an opportunity to educate yourself and bring
 the kids alongside.


Laurie