Yes! You can Homeschool Bravely!

Yes, you can Homeschool bravely!

Maybe your thought is Not me, I’m not a teacher. How could I possibly homeschool at all, much less bravely???

But I really want to assure you, you can homeschool.

Homeschooling your children is a journey of growing together as a family and growing as an educator. You don’t have to have it all figured out on day one. You learned parenting as your child grew. Learning how to teach is a process too. As the work gets more challenging, you’ll get better at it, I promise.

I remember being nervous about homeschooling. Even as a former high school teacher (17 years in the classroom), starting to homeschool for kindergarten seemed like a huge step of faith.

• Would I be able to educate my own child?
• Could I possibly cover everything she needs to know?
• What curriculum should I choose?
• Will homeschooling ruin my child?

Do you know what the common theme in all those questions is?

I was trusting, or not trusting, in myself.

If I was stepping out in faith to homeschool, where was I placing my faith?

At first, I had my faith totally misplaced. It was in my ability to parent and to teach and to pull together state standards and curriculum.

But that isn’t the faith I really needed to homeschool. I needed to have faith that if God has called me to homeschool, He will meet me there and provide all we need as individuals and as a family.

God challenges us to homeschool bravely, trusting in Him to lead us.

Which is why I really appreciated Jamie Erickson’s book Homeschool Bravely!

I found myself nodding and saying yes and amen on so many pages. It feels like Jamie was reading my mind. So many of my best tips and tricks are already in this book! Any parent even kind of considering homeschool can benefit from it!

She does such a great job of being transparent with the secret fears many of us have faced as we walk in obedience to homeschool, or fears that maybe have prevented us from following the call to homeschool.

Are you wondering if you can homeschool because you’re afraid of what your children will achieve in life?

Stop using a broken measuring stick to measure your children.

One thing Jamie does really well is point to God’s plan for our children as a crucial reason to homeschool. A lot of our fears really stem from whether or not we can make our children measure up to the world’s standards.

But in Homeschool Bravely, Jamie challenges us to stop using a broken measuring stick. Only God’s measure really matters (of course I’m cheering. Hello?! Heaven not Harvard!), and she wonderfully walks us through setting aside the false ideals many of us have internalized.

I love how Jamie uses scripture as a foundation for who she is and how she homeschools. In the book, I found sentences that were Biblical concepts just as part of how she approaches her role as mom and teacher, without being deliberate scripture references.

The Bible can’t be all we teach our children, but it should be the most important part, and this author demonstrates her close relationship with God and His word. We can trust that what she says is born of a mature Christian walk and experience with homeschooling. She homeschools several different children with diverse learning styles and personalities.

Homeschool Bravely meets you where you are, no matter where that is. 

Some of the book will appeal more to people who have not yet embraced homeschooling. A lot of practical tips are directed towards readers with little ones not quite ready for formal schooling. If you’ve got toddlers and elementary students, Jamie has pages of excellent tips.

Some of the chapters deal with older children or struggling learners. This part was the most meaningful to me. We’ve been effectively homeschooling since she was 2, but some days are HARD. Homeschool Bravely offers encouragement to stay the course along with some real heart work for both sides of the struggle.

Homeschool Bravely challenges us to rethink how we school.

As a professional educator, I brought home many of my classroom concepts to my homeschool. I’m not sure how I feel about all of Jamie’s ideas, but she offers them in such as way as to ask us to reconsider our why for doing things. We want our purpose for our educational choices to line up with God’s purpose behind homeschooling.

And if we’re not willing to question ourselves openly from time to time, we’re not really walking in humility with God.

God wants us to disciple our children. We do that by growing as disciples ourselves, and then we use God’s word as a focus for how we teach our children to do life.

How do you start homeschooling your child?

You already have.

Parents are educating their children from birth. We teach table manners, chores, fashion sense. If you love your children, you can homeschool because you’ve already started.

All you’re doing when you start homeschooling officially is adding curriculum.

And homeschool doesn’t just mean school at home. 

We get to incorporate HOME into our school. We can teach fractions by measuring ingredients to cook. Humble service through household chores teaches all of us to wash the feet of the people in our lives and home.

Lastly, I love the emphasis in Homeschool Bravely on presence over perfection and resting in God’s truths over the world’s demands.

Being a homeschool mom feels like it comes with a list of other requirements, like eating organic, homesteading, wearing denim jumpers, etc. LOL Don’t add more to your plate than God does.

Jamie does a great job of reminding us we aren’t supposed to do all the things. There are enough hours in the day to do all the things God has for you to do.

Just simply walk in obedience, and yes, you can homeschool bravely!