Learning as a Lifestyle // How We Homeschool with 4 Teens/Pre-teens

Dec 11

We are now in our 6th year of homeschooling, and I can hardly believe it. If it wasn’t for being forced to have the kids home for school in 2020, I wouldn’t have had the chance to inadvertently fall in love with this immersive learning lifestyle for our family, and I don’t think we’d be here right now. But who knows? Life has a way of working out exactly as it’s supposed to in my experience.

Especially in our first few years, I was so grateful to anyone who shared how they were not only making homeschool work for their family, but how they were making it magical, fun, and aligned with their vision. I’ve taken bits from here and there, mostly from books and other moms whom I share values with and respect/admire…and piecing it all together with what my gut and intuition have led me to. I’ve pivoted more times than I can count and had plenty of sleepless nights wondering if I’m doing enough and if it’s all going to be okay.

In my experience, that feeling never fully goes away, but it’s okay because the joy and fulfillment this lifestyle brings us overrides the fear.

It’s an honor for me to pass along all the information and personal experience I can in hopes that it might help someone else who is trying to figure this thing out…or maybe someone who is considering this path but is scared to leap. I have a lot to share, which is tough to include in one post…and I’m also an open book so if you have any questions, just want to talk or want to bounce ideas off someone, feel free to shoot me a message.

Our homeschool routine has regularly shifted over the years as the kids have grown + changed or our living situation has shifted (ie full-time travel). I also just enjoy change a lot, so every year is like a blank slate to try something new, stick with our favorites and of course always - read new books! Having just come off 2 years of full-time travel, we are finding our rhythm once again, and while a lot is similar, some core things have changed now that we have more space, more supplies at hand and aren’t filling every week with adventures in new places that are on a timeline. (If you’re interested more in what our school weeks/days looked like while we were still traveling full-time, I’m happy to do a separate post on that…just shoot me a message so I can gauge the level of interest).

Our days are more of a rhythm than a schedule. The kids are at ages now (13, 13, 10, 10) where they like to get up early, so they can get a head start on their schoolwork and have even more free time later in the day. So most of them wake up to their own alarm (sometimes with help;) between 6-7am. We follow our regular routine described below Monday - Thursday (with flexibility) and use Friday either for science, adventure day, or both!

Every morning we prioritize working out, eating something healthy (they mostly make their own breakfast) and now that we have a sauna and cold plunge, a couple of kids do that with us too. After working out and breakfast, they start on the list we’ve created together that lets them check off the subjects/learning they’re focusing on for that day.

Individual Studies

Each kid has a list of individual subjects, tailored to their learning level, needs and interests, so they work on that on their own. I ping pong around and help whoever needs it while also making my own breakfast and getting ready for the day. There are sometimes days where it seems like everyone needs help on basically everything, and it can be a lot. But most of the time it works out that at least a couple kids are working well completely on their own and everything runs pretty smoothly.

Here is a little list of what each kid is doing currently for their independent work. These subjects usually take around 2, sometimes 3 hours for everyone to complete (including time where they’re waiting on me to help).

Viv (13):

Language Arts: The Good and the Beautiful - High School Level Two

Math: The Good and the Beautiful Math 7

Foreign language: Duolingo French

Viv is very self-motivated with her learning, so along with the above, she devours books of all kinds and also is writing books + poetry of her own. She also spends a ridiculous amount of time crocheting + drawing.

Linc (13):

Math: The Good and the Beautiful Level 6 (a little behind because we did less formal bookwork over the last 2 years traveling:)

Language Arts: Simply Charlotte Mason Using Language Well Book 3 - this is a very simple daily study on grammar/writing/dictation. Language Arts is really not his thing, so it works for him to have less extensive lessons, but I still feel like he’s getting the core concepts in small doses.

Science: Creation Science ecourse through Compass Classroom. This is our first semester to use this online platform, and we’re enjoying it so far. We do science weekly as a family study (see below), but Linc wanted to dive deeper, so he’s doing this course in addition to that.

Foreign language: DuoLingo Spanish

Handwriting: I love this book because it has rich language and quotes to practice with instead of just random sentences they do a couple pages every day

Eloise (10):

Math: The Good and the Beautiful Level 5

Language Arts: Simple Charlotte Mason Using Language Well Book 2 (same as Linc - this works for her because it’s like 20 minutes and done. It gives her more time to do the things she is passionate about)

Foreign language: DuoLingo Spanish

Handwriting: I love this book because it has rich language and quotes to practice with instead of just random sentences they do a couple pages every day

Violet (10):

Math: The Good and the Beautiful Level 5

Language Arts: The Good and the Beautiful Level 5 (She loves writing, workbook activities and art, so this gives her more of all that, and she loves it)

Foreign language: DuoLingo Spanish

Handwriting: I love this book because it has rich language and quotes to practice with instead of just random sentences they do a couple pages every day

Weekly Enrichment

In addition to their individual subjects, these are a handful of things we do weekly. It’s very fluid, and I assign them on the days when we have more time and it makes sense.

Mail Mondays: they choose someone and write/mail a letter to them. This is especially nice since we’ve moved away from family/friends in the last couple of years. We bought this little wax seal kit, which makes it so fun and they love seeing who they get letters back from.

Notebooking: I’ll throw in a notebooking assignment a couple of times a week based on a topic we discussed or an adventure we had over the weekend. Like last weekend we visited the San Juan Islands, so today they all picked something they were inspired by there, researched it, wrote about it and drew an illustration. These are as much memory books for us as they are schoolwork haha.

Commonplace Books: I have been keeping a personal commonplace book of sorts for years, and the kids now enjoy keeping one too. They add quotes that speak to them or little tidbits they want to remember from our readings. They can add gratitudes, little prayers, scripture etc. It’s so special to have these to look back on. Sometimes we’ll go weeks and forget to pull them out, but then we’ll come back to them.

Music: Now that we’re not living camper life anymore, we’ve started including more regular musical instrument practice in our days, and I want to double down more on this as we get more settled in. A couple of the kids are learning guitar right now and another is learning the xylophone.

Morning Collective (subjects done as a family)

Once everyone is done with their individual subjects, we make a snack or some tea/hot chocolate and have our favorite part of the day: Morning Collective time. This time together usually takes us from 2-3 hours, depending on how long we spent on individual subjects and also whether it’s a day we are going somewhere like a hike, activities, a friend meetup, the library/skatepark or an adventure.

We’re using a new guide this year for our Morning Collective time called Without Doors Modern America study. It includes Bible, scripture memorization, Hymn Study, History, Poetry, Geography, Nature Journaling, Art Study, and Composer Study. This may sound like a lot, but the way it’s organized makes it really doable! And it’s super fun to have all these enrichment studies woven throughout our week. I’m loving it so far. It includes using a Book of Centuries /History Timeline to track all the different historical events we talk/learn about through our reading. Using a Book of Centuries helps the kids see more clearly how everything fits together. This is the one we use, although there are lots of options out there.

Read Alouds // the heart and soul of our homeschool

We also are reading aloud from a few different books together each day, which is everyone’s favorite thing. One is the Egermeir’s Storybook Bible (we read through the New Testament last year and now working through the Old Testament), our Brave Writer Arrow (currently Game of Silence), and then we’re always reading through a classic (currently The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), a fantasy (A Cricket in Times Square) and a biography (Emily Dickinson).

After we read a section, I have the kids take turns narrating what we read, and we discuss it. I’ll also pick a couple of topics out of the Arrow guide to highlight. So many rich discussions and connections come during this time. I feel like our read-alouds are the richest part of our homeschooling lifestyle. They bond us together and give connective threads like a web that stitches together not only books and characters over the years but also current events and real life experiences. Even if you don’t homeschool, I highly recommend having read-alouds together as a family if at all possible to squeeze it in.

Aside from that, we do a couple of art/craft things that I run across on instagram or whatever. Usually seasonal fun stuff or things the kids want to do. Right now they are preparing for a craft market we’re taking part in, so they’re all working on individual items to sell. Violet is really into making pigment from rocks and other nature and has just started making paper from scratch. Linc is really into finger boarding and has decided to start his own business making custom finger boards and creating videos of the tricks he’s mastered. Extra time in the afternoon allows them to deep dive into whatever is lighting them up at any given time.

And lastly, science. We are currently working through TGTB Health + the Human Body. We do science all together on Friday’s and just rotate through the different TGTB units (Linc and Viv use the 7-8 student journal and the girls use the 4-6 one). We also do science through nature study and nature journaling, which I mentioned above.

One of the biggest priorities in our day is getting outside. It can be hard when we have so much we’re trying to accomplish that happens indoors, but we spend at least a couple of hours outdoors everyday. We sometimes make a fire on the deck and have our read-aloud time out there. But mostly, we wait until we finish indoor work and head to the trail, the boardwalk, or maybe the skatepark. When we were full-time traveling, we spent most of the day outdoors, and I miss that. But it’s also nice in some ways to have the indoor space and resources to do more art and different kinds of studies, especially since we’re spending winter in the PNW. But rain or shine, we make getting out an absolute must because we all start to spiral if not haha!

Now for some real talk….

Sometimes I feel worried that we aren’t doing enough, but typing all this out makes me realize we are truly covering a lot of bases. One thing I learned from a mentor and chose to accept several years ago is that there absolutely will be holes in the kids’ education. There is no way we will cover every single thing possible as extensively as would be ideal. But every kid has holes in their education - even the best of the best school or individualized curriculum will not cover every last thing, nor will kids fully absorb or understand everything there is to learn. Realizing this took a ton of pressure off and increased my passion to double down on all the things I think are most valuable for them to take away from their childhood/education, and to let the rest go, knowing if it’s needed later they will have the opportunity to learn it.

Something else I remind myself of often is that the most important thing is not for them to learn every last thing, but for them to learn how to learn. If they love learning and have confidence in their own capability to find whatever information or learn whatever skill they need or want to know, then they are going to be successful in whatever they choose to do in life. In other words, I’m way more concerned with keeping their love and passion for learning intact than to fill them with a lot of facts that they probably will never use or need to know. Let’s be honest - that’s what the internet is for.

It’s key to understand that all of life is learning. From learning how to motivate ourselves to get out of bed in the morning to how to unload the dishwasher, cook healthy meals, clean the bathroom, keep the fire in the wood-burning stove going, do the laundry, keep a journal, address and mail a letter, make the bed, make a matcha (okay, this one could be optional;), navigate conflict with siblings or friends, play an instrument, meditate…it’s all learning. And we believe these things are more useful and important than knowing the state capitals ever will be.

And lastly, everything I’ve included in this post is what we aim to do most of the time. But the beautiful thing about a homeschool rhythm is the flexibility it gifts us. So if there is an event or family visiting…or if the whole day is going to be sunny with no rain (#pnwlife), we take full liberty to ditch the plan.

Likewise, there are days where I don’t feel well or the kids are sick or something has happened that throws us off course and we just let it roll off our backs. Life is messy, and the more we embrace that the happier we all are.

Our daily life looks a lot more like a messy weaving with plenty of holes and loose threads than a well-oiled machine, and I absolutely love that about it. I have learned to look at our learning from a bird’s eye view, knowing that it’s our routines and what we do most of the time that matters and the rest will work itself out.

And also - it’s usually the days where nothing goes right that make room for more hugs, cuddles on the couch, emotional connection and bonding, etc. so I welcome those sliding door moments, knowing they offer a kind of learning that cannot be planned for or created.