A Year Well Spent

We all make plans for our lives.  Towards the end of 2017, I put forward my plans for the Year of the Dog.  Funny thing is how we can plan to the best of our ability but we can't always predict what life will throw into our paths along the way.

Fast forward to the spring 2018...  My sweet girl was struggling in school and in life.  The momma bear in me sought many ways to help her but by June it was apparent that we needed to bring her home for the next school year.  I had considered homeschooling my kids many years ago but had felt like I would not be able to give them what they needed in life.  I went into this year somewhat terrified and feeling very ill-equipped for the new challenge I was taking on.  My previous year's involved in the IHC program helped me to build the necessary framework to take on the challenge despite how I was feeling.

Mastery asks us to to "constantly produce results beyond the ordinary" and to "consistently go beyond our limits."  If I was going to succeed I needed to commit myself to mastery and pursue excellence.  Our world no longer looked "normal" by society's standards.  I had many people doubting our choice.  I definitely felt a great deal of pressure to ensure that the education in our home was anything but mediocre.

I now sit here at the other side of that first year of homeschooling.  There were definitely some really hard days.  We both had to figure out what learning home could look like and that we didn't need to make it look anything like "school".  I read any book on homeschooling that I could find.  I invested fully into learning how to do this new life and then I invested even more fully into walking alongside her in her learning.  We wrestled through math together.  Read great books together.  Discovered history together.  Watched documentaries and went on great field trips together.  We learned to redefine what learning looks like together.  We had an incredible year.  Sitting here at the end of it, I view this past year as an incredible gift, not only to her but to me as well.

Some of the highlight reels are:

• My girl loves to learn!
• We swam with a dolphin and snorkeled through a coral reef with rays and so many different kinds of fish and could call it science!
• She discovered that she not only could understand math but she can excel at it!
• She has developed a deep love for books!
• World history is super cool!
• Her mental health is the best that I have seen it in years!

Mastery is a relentless pursuit.  It requires us to keep on learning, to keep on growing, to keep on applying lessons learned.  We are now back in the summer planning season for next year.  I am back to learning on how to best live out this lifestyle that we have chosen to continue for another school year.  We have talked about what went well and where we both feel that we can make improvements.  Her love of learning has made us some pretty steep goals to work towards for this next year but we are both up to the challenge of this journey that we are on together.