Our First Year Homeschooling!

After years of praying what God's will is for our kids and their education, my husband and I decided to homeschool our five kids. It became clear that we needed to listen to the urging of the Lord and take this next step. 

We had a long list of educational reasons but my husband and I also felt like we needed a season of calm, to regroup as a family so we could devote time to helping each child in our care, thrive.

Of course we were eager for mellow mornings, learning about subjects and life together, cooking more healthy meals at home, exploring nature with more "field trips", reading aloud together, spending more time in God's word, stepping away from the rushed life for a bit. 

But we also saw more and more that the public school setting was not working for most of our children, for some of our kids there were huge red flags, for others, a few smaller red flags that brought concern. We couldn't shake the feeling that we needed to try something different.

We named our little homeschool, Oak Tree Academy, after being inspired from Max Lucado's book, The Oak Inside the Acorn. It is one of my favorite children books and I really wanted a name that validated what our hope is for this next year. The story is about the acorn that becomes who God created him to be. This was the theme I wanted, helping our children become who God created them to be.

Here are some things we have been praying about for our kids.

We hope they grow into the person God created them to be.
We want them to take root in the Lord so they can withstand the storms in life.
We want them to stand tall and confident knowing they each were uniquely created.
We hope they will learn in all areas of life so they can discover their purpose from God.

So as we dove into our first year of homeschooling, we made goals, wishes, hopes, and prayers for our kids. We do not have our routine down, it is often changing but I will share some of our favorite things in upcoming posts...