The Benefits of Homeschooling

Students in our area headed back to the classroom this week. As we foraged, fished, baked, and gardened our way through the week, I was reminded that not all learning takes place in a classroom, or even with books for that matter.

Homeschooling Lets Us Maximize the Season

Homeschooling offers unique advantages and allows opportunities to teach your children valuable skills that will serve them well for their entire lives. These opportunities look different from region to region, state to state. For our family, August in Alaska is prime time for fishing, hunting, gardening, and foraging.

Several years back, when the public school system decided to resume classes mid-August, it received pushback from many families. We have short summers. We have a short season to fill our freezers and teach our children useful skills. For our family, one of the many benefits of homeschooling is that we can maximize our summer season. We don't want this time cut short by sending our kids to sit in a classroom during the peak season of valuable activities that contribute to our way of life.

Learning Outside of Books

This week our kids have fished for salmon, foraged for wild berries, and helped out in our garden. Next month they'll resume studies like reading, writing, and math. I'm constantly reminding myself that we are teaching them as much, if not more, this month than we will next month.

The Value of Passed-Down Knowledge

As my husband gave our older boys a lesson in what to do after catching a large fish, I was reminded of the value of passed-down information — trial and error, lessons learned from the generation before you, perhaps passed down to them from generations before.

For your family, perhaps it's farming, raising animals, or some other hands-on activity that you teach your children by doing something with them. No matter what it is, know it's valuable — it matters. Homeschooling gives us this opportunity to take a season and maximize it, to set aside textbooks for a time, to teach and learn beyond the basics.

A School Year Once Built Around These Seasons

Not so long ago, the school year was set up to maximize these times. It was expected that older boys would help on the farm and learn skills that would allow them to feed themselves and future generations. Although most of us can run down to the grocery store, there is something to be said for knowledge of food, preservation, and sustaining oneself. There's something to be said for hard work and the blessing that it brings. There are values and lessons that simply cannot be taught at a desk.

Is There Still a Place for Traditional Learning?

You bet! We value literacy, learning, reading, writing, and arithmetic. But we believe it has its place, and that it is not superior to practical knowledge — it should be harnessed alongside it to raise well-rounded, hard-working, knowledgeable children.

Here's to Homeschooling

Bake that bread.

Build something.

Grow that garden.

Catch that fish.

Raise those chickens.

Forage your dinner.

Make jam.

Carve a spoon.

Sew a dress.

Milk a goat.

And don't ever underestimate that you are teaching something when you do these things with your kids.

When you're ready to sit down to your books, you can download our FREE Christian homeschool curriculum here. If you're interested in learning more about our family, you can read about us here.