As I sit here listening and watching my 4 year old building animal habitats, asking what they eat and when they sleep, I realize that this is what learning should always be. It should always be based around this consuming desire and curiosity about how and why things work. It should be about observing, searching, discovering, and testing. It should be about the desire and motivation to seek out answers, even when those answers only lead to more questions.

The major reason we choose to homeschool our kids is to preserve their childhood and preserve their love of learning.

They deserve to live out these precious and fleeting years without judgement, without worrying about fitting in with a massive amount of other same age children and without feeling the need to compete to feel good about themselves. (I want my son to feel confident enough to paint his nails pink if he wants to. After all, it’s just a color.)

Learning should be about following your heart, discovering the vast unknown, and learning to always believe and trust in yourself and your intuition.

Learning should be relevant to your life. It should be hands on. It should be loud. It should be messy. It should be passionate. It should be connected to your life and the way you want to live it. It shouldn’t be about rote memorization, tests, sitting still, being quiet and learning about things that have no purpose or no application to your life (now or in the future).

I guess you could call us unschoolers. Although, I sometimes feel people look at that term in a negative light. To me, it means letting them take the lead in their learning. Providing them with the resources (or ways to find those resources) and allowing them to learn a subject as deeply as they want.

I want my children to feel confident as leaders. I want them to dance, act or sing without social pressures saying that it’s wrong or not the cool thing to do.

I want them to have the confidence to follow their own personal compass knowing that they are doing what feels good and right rather than what they’re ‘supposed’ to do.

I want to build up their childhood with confidence, passion, empathy, and true freedom of expression so that when they do go out into the ‘real world,’ it stands no chance of knocking them down.

We will be sharing tons of homeschooling plans, projects, and printables in the future. We’d love to hear about your homeschooling journey!