A lot of people ask me why we chose to homeschool. It’s hard to answer that question in a simple sentence.

 

There are about 7,567 reasons why we homeschool. But I suppose if I had to pick just one reason why we chose the homeschooling life, it would be this:

 

 

Or this:

 

 

Or this:

 

 

I’m not saying you can’t do these things if your kids go to a brick-and-mortar school. But we do get to do these things year-round. Homeschooling has given us the freedom of location and movement, and it’s giving our kids a chance to learn from hands-on experiences every single day. Yes, we still do some seat work.

 

 

We’re pretty eclectic and flexible homeschoolers (we don’t fit in a neat little label or box). But if there’s a real life experience, in our opinion, that always trumps seat work, any day. That’s partly why we’re on this trip.

We love presenting the children with opportunities and watching them learn from there. Yes, we guide them along, but we also allow a lot of room for exploring. Both the kids and I are learning more Canadian history and geography than we’d ever remember if we were learning it just to memorize for a test. We’re also learning language arts and math as we go.

From my oldest child learning about metaphors by simply listening closely to music as we drive, to our youngest learning to tell time from wanting to know when we’ll get to a destination, we’re making the world our classroom.

Homeschooling is definitely not for everybody, and we’re thankful that public education is available and free to all who want it in our country. But we’re also thankful that we have the freedom to choose to educate our own kids and spend a tonne of time with them while they’re young. We homeschool because it gives us freedom.