Homeschooling Research On Hold

I have been gung-ho about researching all things homeschooling for years now.  In fact, one of the reasons I was hoping to have children was so that I could homeschool!  I've enjoyed "doing preschool" at home with my daughter, but I've been noticing that I feel stretched and unable to balance everything I want/need to do.  The hard truth is that with my daughter only three and a half, homeschooling is not a current need.  It's been a hobby really, the research and the planning and the attempts at implementation.

Instead, what I think I'm going to focus on is laying the foundation of our future success.  A smoothly running household will require me to have a firm grasp on decluttering, truly finding a place for everything so that everything could actually go in its place, and then getting into a reliable schedule of household cleaning and chores.  I am slowly warming up to cooking again, so that is where my research and planning needs to be directed right now.  Gardening is another area that requires my attention.  All of these silmultaneously present educational opportunities anyway, just not standard academics.

So what I propose for the next year or so is this.  Still attend the Catholic Homeschoolers'  planning meeting at our church in August. Still participate in the annual Not Back to School online summit in September.  Still attend the homeschooling curriculum fairs/conventions next May.  And in the meantime, I know what I'm working on with Maya is letter and numeral recognition, letter-sound correlation, counting, as well as the things I have prepared on our Morning Board that just needs a few finishing touches for us to start using it daily.  And of course we'll continue with library books, lots of reading time in all three languages, and prayer and faith talks.

I don't need to incessantly view YouTube videos on homeschool room tours or curriculum reviews or how-tos of any kind.  I know what I need to be doing over this next year of preschool, and I am deciding to be intentional about how I spend my free time.  I'm done researching homeschooling until next summer, at which point I will access where we are and determine if we'll be starting Kindergarten "level" work, or rather how we're going to be implementing what is suggested in The Well-Trained Mind (I've returned to this resource and realizing I have the freedom to tinker with what doesn't resonate with me, I think this will be our primary go-to as far as choosing subjects and resources.  Basing our educational approach on the trivuum makes the most sense.  Everything else we'll take as it comes.)

Hopefully this decision will pave the way for more intentional prayer time, as well as using my desire to research and plan for more useful endeavors (gardening, cooking, homemaking in general). Sometimes just writing it down makes it feel more official, and so here it is.