 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from rooted arrest and myself. Our goal with the homeschool show and tell was just to showcase there's not one right way to homeschool that there's multiple ways to do it and nobody can really do it wrong. So we do that by bringing homeschoolers together from around the world each and every month to share their take on a specific topic. This month's topic is things I wish I had known when I first started homeschooling and I'm so excited for this because I feel like hindsight is definitely 2020 and I know we have some amazing homeschool moms that participate in this collaboration and I cannot wait to learn from their hindsight. I'm also hoping that this inspires some homeschool newbies to not make some of the same mistakes that we might have made and maybe save you some of the hassle trouble and stress. I have been homeschooling for seven years so there are a lot of things at this point that I have come to realize I wish I had known or done differently. The number one thing though as I wish I had known then that the thing we would learn from the least would be the curriculum and maybe just maybe I would have spent a whole lot less time stressing over finding the perfect one and you guys I know we all do it. Like I spent hours when we first started homeschooling researching curriculum seeing what other people were using spending money on buying curriculum that didn't work for us and getting rid of it and it seems like a never-ending process especially those first few years when I was trying to find my footing but now flash forward seven years and I know that the thing we learned from the least is the curriculum. The things we learn from the most are the books, the games, the field trips and experiences, the hands-on activities, oh and the conversations especially as your kids get older you guys this Emily has become between the conversations that we have like the unprompted not curriculum related questions that just manifest themselves and the things that we talk about are so amazing so I think if I had it to do over I would stress a whole lot less about curriculum I would probably spend a whole lot less hours researching it spend a whole lot less money buying it stress our homeschool out a lot less by trying it and instead I would have focused on cultivating our home the environment and the atmosphere of our homeschool and making sure that I was really focusing on cultivating that relationship because I think that once I did start cultivating that relationship I'm now seeing the dividends and the payoffs from that as she's older with the conversations we're having and those and that learning and education that is coming from those is worth 10 times more than any curriculum we've ever used the second thing I wish I had known when I first started homeschooling was that you don't have to do it all I remember being like oh my gosh we have to do all of the things and all of the curriculum because they're all look so amazing and we need to do it all this year and we would do all of the subjects and our homeschool days were making my head spin because I was exhausted and Emily was stressed out because it was overstimulating and it was just too much and it was it was just very very stressful like it was not the homeschool that I had envisioned so when I let go of the need to do it all to do all of the things and for it to all be on my shoulders as when I found our homeschool finally found peace and by that I mean you don't have to do all of the things that you find especially not in one year you have many many years of homeschooling you can save them come back to them another time you know if this like for example holidays I remember like oh there's like 10 different things I want to do for Christmas schooling but Christmas is only three weeks long and all this stuff well there's always next year like you can't do it all and would you really want to try to do it all and then make the holiday season and holiday homeschooling miserable trust me you don't I've been there and done that so just pick one do it really really well and then do another one the next year so that's one like you don't have to do all of the things all of this year you have plenty of years to do it you also don't have to do all of the subjects ever but you really don't have to do them all in this homeschool year and this week in this day you get to pick like you have 365 days not 180 and you have all of the hours in the day and not six like that's the perk that you have over public school so you can choose to do maybe history in the fall and science in the spring they don't have to be done at the same time or maybe your kid focuses better when they're doing one thing at a time so you do a week's worth of math on Monday and a week's worth of language arts on Tuesday like you get to do that if that's what fits your homeschool and then also that I don't have to be the one to do all the things like it doesn't all have to fall on my shoulders and that is something that once I realized was like oh because I remember trying to be the one to do do all of it all the time and it was stressing me out because there were things that I wasn't good at or things that Emily and I didn't click on together and it was making our homeschool well not enjoyable and so I started outsourcing for example we outsource math to teaching textbooks because that is so much better for our family in our homeschool my mom teaches Emily sewing I can't sew a button on to save my life so she teaches her sewing my dad teaches her archery because she's really interested in that and while I think it's really fun I don't have the working knowledge of it that he has she uses Duolingo for Spanish because I can't speak Spanish to save my life Kevin does science experiments with her because as much as I wanted to and as great as my intentions were I never got around to it it was always the thing I was like pushing off because I don't like messes so there are all of these things that have slowly either taken it off of me or me letting go of certain things and certain expectations and me realizing like we don't have to do it all in our homeschool and I don't have to be the one to do it all and that has given us peace like it is given our homeschool a peaceful environment and less stress so those would be the things that I would like really really wish I could have told myself and tell you if you're new or you're still trying to do all of the things and do it all yourself you don't have to like you're still a great homeschool mom if you're not doing it all I promise the third thing that I wish I knew when I first started homeschooling was to trust the process and let go of expectations I had very high expectations of what I wanted for our homeschool of what I expected from Emily of things I expected her to learn at a certain age based off of you know public school or kids that I knew kids around me kids I saw on social media whatever and the minute that I finally let go of those expectations and really looked at the child in front of me and what was realistic and you know learn to trust the process things were so much better because nine times out of ten something that I find is a problem today in our homeschool like let's just say for example she's having trouble with long division and I'm stressing and I'm not trusting the process and I immediately want to you know declare it a problem throw more curriculum at it stress about it nine times out of ten it will resolve itself in a few days or a few weeks like it's just that I need to trust the process like I know what we're doing works for us and I need to let go and trust it and then it will resolve itself same thing like I remember when we first started homeschooling this even goes to Kevin he had a really really hard time trusting uh game schooling when I decided we were gonna do it he was like wait you're not gonna have pieces of paper for every single subject I'm like yeah it'll be okay I promise and he had a really hard time with that like because he wasn't here with her seeing the benefits day in and day out like he was working so he didn't see the way it worked and then I think it was over like Christmas break or summer break or something and he had you know spent more time with her and he's like oh this is this is really working for her this is amazing and like I know that's why I wanted to do it and so he kind of let go and that was actually something that he said when we talked about this video was that he said I wish I had let go and trust the process earlier because I had expectations of what homeschool should look like and when our homeschool didn't look like that it worried him and stressed him out um so he would have been a lot less stressed if he had known then to let go of expectations and trust the process another expectation I think we should let go of is that every kid is the same because or even your own kid is going to be the same from year to year just because something worked for your oldest kid doesn't mean it's going to work for your youngest just because something worked for your neighbor's kid doesn't mean it's going to work for your kid just because something worked for us last homeschool year doesn't mean it's going to work for us this homeschool year the expectation that um it that's just the way it is means that nine times out of ten we're putting ourselves in a box instead of like I said looking at the kid in front of you in the moment and figuring out what is going to work best for this child for me as a teacher for this homeschool year for whatever the lifestyle that we're living right now might be uh and so I think that if we can just let go of those expectations and really evaluate the moment that changes things drastically and then the last expectation for me personally this was something that I probably the one I still struggle with the most is that if it's easy it can't be working that is like the expectation that I have always had like homeschool has to be hard right so if it's easy it can't be working it can't be good like this can't be enough easy isn't enough and homeschool has to be hard that was the expectation I came in with it needs to be rigorous we need to spend hours doing it and the funny thing is now seven years later I find the things that we do the most the things that provide the most fruit in our homeschool are the easy things not the hard things it's the reading books it's the playing games it's listening to audiobooks which totally count it's the conversations it's the field trips um it's not the hard stuff it's not the rigorous hard complicated things that are producing the most fruit it's the things that are the easiest it's the watching a documentary together at night and it not even feeling like school but she learns the most from it and so I think that that is probably something I still to this day struggle with sometimes I'll get to the end of our homeschool we can feel like we didn't do enough or it was too easy the expectation as homeschool should be hard and then I have to remind myself nope that doesn't have to be hard to count like it can be easy and still count and still be fruitful so those are my top three homeschool hindsight I really wish I had known when I first started homeschooling now I would love to know yours because I know you have one whether you've been homeschooling for one week one year or 10 years we all have something we wish we had known on day one leave yours down in the comments and don't forget to check out the playlist in the description to see everybody else's homeschool hindsight