How it looked in the beginning-
I removed my youngest from school in 6th grade. Yes, you heard me correctly- 6th grade (middle school). We both had ideas about what homeschool would look like.
Our first idea was that we were going to start school at 9 am and end at 3 pm each day. We would be dressed for school. He wanted to wear a school unifom. He said the uniform made him focus on his work. He would sit at the desk and do some online learning and some workbooks.
Our second idea was that we needed a space that was set up like a school room as much as possible. There was a desk, posters, charts, a whiteboard and a daily schedule.
Our thrid idea was that we needed to have exams that I would give to make sure that my child was learning everything a 6th grader would if they were in public school. After all, we did not want him to fall behind. Just in case homeschooling did not work.
Our forth idea was all daily work had to be done be for any fun activities such as dance, art, nature walks, and going on field trips. After all learning is what is most important in school and that is what I wanted. He would even do tomorrows work if we had something to do in the morning the next day.
Our fifth idea was that we need to find a group of homeschool friends to hang out with since all the children we knew went to public school. This may have been the only good idea we had.
How it ended up looking
Shortly after starting homeschool, I found my child would start his day at 6 am, after all that was the time he needed to get up to make it to public school. By 9 am he would be finished with his online classes, work books and have done his daily reading. So what did I do, I gave him more work after all he needed to be learning until 3 pm each day.
Shortly after starting homeschool we went to our first homeschool activity at the trampoline park. I got to talk to other moms and see that each and every one had a diffrent style of homeschooling. Some had been doing it since day one and some were new.
Shortly after starting homeschool, I learned it was okay to do school in bed in PJ’s. I learned that not all days would look alike for us. He wanted to break the subjects up by days, not hours. He wanted to dive deep in some things and not so much in others. Some subjects were fine online but others needed to be project based and hands-on. He liked workbooks that were more open ended and enjoyed reading about history as long as there was no exam.