Not in our wildest dreams

Growing up in a third world country I always had the sense that America was bigger and better; especially when it came to education. As such I had really high expectations for my children’s formal education. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would end up teaching my own kids I may have laughed at you. What a crazy notion!

And yet, that's exactly what we decided to do. Well kind of, but not really. What we actually stumbled upon is something even better. We homeschool just 3 days a week and our children are in a classroom environment 2 days a week. It's hybrid. And yes, we really do have the best of both worlds!

After one year of pure homeschooling a kindergartner and 1st grader (with a toddler in tow), I knew that homeschooling 5 days a week was not sustainable. At least not for me. I was tired.  Tired of everything, but mostly I was tired of homeschooling defining everything about us. And right when I was ready to wave the white flag, my friend Laura approached me about starting this  'best of both worlds' model of education. I was skeptical. But that all changed one evening as Laura and her husband Sean sat in our living room and shared a vision for what this might look like.

Amazingly within 6 weeks, by God’s grace alone, we had 7 students from 5 wonderful families for our pilot year.

We transformed the basement of a home into a school room and patched together the resources we needed: borrowed curriculum, used furniture, we painted a wall with chalk paint and put up a map and some hooks. That was just 6 years years ago.

Today that 1st grader is in middle school and thriving. His sister is fast on his heels, and we just love who she is becoming. 

And yes we still have that last born, no longer a toddler, but the one who is now our first grader. And we look at our children and we smile. We smile because of their love for learning. We smile because we were the ones who actually had the joy of teaching them to read. We smile because they still love being together. We smile at their creativity (boredom does wonders).

We smile because of the hours we have spent together. We smile because of the amazingly deep friendships we have made with others journeying with us.

We smile because our children really are still a little more naive and innocent that the kids around them. And most of all we smile, or perhaps we laugh, because we could never have imagined the educational journey we ended up taking with our kids, not in our wildest dreams, but boy are we glad we did!

PS: Grace Preparatory Academy has moved on from it's humble beginnings and now meets in a wonderful church. We have seen 38 children and their families impacted. Follow us on Facebook