Most people think that you need to buy curriculum and supplies in order to start homeschooling. That’s not what we did.
We started homeschooling our oldest son directly after a move across the country. It was April of my son’s kindergarten year and so we really only had a couple of months to finish out his year. I had taught for 5 years in a public school, had my Master’s Degree in Education, and had taught and was the director for a preschool for 2 years, so this should be a walk in the park, right?
Wrong.
My son had a hard time while he was in kindergarten. He had cried mostly everyday (unbeknownst to me) and had shut down his mind to learning. I had to almost undo what happened to him in order to move him forward.
So, what did I do first?
I played with my son. That’s it. We played. I needed to get my son back and have him open up to me. He was completely closed off to learning.
Closed off to learning + “let’s do school” = complete shut down
It wasn’t going to do any good for me to try to “do school” when he was closed off to learning.
So we played.
We laughed.
We talked.
I listened.
That’s it. That’s how we started. Everything else was built from that.
