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School's Out!

June 18, 2014

By Tineke Ziemer

June 20^th, 2014

A year ago I was scared crapless, fighting the urge to call it quits before we even began, and convinced that whether it be me or my kids, someone would be “with-us-no-more” by the end of the year. I was taking the giant, petrifying leap into the world of homeschooling.

Yes. Homeschooling. The one thing I said I’d never do. (Well, there are two things actually. The other one involves being a missionary in Africa and, unfortunately, I know God is taking that as a challenge too.)

It would take a book to tell the story of this year, in all of its incredible, hilarious, outrageous glory. I have never loved my children so deeply or felt such a bond with them as I did over the past ten months - pouring over our cheek cells through the microscope, falling in love with Anne of Green Gables, sweating our butts off on morning runs, yelling at the computer screen when the French program kept telling us we were saying it wrong, and building art projects out of veggies! I have never been as proud as I was when they decided to raise $1000 for children in Africa who have no water or when they saw the face of a little girl named Miriam and begged to sponsor her. I have never laughed so hard as the days we built epic obstacle courses that required this old momma to squeeze through spaces not possible for adult-sized bodies, army crawl under the kitchen table and take out the enemy targets with nerf guns. Until now, I’ve never encountered the type of companionship that comes through sharing the joys and anxieties of learning together every day, in the best of moments and the worst of moments. There were days when my daughter spent a lot of time going to her room until she was ready to have a good attitude, there were times I found angrily scribbled notes from my son at the top of his dreaded writing assignments saying ‘I HATE THIS’, there were days I needed to take a time out too. But we conquered them together! We even laughed about them later and became better people for the challenges we surmounted.

I quit being a professional photographer this year and instead I became my children’s teacher. Instead of spending 12-14 hours a day in front of my screen, I spent mornings curled up reading them books and writing stories about new inventions, afternoons creating water colour paintings and popping balloons using electrical currents. I spent moments watching their eyes light up when they learned something new and evenings dreaming of ways to make their lessons more exciting. I wouldn’t change a single minute of this last year - there were struggles and there were times we wondered what we got ourselves into, but there were always a hundred more instances where I closed my eyes, soaked in the very presence of my beautiful children and thanked God almighty for waking me up one morning and saying ‘this year you are going to homeschool.’

Last night, our teacher (the one who assesses their work, writes their report cards and keeps us on track,) had 14 of the kids over to celebrate finishing the year. She let them all dish up a heaping bowl of ice cream and put on any toppings they wanted. Some of them did a little performance and us moms gave out awards to
honour their accomplishments. How special to share these moments together!

Thought for the Day

There were several of my friends who all started homeschooling this year and I remember the trepidation we felt, the fears of inadequacy we struggled with. Here we sat a year later, rosy cheeks and proud hearts. We adults were the ones who were blessed to witness this fantastic group of kids blooming this year. Watching them last night, playing so happily together despite their differences in age, I was overcome with a bubbling sense of affection and pride, not only for the hard work that these kids put in all year, but for us moms who stepped out in faith and took the challenge before us. Truth be told, I think we did a bit of blossoming ourselves this year.