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Homeschooling is my passion project, so when Ashlee Gadd’s “I Love” essay prompt started going around my writing community, I knew exactly what my topic would be.
I love the way my five year old son chirps, “Mama! Look at me!” as he runs down a grassy bank. I love his passion for Home Depot. I love how taking him to the nature preserve helps him forget about all of his problems and just embrace the joy of being alive. I love his determination at his reading and math. I love that he has The Story of Little Babaji memorized.
I love how my three year old son pats his baby sister on the back and says that he’s giving her support. I love his enthusiasm for learning. I love his creativity. I even love that he has exhausted my standard course of study for the preschool years, and that now I have to scramble to figure out what to do with him next. We’ll figure it out, one way or another.
I love the way my daughter’s chubby baby arm feels around my neck when she hugs me. I love how she calls Cheerios “toes.” I love all of her opinions about her outfits, and how she sincerely believes that the look is never complete without a bow. I love reading the Anne of Green Gables board book to her. I can’t wait until she’s old enough to listen to A Little Princess.
I love reading my childhood copy of Winnie-the-Pooh to my children. I love making up my own curriculum. I love planning. I love going to the homeschool store and inhaling the used books and smiling every time I see a product that I remember from my childhood.
I love that my children have time to relax and breathe and be. I love the amount of free play that happens in my house. I love taking them to museums and zoos and to local homeschool group activites.
I love how accepting our homeschool community is.
“We’re just starting out this year,” I said with a sheepish grin at the fall kick-off event. “My oldest is in kindergarten.”
I am the youngest in my homeschool group. It’s unsurprising, I’m nearly always the youngest in any given group of moms. And yet the homeschool moms don’t despise my youth. They act as if they are happy to see me. They encourage me when I tell them about my wild days teaching kindergarten and wrangling a toddler and a preschooler. They tell me that it will get easier, and I believe them.
They spread their mother hen wings and let me in, and it means the world.
This coop is exactly where I want to be.
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