I have two sisters who homeschooled some of their kids. I guess that’s where I got the idea to also homeschool my own kids.
But they didn’t convince me nor persuade me to homeschool. Homeschooling piqued my interest because of an experience one of my sisters once shared where I saw that a child can learn independently, e.g., without explicit instructions from a teacher, and given an opportunity, the child will freely express his/her knowledge in his/her own terms.
It sounds so Charlotte Mason (CM), the educational philosophy I follow to educate my kids, yes, but I actually “witnessed” what independent learning was before I even learned about CM. It is what actually attracted me to homeschooling in the first place, and I have to say that it really impressed me.
I realized that a child can learn without being explicitly taught. And if a child can express his knowledge in his/her own terms, you know that a child has, without a doubt, truly learned.
When I realized this, it felt like it was just the right way for children, or anybody for that matter, to learn.
And maybe that’s why CM appealed to me, as self-education is one of the core principles of CM.
So, I realized that going to school is not the only way to learn and to be educated, that there is an alternative way to learn, and that it seemed to be better, in my opinion.
It was actually love at first sight.
And since then, I dreamed of homeschooling my future kids (I was still childless at that time).
After that initial encounter I started to casually research homeschooling to learn more about it.
And the more I learned about it, the more I fell in love with it.
I guess that’s how my homeschooling journey began.
Getting to know Charlotte Mason (CM)
It was still a few years later when I actually had kids. And when my firstborn, a dear daughter (DD), turned three, to prepare and equip myself, I started to research again, this time seriously, about homeschooling. I also asked homeschooling friends how they went about it. This was how I was introduced to Charlotte Mason (CM).
Gina Roldan, the founder and directress of Living Learning Homeschool (LLH), is a friend I know in Church. I would ask her about homeschooling when we’d see each other and it was in one of our chance conversations that she mentioned she homeschools with Charlotte Mason.
But she never actually explained who or what CM was. I asked for a book I could read to learn the ins and outs of homeschooling and she recommended For the Children’s Sake, which, as I later learned, was sort of the standard introductory book to CM.
But I couldn’t get hold of a copy of it then so I just Googled “charlotte mason” instead, and it led me to AmblesideOnline (AO) where I actually first learned about CM. Their FAQ gave me a very good overview of her philosophies and methods.
But, like all the other blogs I’ve read about CM, I will say it, too: there is no substitute to reading CM’s volumes to learn her philosophy (warning though: her writing is so archaic). So I bought a complete set of her series and started to read Volume 1 followed by Volume 6 before I started reading the rest.
I haven’t finished reading all of CM’s volumes yet but after studying CM, and after three years (going four) of using it to homeschool, I’ve written a comprehensive post why I like CM where I explain the basic principles of her educational philosophy.
At the same time I started reading her volumes, I also devoured CM homeschooling blogs to get a feel of how homeschooling the CM way was actually implemented.
And after learning about how (living) books take centerstage in a CM education, I also started hunting and buying books in Booksale and started to build our home library.
These and a few other stuff (e.g., spending time outdoors, listening to classical music, etc.) I start to do as I was learning about CM.
Life tragedy
Some time later, for my husband’s work, our family was sent and we relocated to the southern part of the country. I was initially hesitant of relocating because our family just got through an ordeal and I felt I cannot take another major life event happening too soon.
But since a part of me was longing for a simpler, less chaotic life away from the hustle and bustle of the big city, I eventually welcomed the idea of moving and actually became excited about it.
Unfortunately, exactly two years after relocating, my dear husband got Covid-19 and died.
All of a sudden, I found myself a workless widow and a solo mother in the middle of the pandemic and lockdowns, when I was in a still new, unfamiliar, far place away from my family and old friends. I barely had a community and my kids were just five and turning three then, without a nanny nor a helper at home.
To say that it was painful, devastating, and agonizing (it still is) is an understatement.
I became anxious of a lot of things, like needing to become the breadwinner for my now incomplete family, and the thought of having to send my kids to school because I would need to work.
Homeschooling was the one thing I decided I wanted to do in life, make a career out of it. I’ve had a lot of hopes and dreams taken away by God in the past and I couldn’t believe He was taking homeschooling away from me, too, at the same time He has taken my husband home with Him.
As the days, weeks, months passed, I slowly adjusted to being a widow and a solo parent but my desire and dream to homeschool didn’t go away. My whole world crashed down when I lost my husband and with it all our hopes and dreams as well, but not my hope and dream to homeschool. I clung unto it.
And if anything, now that my kids were without a father, it actually grew more. It didn’t stay simply as a desire anymore, it became a need.
Hope
I lamented to one of my sisters how painful it is to have to give up homeschooling. But she consoled me by telling me to pray about it. Because, as she said, “what you want isn’t something that would go against the will of God.”
And I realized that… indeed! I could pray about it!
Maybe because of my grief that I never thought about it. So I never prayed about it. All I did was cry.
Because when God took my husband home with Him, I thought He was also taking away my dream of homeschooling. My husband’s death was something I can not ask back from God and so I thought homeschooling was included in the package.
So when my sister advised me to pray about it, it encouraged me. It felt like a switch turned on and a glimmer of light shined in my life. I realized there still was hope!
So I prayed.
Faith
God didn’t give me a clear “Yes”. But He didn’t give me a clear “No” either. So I took a step of faith and decided to push through with homeschooling my eldest, telling myself I would try, just try, at least for Kindergarten.
I believed my sister’s rationale that I wouldn’t be going against God’s will. I wouldn’t be violating/disobeying any of God’s commands because there is no prohibition in the Bible against homeschooling (in fact, there are advocates who would say that homeschooling is actually Biblical, but that’s another topic).
In such so-called gray areas, I believe God honors decisions made in faith. And if one proceeds from faith, it is not sin (Romans 14:23). So I decided to pursue homeschooling.
I’d have to admit, though, that I also pushed through with homeschooling because I have already invested a lot into it, e.g., reading CM’s volumes, acquiring books and materials, curating a curriculum, etc., that I do not want all my efforts to go into waste.
And, cliche as it may sound, I also do not want to regret later on that I didn’t at least try.
Lastly, as I have mentioned, homeschooling was the one career I wanted to pursue in life.
I also believe that if homeschooling is not God’s will for our family, He will not make it happen. This is one of the principles I live by because this was how God has dealt with me in the past.
No matter how badly I want and how hard I work for something to happen, no matter how much I pray, beg, or plead to God for something, and even if something is already within my hand’s reach, if it’s not His will, He will not make it happen. And even at the last minute, He can make anything unhappen. (I have a lot of painful experiences in the past where this happened).
But God made homeschooling happen for us. My dear daughter finished Kindergarten, and then we proceeded with Year 1, and then Year 2. We are now (2025) on our fourth year of homeschooling with my DD in Year 3 and my dear son (DS) is starting Kindergarten.
So I do believe that it is God’s will and it is part of His plan that we homeschool.
There were a lot of uncertainties and at the start, it was difficult to think how we would be able to go through it (a constant struggle) but God worked everything out.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…
James 1:17
Future
The death of my dear husband is a stark reminder that I don’t know the future. I have no control of our life, and life can change drastically and tragically in an instant.
So every time someone would ask until when would we be homeschooling, I cannot answer. If it is up to me, I want to homeschool my kids long-term, as long as possible, God-willing.
But I do not know because it depends on God. (I actually become very anxious at the end of every school year if I would still be able to continue homeschooling the following year).
But we will take it one step (or one year) at a time.
As long as God would allow us to, as long as He provides what we need to work it out, by faith and through faith, we will take the next step forward.
Featured image by Matt Howard on Unsplash.