I pray all my visitor’s / returning readers are doing well. It’s been a very long four months. I hope you are all holding up well through this interesting time of events, we possibly never thought we’d see in our lifetime. My last post was in January before any of this pandemic stuff began. Back then my biggest issue was changing math programs for my 9th grader. I wanted to post today with an update to my homeschool situation and add, I hope, some encouragement to all the new families partaking on this adventure.

As a reminder, I decided to homeschool when my children were starting 5th and 7th grades. You can find my journey throughout this blog and I encourage you to read through my posts as they may help you. I currently homeschool in the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. I’ve lived in this beautiful state my entire life. I am a private Christian school graduate. My children just completed, in May, 7th and 9th grades in our 3rd year of homeschool. We are now entering our 4th year, so long as this continues to be with the Lord’s blessing.

Current events have thrown some anvils our way as they have with many families. Our situation isn’t unique. As a homeschooling mom that was my sole job on top of homemaker and household budgeting. That left my husband as sole financial provider. His job was essential. It was until May 19. The future is uncertain for us, but things are happening, God is working and He is taking care of us and we are leaving it up to Him. We’ve been extra careful about finances, but the question still remains about where will we end up? What about the kids schooling? We decided to go ahead and proceed with getting our homeschool affidavit notarized. Worst case scenario, I wasted 30 minutes in the notary and $5. God is good and He is in control. I have not yet purchased any educational materials, but we’re hoping to have a better idea of the situation soon. Once a final decision is made on what we’re going to use for 8th and 10th grades, I’ll post again.

So we finished out our school year on May 18th with 189 days. I don’t track hours, but I can tell you that our school day is 5 1/2 hours (with a 30 min break, which makes 6) a day on most days of the week. Exceptions to this are when they have orthodontist appointments or if we take a half-day before a holiday break. If you do the math that puts us at approximately 1001 hours this school year. The homeschool law dictates for secondary school to be 180 days or 990 hours. Ordinarily we will exceed this more than we did this year, however, we didn’t get as many events in as we do normally due to the events surrounding the pandemic. The PA General Assembly, with the Governor, signed into a law a temporary order to allow homeschool families not to meet the days/hours requirements, or the testing requirements, or the evaluation requirements. It was not a testing year for us. We did opt not to have the evaluation done, but we did put our portfolios together as is still required by law.

I am a member of a few different homeschool groups on Facebook and if you are new to homeschooling in PA and use social media I encourage you to look for those groups as they can be tremendously helpful to you. I do hope my blog is also helpful. Please feel free to use any of the documents I have available to you in the Printables link. They are FREE to use. I have a resources page for you that I will continue to update. I currently make absolutely no money from this blog. The ads you might see are not added by me, it’s because this is a free blog, and I am not affiliated with any company. If you find the information in this blog helpful, please pass it on and subscribe to keep up to date with me.

If you are just beginning your journey, for whatever reason it may be, I want to tell you that you can do it. Don’t expect perfection. There may be days you feel like quitting, don’t. Take a break. Do something fun with your children. Not everyone chooses to homeschool for the same reason, but all of us are capable of doing it no matter how inadequate you might feel or how disorganized or how busy. My journey might not look like yours, but that’s okay. Just follow the PA homeschool law and the rest is up to you. Homeschooling is freedom. (For clarity, I’m not denouncing public cyber schools or online private schools; each has their place.) If you get the naysayers coming after you, ignore them, or you could attempt to educate them on homeschooling. You’re choosing what’s best for your family. Homeschooled children are successful children and will succeed as adults. Don’t entertain the idea that they won’t be “socialized”. Public school is not about socialization. Homeschooled kids are more socialized and better prepared. There are numerous ways to have your children socialize with other children and don’t forget about your own family.

Pray for our country. Pray for our leaders. Pray for our churches. Pray for the lost souls to find the redeemer.

Romans 10:10-13 (HCSB) “One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.  Now the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on Him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, since the same Lord of all is rich to all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Please go read my older posts to help you with curriculum reviews, how to comply with the law, tips and advice, and also ideas on how to keep things organized. God bless!