The Last One

 It started with a $71 curriculum order and a leap of faith when my oldest, Roman, was due to begin first grade.

"Just take it one year at a time," my husband wisely counseled.

And so, with nothing more than a few good books and a kitchen table, we began our homeschool journey.

I fell in love with the care-free lifestyle quickly, almost daily pinching myself that this could be real life: No early busses to catch? No PTO meetings to attend? 

Our schedule is our very own?... to do with as we like?!....

As Booker T. Washington observed after the Emancipation and recorded in his autobiography, "Freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it." 

I felt the same.

But we soon settled into a comfortable routine, where every morning consisted of chores, hygiene, and formal lessons, and every afternoon was some combination of outdoor play, baking or crafting, with the occasional play date or doctor's appointment thrown in.

Over the years I learned to conquer diagramming sentences, making equivalent fractions, and solving for x right along side my growing kids.

I learned to stick with the same curriculum year after year to build familiarity and mastery, so the next kid in line could benefit from a confident mother.

Each year bled into the next until homeschooling began to feel like the easiest, most natural thing in the world to us.

Then, in the blink of an eye, we came to this morning...

 I helped Elsa finish her final lesson in her 5th grade arithmetic book... the last one... and I realized this season of our family's homeschooling is shifting. My baby's done with 5th grade? That means we are officially through the elementary years! I now have all middle schoolers and high schoolers.

Uncertain if I should feel sad, sentimental, or proud of myself, I rummaged through the attic bins looking for room to pack away this year's books, and almost as Divine Acknowledgment, I uncovered Roman's first grade curriculum. The books that started it all. I hadn't seen them in years. 

With them in the bin was a completely filled notebook. I had written out this daily and weekly plan on the first page...

And the following pages, revealing his handwriting and mine, were made up of little assignments and quizzes I had created for him.

I thumbed through the pages carefully, pondering how my younger self hand wrote all these assignments... I was learning how to homeschool, I thought, nostalgically.

Never believing I was cut out for the job, but trusting in the Lord fully, I stuck to the work and now find our elementary years behind us.

(Nola's final illuminated letter in her cursive book...

 If you zoom you may see she creatively turned it into the phrase, The last one...)

"Being confident in this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

The other kids are officially done with their school year, too. Homeschooling in the upper grades has proven to be an enormous blessing, but I will have to write about that another time.

💐

~ Courtney