Three Years of Our Homeschool Life: How We Went From Schooling to Homeschooling

Three years ago today, I officially committed to homeschooling my children.

And somehow, three years later, I’m sitting here wondering how I ever imagined doing anything else.

This little corner of the internet — Our Homeschool Life — was born three years ago, just after my son Soul was born. But our homeschooling journey had actually started much earlier.

In 2020, Lidia was just a baby.

Homeschooling wasn't something I had ever considered. In fact, I had spent most of my life assuming my children would go to school because that was simply what children did.

My older girls went to school from preschool through to almost the end of high school. I was a school mum. I knew that life.

I never imagined I would become a homeschooling mum.

Then the world changed.

During all the chaos of 2020, homeschooling came onto my radar. I remember talking to my husband about what was happening with schools and saying something along the lines of:

If they're still making kids wear masks when Lidia starts school, there's no way I'm sending her. She can just stay home with me.

At that point, Lidia wasn't even old enough for school.

We weren't sitting around making education plans.

But that little conversation opened a door.

And once homeschooling was on my radar, I started researching.

Then I researched some more.

And some more.

Because, like most parents who first discover homeschooling, I had a million questions.

What about socialisation?

Would we be trapped at home?

How would I spend that much time with my children?

What would their education look like?

Could we afford it?

Would I actually be capable of homeschooling?

And slowly, as I learned more about homeschooling and started talking to homeschooling families, the whole thing began to make sense.

Not because I discovered one perfect homeschooling method.

But because I started to realise that education didn't have to look the way I'd always assumed it had to look.

There was another piece of the puzzle happening at the same time.

I'd wanted to leave my nursing career for years.

I had been in that career for a long time, and although I knew I wanted something different, I didn't really know what that something was.

Homeschooling suddenly made me look at our entire life differently.

What if we didn't have to organise our family life around school and work?

What if our children could spend more time with us?

What if learning could happen throughout the day rather than being confined to a classroom?

What if we had more freedom to travel?

What if we could actually design our family life around the things that mattered to us?

The possibilities felt enormous.

And that's when homeschooling became about much more than education for me.

It became about connection, freedom and how we wanted to live.

Something else from my own parenting history influenced our decision.

When my older girls were little, I was a single mum and we rented.

And when you're renting, sometimes life means moving.

Which meant my girls changed primary schools more than once. They also changed high schools because we had to move.

New house.

New school.

New environment.

New friends.

Start again.

I always felt that children need some kind of stable base.

I'm not talking about never travelling or never having adventures. Quite the opposite.

I love travel.

But I believe children benefit from having somewhere that feels like theirs.

A home base. Familiar people. Familiar surroundings. Some continuity in their lives.

So when we started seriously considering homeschooling Lidia and Soul, I didn't want it to become another thing we chopped and changed.

I didn't want to say:

We'll homeschool for a while and then maybe send them to school.

I wanted to understand it properly.

I wanted to immerse myself in homeschooling.

I wanted to make a decision and then build a life around that decision.

And three years ago, we did.

Of course, homeschooling isn't magically calm just because you've chosen it.

There are chaotic days.

There are days when the house is a disaster, everyone's talking at once and I think:

Maybe I should just put these kids in school. 😂

But that's the joke.

Because three years later, I genuinely cannot imagine sending Lidia and Soul to school.

Not because I believe school is wrong for every family.

It simply isn't what makes sense for our family anymore.

Our life has unfolded around homeschooling.

We learn through living.

We follow interests.

We have adventures.

We spend ordinary days at home.

We go places.

We meet other homeschool families.

We travel.

We ask questions.

We learn things because we're curious about them.

And sometimes learning looks nothing like what I once imagined education was supposed to look like.

One of the biggest things I've realised during our homeschooling journey is that choosing to homeschool doesn't just change how your children learn.

It can change the way your entire family thinks about life.

For us, homeschooling was the first step.

Then came leaving my career.

Then rearranging our finances so our family could live on one income.

Then eventually selling our home on the Gold Coast and moving to Far North Queensland.

Our life now looks very different from the life I once assumed we'd have.

And we're still figuring it out.

We're still asking:

What could our life look like if we had even more freedom?

What could we do if we weren't organising our lives around work calendars?

Where could we go?

What could we experience together?

Our recent road trip — more than two weeks and more than 4,000 kilometres — was another reminder of why this matters so much to us.

We don't just want to educate our children.

We want to live with them.

We want them to experience the world while they're growing up.

We want learning to happen in the middle of real life.

And that's really what my Instagtam page @our_homeschool_life_ has documented for the last three years.

Not a perfect homeschool.

Not a Pinterest homeschool.

Not a family who has everything figured out.

Just our homeschool life.

The beautiful days.

The chaotic days.

The questions.

The rabbit holes.

The adventures.

The doubts.

The freedom.

The ordinary Tuesday afternoons.

The moments where I think, holy shit, this is actually our life.

When I started this page three years ago, I had no idea where it would take me.

I certainly didn't know that homeschooling would become such a huge part of the life we were creating.

But I'm incredibly grateful that it did.

Because when I look at our life now, I don't just see two children being homeschooled.

I see a family who made a decision to live a little differently.

And then another decision.

And another.

Until, slowly, our entire life began to look different.

Three years of homeschooling.

Three years of learning through living.

Three years of choosing connection and freedom.

Three years of Our Homeschool Life.

And honestly?

I wouldn't change a thing. ❤️

Where there's a will, there's a way.

That's something I've always told my children.

And homeschooling has taught me just how true it really is.