As the year comes to an end most of us are moving our thoughts to next year.
Wondering what it will bring, where it will take us and our children.
Will the year ahead provide an abundance of learning opportunities that we embrace with open arms
or will it be a year of stagnation?
During 2016 I will enter my 10th year of educating my children at home. Ten years, did I even just say that Oh M Gee!
We've had so many wonderful, amazing experiences and opportunities during that time. I know how blessed we truly are and I am thankful for that every single day.
There have however also been times of stagnation, times of darkness, times where everything seems as though it is just all too hard and truly regular school would be a good option.
Thankfully we've made it through those times relatively unscathed and have lived to tell the tale. But there is one thing I have learned through all of the ups and downs and that is the importance of taking care of me.
It needs to be number one on my list, oh yes it does. Without that I am simply unable to serve my family and those around me. If my cup is empty then I cannot possibly be a filler of someone else's cup.
I've met a lot of amazing people in our journey over the past years also, some have become my best friends in the entire world, some are friendships that have moved on, some are acquaintances that we mingle with here and there and others are newer friendships that we are building and growing slowly. Whilst others are purely online interactions.
However the one common thread I see through all of these amazing women, is that of wanting to provide the best possible education and home life for their children. Let's face it we all want that for our family!
But at what cost?
Are we running ourselves into the ground to provide this for our children? Are we here sitting silently suffering depression to provide this for our children? Do we battle with ourselves every day to provide this for our children?
I fear that for many of us we do. I hear it in your whispers when we chat. I see it in your eyes and I can feel it in your hearts. Anyone that knows me personally knows that I am a pretty open person. I am more than happy to chat candidly about our experiences with educating at home. I'm O.K with being vulnerable and for people to see the real me.
In return for my vulnerability I offer a safe place for stories to be shared and told. I am always amazed at the truly generous blessing that I receive again and again of homeschool mums opening up and sharing their stories with me. I don't take that lightly. It is an honor I know.
With each conversation I feel more and more strongly that we need to find more ways to be filling our cups. To be truly connecting with each other in open and honest communications.
I have tossed around so many ideas over the past couple of years on ways in which I can assist in this in some way, my heart continues to pull me into places of service to the community; whilst being aware that whatever it is I am contributing that it isn't emptying my own cup in the process. It's kind of like walking a tightrope at times.
Just a couple of weeks ago I had the thought that not only should I be making plans for the home educating year ahead but that I should also take some time to reflect on the year that has passed.
I am sure that the vast majority of us do this and we do it regularly but how many of us carve out some time purely for reflecting on where we are at with this whole educating our kids at home thing?
So I have put together a little self reflection journal of sorts to help me to truly focus and to get the best out of my reflection time.
The journal is thirty pages long and I would love to share it with you if you think it may be something you would benefit from.
Then we move on to forward planning with just a little bit of dreaming thrown for good measure.
As we progress through the journal we come to pages where we can work on things that are really important to us and our home school.
Finally the journal wraps up with goal setting and monthly reflection pages to ensure all of the glorious hard work you did in the early pages of the journal doesn't go to waste.
Get Your FREE Copy!
This is my FREE Gift to you. My wish is that as many home educating mumma's have to access to this as possible so please send any friends you can think of that may benefit from this over here to the blog so they can grab a copy too. All you need to do for your copy is to register for our Newsletter.We will never spam you and send you truckloads of emails. We will always keep your email address private.
Once you have subscribed and confirmed your subscription you will receive a final email with the download link. Subscribe now for your copy of My Radiant Home Educating Year by clicking here.
Happy Home Educating,
Kylie
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What a neat idea. I love your Radiant button for the year. My word is Create. It shall be an interesting year.
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