This is the first year that I feel like Sage is really chomping at the bit to get started ‘learning’ officially. We’ve known since Sage was 6 months old that this was the path for our family, and I truly never doubt that homeschooling is the right thing for us both as a whole family unit and as individuals. This year though, I find myself on the cusp of discovery: what will it be like to balance our lives and truly ‘do school’.

We draw from two main educational pedagogies: Waldorf (based on Rudolf Steiner’s writings) and Enki Education (based on the work of Beth Sutton). I have spent the past six years immersing myself and the whole family in Waldorf and Enki methods, ideas, books, conversations, preparing to learn together in a way that will fit our family.

One of the most important concepts I ever learned was about finding our family rhythm. But rhythm is a funny thing- no one can sell you a rhythm, no one can tell you what your family’s rhythm should be, no one can really even tell you about their own rhythm… you have to live it to really feel it. When I first became a mother I was still in a phase of rejecting ‘routine’ and ’scheduling’. After being a witness to the extremes of both rigid scheduling of family life and the opposite style of complete chaos reigned in only by external constraints I had chosen to live much more in the chaos realm and had to learn my lessons the hard way.

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