by Cathie Berglund
Mar 24, 2025
The decade of the 2010s was a sweet spot between the time of limited choices of homeschool curriculum and the explosion of online homeschool resources. We are now in an age when homeschool resources have become so abundant that it is hard to know where to begin. But the 2010s were, in my opinion, the age of just-enough-technology. It was the ideal age for this over-thinker to keep her homeschool in neat little boxes – the Monday through Friday boxes of my weekly homeschool planner.
During that season, having a laser printer at home was a luxury for our family, but I must admit that the printer quickly became my new best friend. Lapbooks and printable worksheets were a great blessing when a bit of review or coloring and crafting helped to bridge the gap between my kids’ five-year age difference and varied learning styles.
Videos and computer-based curriculums for math and science were not interactive in the early 2010s, but my children successfully learned from them, despite the lack of algorithms.
The internet, the library, and used curriculum sales were my tool kit for planning the school year. I scoured online book lists and catalogs from big box curriculum companies for great books and historical fiction for each child’s reading level, then I would pick up history textbooks and literature at our homeschool community’s epic used curriculum sale each spring. (The church parking lot was full, from end to end, with tables and blankets piled with books! Oh, happy day!)
With the history textbooks serving as the spine for the year’s history curriculum, I mapped out weekly goals for my kids, using the historical novels for read-alouds, copywork, and writing prompts. It was a lot of fun for me, but a lot of work for my kids. As a good student of the public system, I had learned that I needed assignments to fill all of those planner boxes.
All was as it should be, or so I thought, until one day at a homeschool conference I heard a wise home education pioneer say that grades were not the goal of education. What? That was not possible! I had boxes to check and report cards to complete!
At the time, I could not grasp the meaning of this new way of thinking, but I have since come to understand the freedom we have in California with our great private school law. We have the freedom to make relationships a higher priority in our school day than test scores, and to help our kids meet God in the pages of the Bible.
Homeschooling is a way of life, a way to deepen relationships with our children and for them to see us model a life submitted to the Lord so that they will know His character by His deeds (Psalm 145).
It is striking to me that Jesus became greatly displeased with the Disciples when they forbade children from coming near Him in Mark 10:14. (The Greek word translated “greatly displeased” also means to be moved with indignation.) It was very important that that generation of children be given access to knowledge of the Lord. If we look a few decades down the road in the lives of that generation, those children became the adults that lived during the time of the great persecution by the Emperor Nero, so they would need a rock-solid faith in Christ to endure persecution.
Lord willing, we and our children will not have to live through persecution, but we can expect difficulties. In fact, Jesus said that tribulation is a certainty in this life (John 16:33), and as parents who love our children, we want to do our best to equip them for all that life has to offer, including the times of testing.
While there is no guarantee that our children will ever use their geometry lessons or sentence diagramming again, we can be sure that the lessons of God’s power and promises will help build their faith when they encounter difficulties.
So, I encourage you to lean into the freedom we have as home educators to seek the Lord and ask Him as you make plans for the school year, “How can I help my children know You better this year?” There is nothing wrong with either geometry or sentence diagramming. In our homeschool, we did plenty of both in the 2010s, but I am very grateful that we had the opportunity to focus on making disciples, not checking boxes.
_________________________________________
Cathie and her husband, Scott, graduated their two children from their homeschool. She feels very blessed to serve as Exhibits Coordinator for CHEA and to have recently graduated from mom to grandma.
