Homeschool High School Graduation Missouri

So you're plugging along, homeschooling since your kid is five, deciding later to keep him that one extra year because you know some people who have done that, especially with those crazy boys. You're happy to keep him around, not because he is academically challenged, but because you just love homeschooling so much.  Then you blink and he's almost 19 years old and it's his senior year.

Then your kid is going through the homeschool graduation process with something like 75 other kids, and that's just on the Missouri side. There are a bunch more on the Kansas side PLUS all the kids who just don't want to even mess with a graduation ceremony.

So proud of my son, Joel McLoughlin. He wants to go to Police Academy as soon as he is old enough. In the meantime, he's thinking about getting a personal trainer certification, an EMT certification, and of course he's working a job as well.

My husband and I on either side of Joel. Plus Sam and Eva and Callie (front), Michael (back right), and Julia, who is living with us during COVID (far right) and my husband's identical twin Eric (left), who was the only guest (1) we were able to have at the ceremony due to tickets (2) we could have gotten extra tickets, but grandparents are in the older population and chose to stay home. Actually, Aron's parents would have come but my FIL just had some procedure and was recuperating.

The ceremony was originally scheduled for a church in Raytown, MO near where my grandparents lived (my Poppy built the house) in the 1950s through 1970s on Harvard Road. Then it got moved far, far away to Warrensburg, MO. Finally it landed on Raymore-Peculiar High School gym. We found out dream home and moved from Overland Park, KS to Peculiar, MO in 2017, so the high school is about 5 minutes away!

Using Reward Charts in Your Home and Homeschool

I love Target's cheap aisle that's right in the front when you walk in the door. Starting in the summertime they always have fun teacher things and they run out fast! I picked up these reward charts that came with cute apple stickers to try to motivate my kids to get into some good habits for a reward.

I'm getting tired of hounding the kid, but a Pokemon booster pack speaks for itself loud and clear.

The booster pack Sam wants is about $4 so I am doing the same type of reward for Callie. She will fill up 2-3 of these charts doing her math, so she can save up and get a $12 piece of jewelry instead. She is way behind in math and I'm trying to get her caught up. We only have one PC and 5 kids running around the house, so getting her math done can be a feat sometimes.

Supercute reward stickers.

I'm the kind of mom who believes in doing things that make mothering more fun and easier and fosters the relationship I have with my kids. I don't want to JUST be the dictator homeschool teacher; I want to have fun with the learning process. That can't happen all the time, obviously, but I give it a shot. So, yes, I believe in bribes and I believe in rewards. And we don't do that all the time. When I get compliments on my older kids I know I have done something right and I just need to keep up the character-building work with my two youngest kids even though I am getting exhausted during this parenting journey (wink).

The Brave Writer: Your Homeschool Coach

I don’t think a whole lot about the future. I survive day by day, praying my kids learn what they need to learn to live good lives. That they learn common sense life skills and also basic math and English skills and don’t sound dumb in a convo about the Holocaust or atoms. But lately Julie bogart is on my radar a lot and she’s raised her 5 kids and homeschooled them and loved it and writes about it and podcasts and shares helpful things and encouragement and I love her style and I realized I could be a form of her when I’m older. When my kids are gone I always figured I’d of course take up quite a bit of time checking in on them and making sure I know what’s up with them (thank God for texting) and then grandkids, of course. But in my other time, when not volunteering or caring for my parents or being with aron, I knew I would keep writing. But Julie gets $25/month for this coaching community she runs. It’s brilliant. I haven’t joined but it looks neat: http://coachjuliebogart.com/. I want to be a source of homeschool encouragement to others when I survive my own journey that I am learning so much on the way. Her style is so chill. Check her out on this Homeschool Sisters podcast. She also does these great writing helps called The Brave Writer.

She doesn’t make you feel guilty for not doing everything, for having bad days, burnout, resentment, more. She can be chill because her kids are grown … she says we are homeschooling our kids for jobs that don’t even exist yet so don’t worry about them if they want to play Minecraft all day … they might be programmers for drones someday. If nothing else, you must LIKE her Facebook page and make sure you click the option to see it first in your newsfeed because she always shares helpful things that I SAVE on Facebook to read later. Encouraging things to help us on this journey that is like no other. Often I read some homeschool mom sites and I feel more frantic. I read Julie Bogart or listen to her and I feel relaxed and that trickles down to my kids and my homeschool style for sure.

I mean, check this out from her coaching website:

Late at night, do you worry about…

• The enormity of the responsibility to educate your kids,
• the wide disparity of information about learning,
• the unrelenting demands of the little people in your charge,
• the annual changes in family dynamics and hormones,
• your natural home education fatigue
• and (dare you admit it?) boredom?

All of us wonder: Am I doing a good enough job? How will I know?

YES! We all wonder! We pretend to have it together but we need support and ideas and help! Homeschooling in my 40s with teens is way different from when I started in my 30s with little ones! My husband sometimes travels, I'm dealing with hormones (mine and those of my teens!), I work from home, I have to come up with ideas for teaching 3 classes a week at a homeschool co-op and MORE!