Becoming Minimalist Homeschoolers?

Last time I wrote, I told you about how we would soon be homeless. Thankfully, I can now say that we have a short term plan for where to lay our heads when we arrive in Ontario!

Photo not of actual lake ;) This was taken at our Couples Resort getaway in Northern Ontario!

At this stage, we're planning for a month or two of minimalist living & homeschooling at a cottage by a lake...




I'm getting excited about it!

Our Temporary Home

We didn't want to jump into buying or renting a home in a city we're totally unfamiliar with, and although we did plenty of searching online for rental homes, we weren't finding anything too promising in our price range, so we decided to buy ourselves some in-person researching time in our new city, by renting a furnished cottage for a couple of months. We will leave our belongings in a storage unit and live minimally in our tiny little 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom cottage.

I'm pretty psyched about having a lake in our backyard while we're there, and lots of nature around us. While I love Utah's beautiful mountains, we've been living in an area with hardly any trees (and the ones that are here are just little guys) and very little green. We really miss the green in Ontario! I realize we'll probably be in the brown/dull yellow, mucky early Spring season when we arrive, but hopefully things will get pretty while we're there. I think it will be good for our souls.

Homeschooling

If you were paying attention back at the beginning of this post, you may have caught the word "homeschooling". It's interesting how controversial that one little word can be. Some people are all for it, others are totally against it, and then there are those of us who land somewhere in the middle (though it seems to be largely polarizing). Ken was homeschooled for some of his elementary school years and every single one of his 4 siblings homeschool (or have at some point homeschooled) their kids- except for us. I have always considered homeschooling to be an option for our family, and considered it seriously at several different periods of time, but this is the first time that I've felt it was the right fit for us.

When we leave Utah, there will only be about 2 months left until the school year here ends. When we arrive in Ontario, there will be about 3 months left of the school year there. We will be living in more than one school zone during that 3 month time period, so enrolling the girls in 2 different public schools there (during a 3 month period) doesn't seem like the best option for them (either academically or socially/emotionally). Our goal for them, as far as being prepared for school in Ontario again in the Fall, is that they will be caught up with what their Ontario peers have been learning this year. So my current plan is to work through the Ontario curriculum with them, and focus on the areas they haven't learned yet. We'll also go over what they would've learned in French class this year (since Katrina didn't study a language & Talia has been studying Chinese this year!).

I've always wondered if we'd ever homeschool- now we'll get a taste of it for just a few months. :)

Meanwhile...

So that's the update on our plans for transitioning from Utah to Ontario.  We are at the tail end of the packing stage now, and starting to get excited for the fun we have planned for the roadtrip from here to Canada. I look forward to sharing those adventures with you!  I hope to share some of it in my Instagram Stories, live (depending on Internet connectivity), and then I'll share an overview on the blog when things are more settled.

Thank you for following along with our story, I appreciate each of you who visit my little space on the web! :)

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