Homeschooling in Canada

Hi! My name is Katie, and we are the Babbey family! We live in Southwestern Ontario, near a very small village called Tupperville. The Lord has blessed us with four children ranging in age from our eldest daughter who is thirteen to our youngest daughter who is nine months old. In the middle are two wonderful boys ages ten and seven. We are in our ninth year of homeschooling.

Let me begin by sharing with you that we never originally intended to homeschool. It never even crossed my mind. Whenever I would hear the word “homeschool” I would picture that shy, geeky boy I attended public school with. Why did I do that? Why did I make a judgement like this? It’s because I truly didn’t understand what it meant to homeschool.

What brought us to the decision to homeschool? I couldn’t get over the gut-wrenching heartache I was feeling over society telling me it was time to send my sweet first-born child off to school. She was still so little and innocent, and I didn’t want to lose that. It was then that a good friend of mine suggested I homeschool her for kindergarten. After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that I was more than capable of teaching her how to count to ten, spell her name and sing the alphabet. In fact, she had already accomplished all of this. You see, what I didn’t realize was that I had already been teaching her since the first day she came into this world!

Okay, so we decided to homeschool. Now what? Where do I begin? I need to buy curriculum, right? Answering these questions was the most daunting part of our decision to homeschool. We knew we wanted a Christian curriculum, but I had no clue where to begin or what to choose. For the first several years I bought the most expensive curriculum available because I felt I had to prove to my family and friends that my child was indeed learning and that we weren’t holding her back educationally.

Please take my advice when I say you do NOT need to buy the most expensive curriculum, nor the curriculum that has the most books or activities for your child to complete. This will only leave you feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, which is not helpful at all. Finding the right curriculum for your family (and more importantly for each child) may take some trial and error, and that’s okay!

What I highly recommend is finding and joining a homeschool group in your area that adheres to your morals and standards. You’ll be able to find wonderful support from seasoned homeschool moms who can help you navigate your way. We ourselves are members of the Chatham-Kent Christian Homeschool Group. The friendships we have made in this group are incredible.

I would love to share our typical homeschool day with you, but to be honest, we don’t have a typical homeschool day, per se. However, a “great” homeschool day in my opinion is a day when my children have been kind to one another, they have read their Bibles, completed their math and language arts, and have heard words of affirmation from us—their parents and teachers. This to me is a success and everything else that gets done is a bonus!

One of the biggest challenges we face here in Canada is the fact that the majority of homeschool companies that provide our curriculum are based in the United States. Even though we live only fifteen minutes away from the American border, we do our very best to purchase our curriculum in Canada. The exchange rates, combined with shipping costs from the U.S., can easily double our expenses. This is why we are extremely grateful for companies like The Learning House and Northwoods Press who provide us with not only our core curriculums but our amazing Canadian literature books and our fantastic Canadian history bundles. We’ve also recently become members of SchoolhouseTeachers.com, and they have an entire section just on Canada!

Besides what is learned through the textbooks, we love learning and teaching by hands-on experience. Three years ago, we moved to the country, and it was one of the best decisions we ever made for our family. It has made a huge difference in the lives of our children, especially our boys. They love to spend time outside riding their bikes, building forts, picking vegetables that are not quite ready to be picked, and watching the farmers plant in the springtime and harvest in the fall. Even though the nearest city is half an hour away and our internet connection drives me crazy, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Now that we are nine years into our journey and have added three more children and a dog to the mix, are we happy we began homeschooling? Absolutely! Is everyday a blast? Absolutely not, but we continue this journey because we firmly believe that children should be taught at home, and we need to lead them by example.

Here is a sneak peak of us homeschooling through the seasons….

Spring: We take a field trip to River Bell Organic Market Garden in Dresden, Ontario, and the children each pick out their own tomato and pepper plant. They are responsible to take care of them in the garden, planted alongside the many other vegetables we grow.

Summer: Our best family vacations are spent at Muskoka Bible Centre (MBC) in Huntsville, Ontario. Somehow we always manage to turn a six-hour drive into a nine-hour drive, but once we get there, we have a wonderful time as a family spending time in God’s Word with friends.

Autumn: We take a field trip to an apple orchard along the river and pick “wind fallen” apples for a fraction of the price. We pick as many as we can before I’ve had enough of the bees! We then spend the next few days canning applesauce as a family. What a juicy mess!

Winter: When the trees outside are completely covered in frost like this, we declare it a snow day! The sleds and snow scooters are pulled out, and snowmen and snow forts are built.

Thank you for taking a peek into our homeschooling journey. I hope and pray your school days are filled with many wonderful memories and blessings from the Lord. I’d love to read about your homeschooling journey from where you live in Canada!

Katie Babbey

Homeschooling mother of four in Southwestern Ontario