We have been homeschooling our children for more than 15 years, some of them have already graduated from the homeschool environment, and we have seen many changes happen along the way:

• Expected things, like the explosion of the numbers of homeschooling families that happened over the years as parents started to take up their roles as educators of their own children. Finding other homeschoolers back in the 90's when we started was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Now it is much more popular and more "acceptable".

• Highly anticipated things like homeschooling moms start writing their own curricula, unit studies, websites, blogs and books. We also witnessed another new trend -  distance education which is an offshoot of the "original" homeschooling movement in which parents are intimately involved in their child's learning.

• Changes in the face of the homeschooling community - Initially it was mainly Christian families who chose this educational route, but increasingly parents of all faiths are realising that children learn well in the home, usually better than they would at school.
  

• We have also watched online learning explode with the likes of The TEDx revolutionary education talks, Kahn Academy, open universities and MITK-12 online videos. When we started out libraries, books and real life were the major form of resources which we could draw upon. Internet access was still via a dial-up connection!
  

We can however both say that the most surprising change has not come in the larger homeschool community, or the education sphere, but within our own paradigm of what home education is, how it is achieved or can be achieved and what it would look like in our homes.

The way we are home educating our younger children in this mature season of homeschooling is vastly different to how we started off. As we have matured and allowed the paradigms in our thinking to be shifted we find we are not holding as tightly to a methodology, philosophy or even books as much as we were at first.

Of course we are more confident now and we are more intimately aware of what makes out children "tick" which is an exciting place to be with our younger children. As we have had to let go of things that were once very important in our HOMEschools we realise that we have changed and shifted in our approach for the better.

With this letting go comes a greater freedom in the way learning happens in the home, but it also puts the mom on shaky ground as she now learns something new and much patience is required in the process. The tendency is still to grab for what is familiar but it takes a little bit of self control to rather leave behind what once worked, but does no longer.

We can state with full confidence that homeschooling is not only in the best interests of the children, but also for the parents who are willing to be stretched, willing to grow out of their comfort zones and willing to embrace change for the better.