Home Schooling Part 4: A Tough Week and a Harvest Lesson

Originally written in September 2014 as 'Home Schooling Part 4' — Updated for clarity and reflection in 2026

What do you do when home schooling suddenly feels hard?  

That is the question I found myself asking this week.

This is the fourth instalment in our home schooling journey. If you want to follow the story from the beginning, you can read the earlier posts on the blog here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

This week has been mixed. Some moments were brilliant. Others were difficult.

Harvest Week

Our church held its Harvest service on Sunday, so we explored the theme together. I gave William ten pounds and a calculator and told him his task was to buy as many items as possible for the food bank donation. He loved it. He compared prices, worked out what was expensive and what was good value, and stretched that ten pounds into more than twenty items.

We talked about Harvest, where it comes from, and why we give. He understood it. He enjoyed it. He even made a biscuit picture by measuring out the ingredients and wanted us to share it together. It was a small moment, but it showed how much he was taking in.

[Image 2. Description: William created a picture using biscuits he measured and prepared as part of our Harvest activities.]

[Image 3. Description. Multiple plates with broken biscuit across them for people to try laying on a tablecloth with white, yellow, and green stemmed daisy's on]

The rest of our topics continued well too. He stayed engaged, asked questions, and kept building on what we had already covered.

The Harder Bits

Two things have been weighing on me.

The first is that I still have not managed to organise a proper trip or meet up with other home educators. I thought it would be easier. It has not been. I am trying, but it feels like slow progress.

The second is that we had a rough start to the week. William shut down completely one morning and refused to take part in anything. I do not want him to feel pressured to achieve every time. It is one of the reasons we chose home education. I also do not want him to think he can simply opt out whenever he feels like it.

Finding the balance is harder than I expected.

I muddled through, set a few small goals, and we got there in the end, even if it took twice as long. I still do not know if I handled it well. If we had other home educators around us, maybe I could talk it through with someone who understands.

For now, we keep going. We keep learning. We keep trying.

2026 Reflection 

I look back at this and see something I could not see then. I was exhausted, unsure, and trying to hold everything together with guesswork and good intentions. I worried about the balance between freedom and structure, about doing it wrong, and alone. I thought the difficult days were signs that I was failing.

They were not. They were the groundwork.

William’s Harvest project became one of the longest-running threads in our home education story. He returned to it year after year, each time with more imagination and confidence. The simple biscuit picture in this post eventually grew into the cheese straw tree, the bread cat with her kittens, and all the other Harvest creations that filled our kitchen. Those moments became the early spark for what later turned into My Little Chef, where cooking became a way for him to learn, express himself, and take pride in something that was his. We even mixed cooking in with other lessons, like Math.

I can see now that this week was not a setback. It was the start of a pattern. When things felt difficult, we found a way through by leaning into what he enjoyed. Cooking, baking, measuring, comparing prices, working out quantities. It was maths without worksheets and home economics without calling it a lesson. It was confidence-building disguised as fun and a way of unschooling Will in parts he struggled with. This experience also allowed me as an educator to explore different types of home schooling alongside creating a unique home schooling environment for him.

I did not know then that these small choices would shape the way we learned together for years. I only knew that I was tired and trying my best. Reading this back, I can see the early foundations of the parent and educator I eventually became and the beginnings of the boy who would one day take over the kitchen with his own ideas, recipes, and sense of pride.

This week felt rough at the time. Now it feels like the start of something good.

You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,  Part 7, and Part 8 here.

If you want to read more about our home schooling journey, click here.