Growing
Our Homeschool
By Chris Oldenburg
Gardening is a mirror of our homeschool journey, both requiring the understand- ing that small seeds, heaps of
faith, attention, and a dose of humor lead
to bountiful harvests. Our homeschooling adventure is much like the gardens
that surround our family home. ;ey
are not always orderly, ;awless, or some
days even presentable, but they provide
us with opportunities to grow and then
we reap beautiful harvests.
My mother instilled in me a sense of
appreciation that can come only from
the opportunity to plant, nurture, and
watch a treasure blossom. While I didn’t
always want to pull weeds from the bean
rows or hoe between the squash plants,
I did learn to appreciate the e;orts and
rewards of gardening.
So much of life is re;ected in a garden,
and as I began my new journey in life as
a mother, I found myself going back to
my roots. ;ose lessons from my mother
about sowing seeds, nurturing fragile
life, and ;nding joy in the fragrance and
abundance of it all could be said about
gardening, as well as mothering and
homeschooling.
In 1976 my grandmother wrote a
simple note in a book about gardening
and gave it to my mother: “To Kathy,
who proves you can’t take the country
out of the girl, even a generation later.”
I received that same book in 2000 from
my mother, with my own special note
and the gi; of a tradition to pass along to
my own children one day. ;e book has
wonderful chapter titles, such as “;e
Healing Hoe” and “;e Magic Story of
Seeds.”
Gardening is a
mirror of our
homeschool journey,
both requiring the
understanding that
small seeds, heaps of
faith, attention, and a
dose of humor lead to
bountiful harvests.
During the ten plus years I have home-
schooled my children, I have gone back
to those roots and applied gardening to
our core curriculum. As toddlers digging
in the dirt at my toes, the kids carried on
conversations with bugs, small stones,
and the cloud shapes above. Gardening
with very young children sometimes
just means spending glorious days in the
spring sun, sharing secrets with the wind,
and turning empty seed packets into
treasure maps, garden ;ags, and sleeping
bags for pet rocks. ;e weeds may still
come, but the kids will grow as well when
they spend time outside, learning to be
stewards of the soil and enjoying the na-
ture that God has provided.
