Sometimes I feel like I am not a good homeschooler. I have a hard time keeping a schedule and completing our curriculum, despite spending hours planning out the school year. And re-planning. And re-planning.

Here is it the middle of July and we still have work to finish from this past “school year.”

I had a plan to get it done, which we were supposed to start today, but here we are not doing it for what is, of course, another good reason.

I always have a good reason for not doing what I had planned.

Don’t get me wrong, the kids have learned tons of stuff this year.

The D is a voracious reader. All I have to do is pick out a few non-fiction books at the library and, when he is done reading the books he picked out, usually within a day or two, he will inevitably pick the non-fiction books up to read when he gets bored between library trips. I am certain he learned lots this year about a variety of subjects.

Big E has learned lots, too. Between the books he read, the videos he watched, and what The D told him about the books he read - he loves to share what he learns - I am confident that Big E has learned a lot this year, too.

We have also done science experiments together, explored topics online, gone on field trips, and even though we didn’t finish the math curriculum we were working on, we do math problems together all of the time in practical, everyday settings.

I love math and never miss an opportunity to teach the boys about it. I’ve even gotten Bob into the habit. As I look over at the dry erase board now, I can see where he was showing the boys the night before last how to figure out the hypotenuse of a right triangle using the Pythagorean theorem.

My problem, I think, is that I don’t have a neat and tidy package of written work to send to the state to prove that they learned something.

I went through this last year, too.

That’s what frustrates me about the homeschooling laws here. I know that the kids have learned a lot of stuff, but I get really stressed out over the prospect of proving that to the pencil-pushers over at the state Department of Education.

It’s not that I am not a good homeschooler; it’s that I am not a homeschooler that looks good on paper to a bunch of educrats.

Now I just need to figure out if that realization is supposed to make me feel better or frustrate the dickens out of me.