Tatum Berry

Homeschool Update: 4 weeks in.

It’s a little past 5 am on April 27th. Jeff and I were supposed to take the girls to our first branding of the year today, but about 5 minutes ago, the text came in that our friends are postponing due to cold rainy weather. I said a prayer this week that the Lord would help me find time to write for my blog, and waaa-laaaa here it is. Let’s see if I can write the majority of this post before my little early riser LuLu comes out to cuddle. We finished our 4th week of homeschool yesterday, here is an honest account of how things started out. There have been ups and downs, tears and laughter, and lots of adjustments, but all in all I am very pleased with where we are and excited to put in another month of schooling before we take our summer break.

My students having fun on the dry erase board.

Today, I’d like to give you a recap of how our first day of homeschool went….and oh what a day it was. Our first official day of home education was on April 1st, 2024. Jeff and I made the decision to pull our 3rd grader, Jojo and our Kindergartner, Ella out after spring break. Jeff thought it would be great to have a couple of months to work on our homeschool routine as a family since this is a somewhat slow time of year for his business, versus me starting them on my own in the Fall when he is traveling in his busiest season. I gratefully agreed to this idea. If you would like to read more about why and how we made the jump to homeschool, scroll down and read my previous post. After spending the week of Spring Break preparing and planning for our first day, I felt confident that I was ready to begin teaching my children.

The night before our first day, I made an ambitious plan not only to make a copycat Starbucks egg bite recipe for breakfast, but that I would quadruple the recipe in order to have egg bites for the entire week. This was my first mistake. While the egg bites turned out delicious, I got a little bogged down in cooking and then cleaning my mess up and had to bark orders from the kitchen for the girls to get dressed and prepared for our first day. We set 9am as our class start time, which meant that before then we needed to have all animal chores done, eat breakfast, be dressed and have our class materials organized and ready to go. Jeff had made a point that starting at the stroke of 9 was a very important thing to implement for our first day, so when we streaked downstairs to the homeschool area at 9:05 he was a little less than impressed.

Ella forgot her very important backpack which held her special school supplies and was dead set on going upstairs to retrieve it before we began. Jeff however was dead set on starting school and not being anymore tardy than we already were and told Ella the backpack would have to wait. There began our first emotional episode of the day with full on crocodile tears from our middle born. Never to fear, I swept in to ensure Ella that we could get the backpack after we did our morning routine and introduction. We seemed to get the tears slowed down and were able to begin the pledges. Pledges? Yes, we have decided to do pledges at homeschool? It may sound silly, but we have decided to do the “Pledge of Allegiance,” “The Bible Pledge” (pictured below that we borrowed from a Homeschool Co-Op group we visited) and a memory verse out loud together to start each day. I will explain more on this in a future post, but however awkward it felt the first few days to be starting homeschool so formally, it is something that gets us into a good mindset to begin our school days.

The Bible pledge we recite each morning.

Okay, back to our story, we begin our first pledge and Ella is kind of mouthing the words and not saying them out loud, so I motion for her to say the words louder, and that is when our second stream of tears burst out and Ella yelled, “I can’t do this!” I kid you not, Ella starts wailing that she HATES homeschool and this isn’t at all what she thought it would be. Oh boy. My calm, cool, teacher lady demeanor begins to weaken. Then I look over to my oldest child, my “go with the flow JoJo”, and notice her eyes are getting cloudy. I crack…. What is happening? We are five minutes in, and 2 out of my 3 pupils are in emotional distress. We take a pause. I ask Jojo what could possibly be the matter? Tears are now streaming out of her eyes as well. She says she misses school…… Help me Lord! This is not at all what I envisioned our first day being like either. Poor Jeff is silent, wondering how we got to this point, and no doubt praying his wife doesn’t start crying like his two oldest daughters are. Bless little 3 year old Lucy, she is still standing proudly with her hand on her heart, wondering what the hold up is.

We take a break, sit down and talk about what is bothering everyone as we try to dry up the tears. Ella didn’t realize homeschool was going to be so serious. She thought it would be playtime and more cuddle time with mama, she didn’t think there would be time restrictions and that I would make us do “serious” school. Next I ask Jojo why she is upset. She explains she had been excited about homeschool and was doing her best to stay positive, but when our first few minutes of homeschool began, she realized this was actually happening and it became clear she wouldn’t be going back to “real” school. So we talked through everything, and said a prayer together. Ella got to run upstairs and grab her backpack, and we began where we left off. I kept my courage up as much as possible and praise the Lord our day began again, this time much smoother, as we talked about how homeschool would look going forward. I’m proud to report, after 4 weeks, we have not had anymore tearful outbursts and the girls have both spontaneously told me they are loving school at home. They still have moments of missing public school and friends, but I think they are starting to see how fun this new journey together can be.

Stay tuned, in my next post I will finish our Homeschool update after we have 1 full month under our belts. Until then, God bless you friends and may his favor shine upon you. —Tatum

Why We Have Decided to Homeschool

While I hope this post is helpful for others who have recently made the decision to homeschool or are considering making the switch, I must forewarn my readers that my main motivation of writing this post is to help me work out our reasoning, so I can have a reminder of our “why” on the challenging days ahead. Writing really helps me process things. Spewing my thoughts and sometimes my worries and anxieties out in print form gives me understanding. If you are still with me after an introduction like that…bless you. Let’s dig in.

The Call….

My oldest, Grace Josephine, who prefers to be introduced as Grace outside of our home, but we affectionately call JoJo, started kindergarten right in the middle of COVID craziness. I will never forget her first day of school when I sent my precious first born in wearing a face mask that covered her smile. Sending your baby to kindergarten is hard enough when you aren’t concerned about a world wide pandemic. That was not an easy day. My little JoJo handled it like a champ, but my mama heart struggled hard. A few of my friends at the time had decided to homeschool or try private schools. Those ideas were nowhere on my radar as I had absolutely loved my public school years and wanted my kids to get to experience the same. But would it be the same? A seed was planted that day but we journeyed on with our public school course.

Jo’s first day of Kindergarten

Let’s fast forward to later in the school year. We were in the waiting room of our family chiropractors office when I noticed a sweet little girl with a tshirt that said something about “to know Christ and make Him known.” I told the little girl I liked the message on her shirt and she said, “Thank you, its for my homeschool group.” Her mom then chimed in and told me about the homeschool group they were apart of that was for Christian families and how their goal was to raise up children to know the Lord and His Word in order to one day be able to share the gospel with others. A light in my heart lit up. God even put the cherry on top of the afternoon when after that family went in to their appointment another woman walked in, sat down beside me and with no prompting from me bagan a conversation about how she homeschooled her children. God was up to something here, and it was clear he was trying to get my attention when it came to this homeschool thing. Another seed was planted.

JoJo continued to attend public school. She enjoyed school and was thriving socially and academically. For the most part I was pleased with our elementary school. We got a new principal when JoJo went to first grade who did an excellent job communicating and we were blessed to have wonderful teachers along the way. Still the Lord was talking to me about homeschool. He kept putting people on my path who homeschooled and even gave me two close friends, Brooke and Skylea, that successfully homeschooled their children. I just didn’t see the idea as a reality when my child was doing so well at school.

The summer before Ella, our middle daughter was about to start Kindergarten, I really wrestled with the decision of whether we should begin homeschooling or continue on with public school. Jeff was very supportive as I wrestled through my decision. After many conversations and much prayer we decided to send the girls back to public school. I knew in my heart we would be homeschooling in the future, but the timing didn’t seem quite right.

Ella’s 1st day of Kindergarten, Jojo 3rd grade

That brings us to where we are right now. It’s march of 2024. We are three quarters of the way through the school year and I have just sent a letter of my intent to homeschool to the superintendent, with a start date of April 1st. WHAT?!?! If it sounds a little crazy to you, lets just say I’m freaking out a little on the inside. So how did we get here? How did we decided to pull our kids out of public school when nothing major has happened and they are doing pretty good in their classes? Less than 2 months ago, I had no clue that my kids would not be completing the school year. Stay with me. Here is how it all went down.

God started talking to me again, this time a bit louder. However, I had pushed the idea aside as something we would explore in the future. For now, I was comfortable with my girls going to school and had my focus on other things. Once again homeschool conversations started popping up. I however kept thinking, “yes one day we will homeschool,” “the timing isn’t right.” Then, some things came up at school that began weighing on my heart. One afternoon while cleaning papers out of JoJo’s backpack I came across a packet on Greek gods. As I looked over the pages talking about the powers these so called gods possessed, their attributes and the attached coloring sheets of their pictures, I felt the spirit of the Lord grieving. There is no other way to describe it but I felt a deep sadness. To some it may seem silly that I was upset over my child learning about these mythical gods at school, but my heart was very troubled. God spoke to my heart and said, “it’s time.” I visited with Jeff about the situation and had good intentions but somehow in the busyness of life the urgency of the call was dimmed again.

The next week our cousin Colby sent me a text out of the blue. He said he didn’t know why, but he was listening to a sermon and the Lord told him to send it to me. He even had an exact time that he said I should really focus in on listening. I quickly listened to the sermon out of excitement for what the Lord wanted to communicate to me. As soon as the teaching began I knew exactly what it was for. The message was about obedience and about when God calls us to do something we need to be quick to obey. BOOM….Ok God, you could not have made that much more clear. I had confirmation of what God was asking me to do. Now I just had to figure out how to gather every bit of courage I had in me to answer this call.

Step one was getting Jeff on board. While I am married to one of the most supportive men on the planet, this was kind of a crazy situation. Praise God that he had sent the message through Colby who is Jeff’s cousin and also a close friend that we both trust. I showed Jeff Colby’s text and had him listen to the sermon. Jeff could clearly see how God was working but he needed time to process all of this information. I knew deep down God was asking us to do this now, but I also knew that if I told Jeff we are pulling the girls out this week and starting homeschool immediately it would be too much. So I prayed that God would give the timing to Jeff. I asked him to make it clear to Jeff when we would start. I kind of expected Jeff to decide that we would finish off the school year and begin next fall, what happened next blew me away.

A couple weeks passed, one of which we got to spend in Arizona on vacation. While on our trip, Jeff and I had lots of time to talk this homeschooling thing over. I did my best not to be pushy about starting immediately and I continued to pray God would give the timing to Jeff. We got back from our trip and sent the girls back to school. A few days later Jeff came home after spending time with our close friend Isaiah. They had been talking about the homeschool stuff and Isaiah had mentioned that it would be important for Jeff to be very present and helpful at the beginning so we could work out schedules and find what worked for us. Knowing that the Fall was his busiest time of year, and he would be gone for multiple days at a time, Jeff brought up the idea of starting April 1st so that we would have his help getting things figured out. BOOM, again. GOD GAVE JEFF THE TIMING. My prayer was answered! He is so faithful to answer our requests when we are committed to living for Him. This sign gave my heart so much courage knowing God was in this with us and he was working the details out.

So there it is. This is my proof of how God worked. This is my reminder for the hard days that will come. When I wonder why we ever decided to do this crazy homeschool thing, I will look back and remember that if for no other reason, it was because God asked us to. And that is enough.

Welcome to my Blog

I am so happy YOU are here. Allow me to introduce myself and share a few fun facts about my family and I. My name is Tatum Berry, I’m a 34 year old wife and mama who lives on a ranch in the cowboy state of Wyoming. My husband Jeff and I have 3 girls, Grace (age 8), Ella Rose (6), and little Lucy Belle (turns 3 next month). Our family is passionate about Ranching and the western lifestyle. We spend a lot of time working with our horses and taking care of our cattle and chickens. The most important thing to our family is making sure we honor God with the way we live. Jesus is our savior and Lord of our household. We hope to glorify Him in everything we do and encourage others to find the peace and joy that comes from being in relationship with him.
I created this blog to have a little place on the internet where I can share things I’m passionate about, tell stories and connect with people who love the things that I love. It would make me smile if you would take the time to leave me a comment and let me know where you are reading from. God Bless and hope to see you back here soon.
Tatum 🧡