After hours of failed homeschool planning templates with my pencil, and disappearing eraser, I secretly wished someone would hand me a personalized, ready-to-go home-based learning plan neatly wrapped with a bow. 

When no package arrived, I decided to cease the sanity. I pushed pause on my futile scheduling attempts and we gently entered a period of deschooling. 

While shifting my energy, I began thinking about the skills most important for my son’s growth and future success.  I asked myself, “What is he learning from this interaction?” I began to observe and jot it all down. I began looking for ways to incorporate learning into our everyday activities rather than trying to carve out time to force the learning on my less-than-eager child. 

And this is what I discovered: when I finally stopped trying to schedule and organize our “work”, things began to flow. I realized we had a home based learning schedule of sorts! Or, more importantly, we had a rhythm, and learning was happening. 

It dawned on me that all I needed was to figure out how to plan. I needed to do more of what was already working for our home based learning. What I needed was to reverse plan. 

Now, instead of trying to figure out the what, when, and how, of the learning, I have created a map with a few interesting (to us) landmarks. Voila! A rough guide for our very own inspiring, flexible, and relaxed adventure.