One of God’s best gifts to me on my Golden Birthday Month was my eldest child’s Junior High School graduation.

This milestone means a lot to me because I have homeschooled him since birth. I was his main teacher through the years (16 years and counting!).

I feel a mixture of gratitude, pride, fulfillment, accomplishment, happiness and relief.

My husband homeschooled him, too. He handled STEM lessons, tech-related subjects, sports, and music. Of course, values-education and faith lessons were taught by both of us.

We have hired teachers and coaches through the years also for other subjects and interests like performing arts (piano, theater, voice, music theory) as well as coding and sports (chess, karate, and swimming).

But I will always be grateful that I got to teach him in most subjects for almost 2 decades. This gave me lots of time to bond with him, make many memories with him and influence him.

My most memorable and cherished times with him were going to daily Mass with him as part of his Catholic education and striving to read the Bible to him daily and help him learn from God’s Word.

I believe that the most important lesson that I taught my eldest son, Yanthy, was about our Catholic faith. I taught him about God and introduced God to him. I’m grateful that he has heard God’s voice early in his life and he chose to follow God’s voice and accept his unique assignment from God to serve as God’s musician from a young age.

I am happy and proud that he has chosen to use his time, talent and treasure in the service of God and His Church in the past decade through his service in the Music Ministry. (You can check out photos of his service which I document in his Facebook Page Yanthy and watch some of his videos on his YouTube channel Yanthy’s Music.)

I did not give him a lot of written exams yearly because I placed a premium on hands-on experiences and projects and real-life application. I already know that he has a good memory. What I want him to learn was how to apply what his knowledge in real life scenarios.

I encouraged him to create real-life passion projects. The first among these was his 1st solo piano concert when he turned 7 years old. His other major passion projects were preparing for and passing the ABRSM certification (with distinction twice) for musicians that is globally recognized, writing his book manuscript in Grade 6, and publishing his book (Minecraft Guide for Newbees) on Amazon in high school, launching a piano solo Christmas album titled Christmas Hymns for Him when he became a teenager (you can read about it here), making and editing videos using Canva, iMovie and Capcut, composing songs, and joining competitions.

We were eclectic from the start. I combined many approaches which I felt and thought would fit my son’s learning style, temperament, interests and needs. We used the child-led, interest-led, strengths-based, project-based, literature-based and faith-based approaches. We also did a lot of unit studies, lifeschooling, gameschooling and travelschooling.

He learned and mastered many life skills like cleaning his room, our house and our vehicle, dishwashing, cooking, doing the laundry, ironing and grocery shopping. He even learned how to bake and make pizza and ice cream. He learned carpentry and making parols (Christmas lanterns). He learned not just to write, publish and illustrate a book. But he also learned how to promote books by being one of my assistants in my book tours and book tables. He learned to teach choirs. Just before his Junior High School ended, he had the chance to conduct online music classes through our online music club for Catholic kids.

Because he was homeschooled, the world was his classroom and everyone he met were people he could learn from. He had plenty of opportunities to explore and hone his talents. We had the freedom to use materials locally and abroad.

It was fitting that he sang A Million Dreams during his graduation. He was a boy who dreamed many big dreams and achieved most of them. He had a lot of courage and determination for the things he was passionate about.

Homeschooling allowed us to seize the moments when our eldest child was most interested and ready to learn. It allowed us to spend time on the tasks and things that really mattered not just to him, but to our family.

We made 2 AVPs to showcase the some of the highlights of his elementary and junior high school education which you watch here and here. We had a hard time choosing what to include in each AVP because Yanthy had so many achievements and goals achieved at such a young age. We hope that you enjoy watching these videos and that you will be inspired to homeschool your child or to persevere in homeschooling.

We thank God for the grace to persevere year after year and for His favors that enabled Yanthy to achieve his many milestones and dreams. If not for God’s help, I would not be able to homeschool my eldest son this long. There were many times when I considered giving up. But, whenever I go back to the reasons why I still wanted to homeschool him in high school, God gives me my second wind.

We’re also thankful that we found partner schools or homeschool providers (The Learning Place Internationals or TLP and Frames of Mind School or FMS) that allowed us the use of open curriculum for our homeschool. I most thankful to God for FMS, a multiple intelligence school in Rodriguez, Rizal which had the most affordable tuition based on my experience for homeschooling using an open curriculum. What we were able to save in Yanthy’s tuition, we were able to invest on homeschool materials and training for his fields of interest, especially in music. Since it was a multiple intelligence school that support and accepts progressive approaches to education, we were not burdened with unnecessary tasks or exams. We got to do lessons that were relevant and essential.

Lastly, I felt relieved that we did good in educating our eldest son by homeschooling him all throughout this time. He learned so many useful things. He just graduated Junior High School, but he is capable enough to earn a living with what he already knows. In truth, he has been earning through the many skills that he has acquired through the years.

Let me end this post by quoting the Bible verse that has been our guide and mantra throughout our homeschool adventure and journey.