First, let me say—I never had any intention of homeschooling. I was a public school kid and turned out “just fine.” At least according to me! But then again, I also never planned to be a mom raising kids in the Virgin Islands either. And yet… here we are.
Both of my children attended a private nursery school, which was an amazing introduction to school life. We were incredibly lucky. My son jumped straight from the toddler class into Pre-K 4, skipping Pre-K 3 altogether. He started Kindergarten at 4. My daughter skipped the toddler class entirely and went into Pre-K 3 at age 2. She potty trained herself in two weeks—she had no time for toddler activities. She knew where she wanted to be and made it happen. #bossbabe
When it came time to choose the next step, we had a few options. My daughter could stay another year and do Kindergarten at age 4, or we could send her to the same school my son would attend.
But here’s where it got tricky: Because of my son’s birthday, he would have to repeat Kindergarten, regardless of whether it was public or private school. I talked it over with his teacher (who’s amazing), and she agreed—while boys often develop a bit slower, he was more than ready for 1st grade. He would be bored repeating material he already knew. Unfortunately, the system doesn’t care about readiness—only age.
And then there’s my daughter. Let’s just say if we tried to make her repeat preschool, we’d have a full-on rebellion. This girl is adding and subtracting for fun and she’s not even in Kindergarten yet.
So, we took a step back and asked: what if we stopped trying to fit them into a system that wasn’t built for them?
Here in the Virgin Islands, homeschool pods (or co-ops) are actually pretty common. We looked into starting one ourselves, focused on first grade and Kindergarten-level work. I talked to tons of parents, had meetings, explored ideas—but it all started to feel like we were forcing something that didn’t fit. We had never homeschooled before. Were we really ready to start a school, hire a teacher, and take on that kind of structure?
And even more importantly—if we’re all following the same curriculum, are we actually meeting each child where they are? Or are we just recreating the classroom at home?
That’s when we scratched the idea completely and chose a simpler path: just homeschool our two kids at home, with me as their teacher. And once we made that decision? It clicked. But now what? Where do we go from here?
And the big question:
What curriculums do we choose? Check out our next post here!
