I’m retiring this week from a job I’ve had for the past 23 years. It’s a job I chose willingly and have loved. I’ve been a homeschool mom.

Now, homeschooling isn’t for everyone, for lots of reasons. I believe strongly in good schooling options and parental choice, and I’ve written about that a few times already. But I was able to homeschool, I believe God called us to homeschool, and I very much wanted to homeschool, so I did.

I wonder how other moms celebrate or commemorate the end of homeschooling? Here’s my method: First, I had a good, long cry. Then I sent a family text with a picture of a completely clear dining room table (see above), telling everyone that my 23 years of homeschooling had come to an end and how much I loved them. My husband and I went for a walk and got ice cream. And then I sat down to write this highly personal (but maybe a little bit universal?) list of big moments, along with a few pictures from homeschooling in the Matt household:

Every year for many years now, my August experience has been the same.

I start the summer joyfully (as do whichever of my kids are being homeschooled at the time, even the poor older guinea pigs I subjected to minor “summer math and reading” in early years—sorry, kids). I’m full of hope, relaxed expectation, and plans for catching up on all the things I had no time for during the school year. I even have a list of what I intend to accomplish in all of the “free time” I’m going to have.

In my previous post, I explained how and why you can use Norman Rockwell paintings as resources to teach social skills and inference to kids on the spectrum, as well as neurotypical (NT) kids. I also provided a walk-through of a lesson based on one of Rockwell’s early paintings.

In this post, I’ll go into more detail on the kinds of questions to ask your child, what to anticipate during the lesson, and what to do about a resistant child or one who seems to be in over his head.

How to use classic illustrations to teach social skills to kids on the spectrum.

For many years in our homeschool, we did “artist/composer study” every Friday, studying one person each month. For most of those years, we simply focused on the artist’s life and their most important works. But when I was teaching my youngest, I realized an amazing thing during our study of Norman Rockwell: his paintings are incredible teaching tools for developing social skills and inference for kids who struggle in this area. And as a bonus, they’re really fun to talk about.

Both this post and the next are for the benefit of those who are homeschooling a child on the spectrum, as well as those who teach or provide social skills therapy for kids with ASD, or want to use these techniques with neurotypical (NT) kids just for the fun of it.

When my kids were young, we mostly followed the Charlotte Mason approach to education: literature-based schooling, short lessons, lots of nature study, and frequent copywork, among other things. For the most part, I kept this pattern for all four of my children, through their many differences in enthusiasm for school, attention spans, and abilities in each area of learning. I quickly discovered that I didn’t need a formal language arts program at all until mid-elementary years, thanks in part to the practice of Do-It-Yourself Copywork.