Today I decided to take the least stressful path in compliance with our state's homeschool law ... 
                After moving back up here last year, I found that complying with a new set of homeschool regulations was overwhelming.  I moved from a state that the HSLDA considers a little more regulated than here and I will tell you that there are so many loopholes and painless ways to be in compliance with Tennessee homeschool law, that I don't understand why they bother doing the paperwork.  In New Hampshire, at the end of each school year, we can get a portfolio review by a certified teacher or administer standardized tests.  (There is a third option which I still don't understand.)  
               My kids have never taken standardized tests before so I decided to go the portfolio route since we are technically supposed to keep one for our records for two years anyway.  Having never done a homeschool portfolio before, I found myself stressing over this on a daily basis.  Really... I mean daily!!  Here I am, already having to deal with a big adjustment from homeschooling two of my kids to homeschooling three this year, along with taking care of my 3 year old, who seems to have a knack for getting into more than her brothers ever did, and now I have to change how we homeschool to produce "papers" for a book for someone else to judge?  Energetically, this has not been a good situation for me, my kids or homeschooling in general and I haven't been able to figure out a solution for it.  All the meditation in the world was not going to fix this!

                After sitting down and taking a hard look at the root cause of my stress, I realized that it was my resentment that in the "Live Free or Die" state I am being forced to change how I intuitively "teach" my kids to conform with an external system that doesn't take my childrens' individualism into account.  After weighing the pros and cons of what my choices are, I decided that the standardized test route will be the least painful.  I can order the tests, look them over to see if I need to cover anything over the next couple of months that my kids don't already know then administer them over a few days as the test company suggests.  As for the portfolio contents, I am throwing each of the kids' papers in a box and forgetting about it.  I am respecting my own limits and the fact that I am not a scrapbook type of person.  I will not change my sense of what is really important in life in order to put together some pretty-looking, results-driven books "just in case."  

                Whew... I feel a whole lot better already!
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