Hi All!
In my first blog, you may have read that I approached my husband about homeschooling to get his thoughts and he was immediately excited. Next, I wanted to ask my family. We are all so close and I value their opinion. Since we weren’t homeschooled ourselves, I thought I would have faced a bit more hesitation but boy was I wrong.
It was summer 2023 and our 3rd son had just been born. We were staying with my parents while on paternity leave to give our older boys extra time with their grandparents. We were eating dinner, when I casually brought up to my parents, “What do you think about us homeschooling the boys?” I thought I’d be met with resistance and push-back. Instead, my dad told us a story that changed my perspective about homeschooling and ultimately led me to start BaseCampEd!
He said, you know “so and so” (names aren’t totally necessary for the story!) moved out of California during covid and decided to head to rural Maui. The parents needed to continue working, so they met a few families locally and all the children homeschooled together. They started their own mini co-op. Each day of the week was assigned to a different family and all the parents divided the subjects based on interest and expertise. The different families supported each other and shared the load together. Even after covid ended, their mini co-op was thriving, so they didn’t put their kids back into school, they continued homeschooling. That sounded like a dream scenario and I knew I wanted to make it a reality.
Before that night, I never thought about homeschooling from this prospective. I thought it was an “all or nothing” type of situation. I thought I would need to quit my job for good and be a full-time parent and educator. That was the scariest part for me. It sounded daunting and all-consuming to be the ONLY one responsible for my child’s education and success. But life isn’t meant to be done in isolation. We are supposed to lean on the support of family and friends and raise our children around people we respect and hope they will emulate one day.
I love the idea of my boys learning accounting and finance from a neighbor down the road who owns a small consulting firm. I want my boys to learn to cook from someone who has opened a bakery or restaurant. I want them to learn coding and software development from the professional who has built their own application! Take hockey lessons at 10AM from the best coach in the area. You can’t do any of this without community.
When I first started doing my own research about homeschooling, it felt very overwhelming. There are so many resources out there, but what was truly missing was the community building aspect. I wanted to cut through the endless amounts of groups and go straight to the source—parents who actually DO IT IN MY AREA!
Remember we move, A LOT?! Every time we move, I want to be able to pull up a map of my neighborhood and find families in the area who are also homeschooling or maybe curious to start in the future. I want to find true, in-person connections with families who are like us. I couldn’t find that out there, so I decided to create something I NEEDED!
Fast forward to summer 2024 and we are one year away from our oldest entering kindergarten. My husband and I couldn’t stop thinking about that story my dad told at dinner one night and we decided to be all-in on this dream of a community building application. From our own personal savings, we found a development company to build the app. It took about 9 months and in February 2025, we had a fully functioning app that hit the app stores! I am so proud of how far we have come, and I cannot wait to see where we go in the future.
If you have already downloaded the app, THANK YOU! Thank you for believing in the idea and your support truly means everything. Now, I need YOU to help spread the word. The more voices we have, the richer and more vibrant this community will be. It takes a village, why not build yours with BaseCampEd?!
I am always a message away at contact@basecamped.com
