It has been two months since my husband and I decided to homeschool our two oldest children (the other four are not school age yet). In such a small amount of time I have watched our whole family dynamic change and grow. My older kids are very helpful with the little kids and with household tasks. The are begging to learn to cook and I have taught them both to make scrambled eggs so far. Both of them could make mom and dad breakfast with a small amount of help. This is great. Cooking is not the only home based task my kids are learning. We all clean the house together and organize laundry. So when do we find time for school?
The mornings are early in our house. I wake up around 5:30 most days and everyone is awake by 6:30. Joel and Ellie need to practice piano first thing. It is hard to make them practice for a long time at these ages, so the often practice twice a day. Dad is involved in as much of this as possible since he know much more about piano playing a music than I do. We eat breakfast and by 7:30 I want us getting ready to do math. The younger kids view this as coloring time. I also will read stories if some of the kid want me too. Next we have to work on Language Arts. We have been focusing on writing about what we read, so this is parent focused. I try to add things like nouns, verbs, etc. and we have workbooks that include this as well. Science is a family favorite, so often we all read about space, animals, or weather together. Our activities are simple at this point, but fun. History is all about the world this year. We started with an intensive study of Bangladesh, but we are moving to brief histories of other countries now. It is fun to see what the kids remember in a week.
In the model where one is tested constantly, I realize that very little information sticks with me today. Learning is such a natural process, but I feel like we forget this sometimes. I used to be so afraid to homeschool because my kids might not learn everything. The truth is, they learned less before. Don't tell them, but they end up doing more work. However it takes less effort because they are so much more involved with what we are working on.
My biggest challenge is my younger four kids. Some of them enjoy just playing on alone, but there are many interruptions. We do not have much time for activities outside the home, but I make a point to take the kids to story time once a week. Sometimes I feel like I should be doing more with them, but then I realize what they gain too. They have older kids around playing with them, guiding them in activities, and they get to learn cool new information right along side the older kids. Our family as a whole is bonding more than we would if the older two kids were still in school.
I never planned to be a homeschool mom and I did not think the role would fit me, but now I can see how it can work. The funny thing is I say I did not want to homeschool, but I used to imagine myself a teacher when I worked on my French Literature degree in college. It has taken me ten years to figure out how to use my degree wisely and I think pouring all my skills into my children is not a bad way to use my liberal arts education. This does not mean I only plan to educate my kids, but I feel like I am finally using my degree in some way.
