Lessons for Mom
I always thought that an education would help prepare my children for life and work. So this year when my family moved into the realm of officially documented homeschoolers (by way of kindergarten), I felt it was my job to begin dilligently dispensing facts and making sure my child has mastered the typical grade level skills.
Under the assumption that educating a school-age child would need to be very different from what I had been doing all along as a mother, I thought I would need to arm myself with facts, lesson plans, schedules, workbooks, and curricula. I wasn't going to take any chances failing to "make my children geniuses". Everyone thought I was crazy for homeschooling in the first place, so I had to prove something that would give the idea some credibility. And that meant hard work and discipline in our schooling--or so I thought. What started out as a year to be planned and regimented became a year of allowing myself to unlearn and relearn. I have stumbled onto more insight on the education of children through the process of homeschooling than in four years of obtaining an elementary education degree. I earned my teaching certificate by reading chapters, passing tests, and managing to stay awake during lectures. But the new ideas I've formed about education have come from experience, close observation, and listening to my instincts.
No Time for Schedules
Despite starting out with the noble intention of implementing structure and formality into our daily routine, only a few weeks went by before I was compelled to change my battle plan. The "sit down at the kitchen table, listen to mom, then do your worksheets" routine that fit neatly between oatmeal and playing in the backyard no longer fit into my ever-evolving perspective. We have some of our most valuable learning experiences late at night, on Saturdays, and in the car. The whole world has become our classroom, so there is no set time and place to explore it.
Not So Brilliant Plans I had lots of plans for covering specific topics at specific times, but I quickly found out that my children would not necessarily be interested in learning about plants when I had scheduled to teach it. Instead, when we went out to plant sunflower seeds and gladiola bulbs in our flower bed or carrot and cucumber seeds in our garden, that's when they were eager to learn the elements needed for plant life and the parts of a flower. I had to allow myself to live and teach in the present. When we find a walking stick, we look it up in our insect book. When someone has a dentist appointment, we talk about dental hygeine. We learn about snow when it snows and we learn about hail when it hails. If they are not the least bit interested in something, I drop it. I still make some plans and come up with educational ideas, but most of our day is based on my children's interests and what's going on in our lives at the time.
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