Looking at the older post "winner routine", I just had to chuckle at how our way of doing has already undergone a massive metamorphosis.
In this new year, with growing kids and new needs, we have at last settled into a new routine. As a child I always had this thing that I could not “sleep in” because there was obviously ten thousand very important things that had to be done at soonest (or not 😁 ). And if I did try to lie in a bit, I would be overwhelmed by this extreme guilt and throw myself out of bed, anxiously looking for something very important to be done. That has luckily changed a lot and especially with having kids, the moment the opportunity to sleep late shows up, you grab it with both hands and don’t let go for as long as you can!
When starting with home-schooling however, initially I put so much pressure on myself to be up and going as early as can be, because obviously we cannot think that for a moment life could actually be a bit more relaxed now that we made this lifestyle change! And then when things didn’t happen early enough, I would feel that our day of homeschooling was a failure. Welllll, well, that has also luckily changed now and our way of doing have evolved into this lovely very relaxed new way of doing.
When starting our homeschool journey and not really being surrounded by much other homeschool families, I remember that one of my biggest concerns and frustrations was “If I don’t just repeat school at home, how does a normal day in the life of OUR homsechool then look like?”. Although we chose this new way of doing, I do still like routine and with my kids it definitely helps to ground them, so the total free learning, free time (unschool) approach would not completely work for us.
There are SO many different ways of approaching homeschooling, and when planning to do so, make sure you expose yourself to as many as possible approaches, ways and routines. Soon you will find out what would work best for you, your kiddos and your family culture. This will (and should) all revolve around what you and your family value most together with what you would like to achieve through your homeschooling.
So for those of you still playing around with the idea, those who have already started but still looking around to see how others do it and for those who are just curious, here it is in short, with the obvious daily variation. Our basic perfect homeschool day would look as follows:
We’ll wake up without a clock, whenever everyone wakes up 😃 usually around 7 o’clock in the morn. After that the kids will start sorting themselves for breakfast, while me and Martin have a quiet'ish cup of coffee and chatting through whatever we need to chat through for the day. After that the kids all do their daily chores and then by the time I’m already making my second cup of tea we would start with the schooling part. Then we would be busy for round about 2½ to 3 hours (depending on what we are busy with), after which we are done. The rest of the day the kids play and have some extra-mural activities (not too much though!) and Bob’s your uncle! Day done! I try to spend two days a week on the 3 R’s (reading, writing and Maths), and 2 days on a variety of the social sciences, biology and science side. And on our 5th day we have our outings, a lovely long playdate or just about whatever we want!
Good luck with finding your way!
Ok, so all of you out there homeschooling will definitely identify
with me here! As much as choosing to
homeschool has simplified our life and as much as my stress levels have been
reduced, if you are not careful about the following, you might achieve exactly
the opposite (as learned by myself the hard way!!), where you are left with a crazy complicated
situation and stress levels that threaten to hi-jack every level of your
being.
Look out for these 5 bloopers and grab them by the neck as
soon as you catch them trying to steel your joy!
1. Planning, planning, planning!
Even if you are taking a seriously relaxed approach, I really believe that doing some planning for every week of your homeschooling can make a massive difference and help you to get the most out of what your are doing. I usually sit down for 10 minutes every Sunday evening, and plan out the week, plan out our basic to do’s for homeschooling, plan some field trips and work it all around our social and extra-mural activities. I try and do this two weeks in advance, just helping me to feel that I’m that one step ahead. If you are as loose-headed as I am this will help you to not double and/or overbook yourself and not be caught with your pants down!
2. RELAX about what you are busy with.
This could sound completely contradicting to nr.1, but in my case it actually enabled me to become more relaxed. Let go of the pressure of what you think the perfect homeschool scenario looks like (especially if you read a lot of blogs and how "perfect" everyone else is managing). If we do not complete what we should within the one week, we just catch up in the next. If someone, including yourself, are sick, take a rest and pick up the threads when everyone feels better. If your child gets out of bed on the wrong foot and every bit of the schooling part is torture, let it go and find another way to connect with your child, the rest can happen another day. One week will not necessarily look like the other; a certain teaching method might work now, and not at all the next time you try to use it. In the safety of your basic planning, there is so much leeway for you to be as flexible as you want to or as needed by whatever circumstance.
3. Help the kids get into the right attitude.
In the past, often when I drop the bomb that we will be doing something that they were not prepared for right before we start, I sit with either a breakdown or an attitude problem, which in any case restrict the learning process. Instead, I have found that while they are busy with their morning chores, I just let little glimpses of what we will be busy with that day fall, sub-consciously prepping them for the day (this is where the planning part comes in handy). By the time we actually get to it they already have their minds wrapped around it and I have much easier learning.
4. Don’t overcook it!
Somehow, in my case, the more time I have on my hands, the more I want to squeeze into it, instead of just taking it easy and living life a bit slower! A big part of why we decided to start to homeschool was because we wanted to slow down life a bit, minimise a bit, make things simpler and be able to take in more, absorb more of life as we go. And then, within two blinks, I very soon found myself just filling all the open spaces with new things! So, some good advice (to myself as well!): Take It Slow! Take time to lie on the couch with your kids, have those much needed conversations, connect with them, read with them (a lot!). Take time to sit back and watch how they play, absorb those little laughs that will too soon disappear, make a cup of tea and lift your feet for a while, with little ones you will soon be running around again.
5. Open up some much needed mind space.
If you are a bit more introverted than extroverted like me, you will know that your batteries soon run empty if you don’t have time to hear yourself think (or just to THINK for that matter 😃). With having your kids with you the whole day (usually including and all day 101 Q&A thrown at you), it is seriously important to make place for some alone time, time to think! On one of the homeschool Facebook pages, I saw a mom rant over how she has no "me time" at all, and the reaction of so many other mothers echoed the same sentiment. I don't think it's just a homeschooling thing, I think its actually a MOM thing. And it's sadly not going to happen all by itself, you’ll have to Prioritise and Plan it into your week (see, again planning), and book some specific times out where you can become quiet. This excludes time where you do grocery shopping or have quiet time with God. I can hear you saying “yeah right, in what life is that possible”, but it’s all about living life pro-actively, planning as you go instead of just reacting at whatever life throws at you. Go for an early morning run while dad is still available, ask a friend to babysit or have the kids go on a play date and go have a quiet cup of tea somewhere else. Make time to sit down and write (that’s why I started this blog! More for myself than anybody else.), and make time to figure out who you have grown into, in this new season of your life. The better you learn to get to know yourself in every new season and situation you face, the more everyone around you, including your spouse, will be able to figure out how to connect with you.
So there you go girls (and guys if you are a homeschooling dad)! Hope this helps someone feel a bit more motivated. Always remember why you chose this road in the first place!
So as most of you know, my kids are 9, 6 and 3 years old. And I have found the most lovely routine in which we start our days at the moment (Dankie Hannabananna!). This is obviously bound to change and undergo some metamorphosis as we go on!
We start our morning with the oldest making breakfast for himself and the two girls, while I have some QUIET time in this time space. After this we go have our coffee with the kids and this is also the part where we create the opportunity for us to get into some serious social issues-, Bible study-, God type conversations in the living room. After this everyone goes of to finish his or her chores - which includes self care (combing hair, getting dressed, brushing teeth) as well as making their beds, feeding the animals and opening curtains. When all chores are done, we have some outside time. Going for a bike ride, a run, going to the park, having a jumping rope competition and even some garden work! After all the bodies have had some good moving around, I start reading to them while they start drawing/ playing lego/ do something more quiet. This has opened up a whole new world to them! As I take non-picture, round 300 pager books they hang on my lips as we start and finish a story in about two weeks time. I have also found that this develops their vocabulary, opens up another set of conversations we wouldn't necessarily otherwise have had and opens their world wide up for whatever scenarios plays out in the book. After this we have a tea break and start with some old-school school stuff :) This would include a specific subject for the day together with a little maths every time. Our old-school school time would generally be focused on a theme, such as underwater creatures etc, in which we interweave all other subjects. And then.... that's it..... School's out! :)
Ok, so we are well into this whole experience and even though there has been still much roller coastering :), the aftershock of the big change has certainly evened out a bit. We have established a lovely routine, with lots of input from Hannah, another dear home-school friend, leaving everyone happy most of the time. Lessons I have learnt in these past weeks relates mostly to certain misconceptions I had over what the picture as a semi working mom, homeschooling and my capacity would look like.
Before having kids I would have told you that I am mostly extroverted, getting most my energy from socializing. I have since though, through being quite exhausted with the normal part time working mother/wife role together with everywhere else you try an have an impact in your community, realized that the opposite is actually true. Although still seriously needing to connect in a meaningful way with good friends, much of my recharging happens when I'm alone, and.....uhm....QUIET. One of my greatest fears regarding homeschooling was that I would feel totally smothered, even more exhausted, and that I would have no alone time whatsoever. During our first few weeks of roller-coaster riding that fear might have popped up again for a few seconds here and there, but as we settled the truth about this new way, soon set in. Pre-home school life looked as follows: Take the kiddo's to school, have a quiet few hours to work, start with the crazy school run - fetching three different ages at three different times. Then I would have a bunch of tired and hungry kids, try to get them fed, and some homework done (with much moaning and groaning) before we have to be at several extra-murals, after which I would have even more tired and hungry kids. Through all this, together with the help of a very helpful daddy, the days ended with trying to make dinner whilst trying to manage their emotional well being, then getting them fed, bathed and in bed. After a usual day like that, I was completely exhausted, there was no or little fulfilling quality moments or conversations with the kids and we were just to glad to get them to sleep just to repeat the crazy the next day. (Sound familiar??)
Now, as we spend our mornings with what the kids experience as "quality time", by eleven o'clock all of their emotional tanks are full, we are done with all school work, we have had quality time and conversation and we are no where near tired. That leaves us pretty much with a good part of the day to play, do extra-murals, work and connect with other people.
The other big thing I have realized is how seriously performance orientated our whole society is and how intertwined in our way of thinking. Even our loving and friendships become conditional and performance orientated without us even realizing it. Everything is measured and boxed and evaluated against some sort of scale that has been imprinted in every day life. This will obviously differ for different personality types, but it has been quite some process changing my thought processes (and is still an ongoing struggle)! Another sad thing is to, in this process realize how platonic your view of success is. While loving our more relaxed, more organic way of learning, every time I enter a nice bookshop I fall back into "O, goodness, I need to buy these and those books, and the kids will need this and that so that they can be on par". Our new reality is much more focused on the development of our kids as a whole... Not just academically, not just achievement wise, not just leadership wise (although all those things play a very important part). The school system has very much set the bar for what the "successful child" looks like, and even with our new way of trying things, it's still a challenge to break away from looking at our children through those lenses. Our greatest challenge for now is probably to totally break away from that. Not just in how we see our kids, but in how we approach all our relationships.... Including that with God...
So after thinking this through for the last 5 years (yes, I know.... 5 years?!?), we have finally made the decision to take the plunge into the unknown! Like most unpredictable situations I have faced in the past, like the decision to have children, going into labour, choosing homeschooling (they all more or less fall into the same measure of unknown!), I sort of refrained from having any black on white expectation of what it would look like. People often try and give their input on what they think beforehand, sometimes great, sometimes not so great (sometimes informed, sometimes not so informed), and I usually tend to take the "eat the meat and spit out the bones" approach, mostly being a bit optimistic about what awaits. And then the wave hits you, and you are forced to face the reality of this unknown, throwing you into total surrender to the One who knows what He is doing, and riding it out the best you can.
That said, our start was definitely an interesting one, not exactly moonshine and roses (is that just an Afrikaans saying? Maanskyn en rose, so mooi gestel :) ). Our plan was to at first only take our oldest out of school, settling him and then in the new year start all three with our new approach. With Mr.1 having a quite a serious personality, always wanting to know exactly what is expected from him and what the program will be, our homeschool start was one "lovely" emotional roller coaster ride! From really enjoying the freedom to being frustrated with not having any formal schooling, I eventually managed to get him to relax by "pretending" he is on holiday! While all this was going on, little Ms M decided that it is totally unfair that she still has to attend school and began protesting every morning with great resistance eventually leading to the decision to take her out as well. Needless to say, since we have made the decision to have both older kids out of school, everything has settled, every one has relaxed and for the first time at the start of week 2, I started to become excited about homeschooling again :). For now, my greatest struggle is to make up my mind on approach. So much of ones thinking is still stuck in the "old way of schooling", whilst knowing the benefits of doing it in a new way. One day, you are totally relaxed, having this lovely organic learning environment and just enjoying all the deep, meaningful learning that takes place. Then the next you open up some educational books and freak out because you are totally inundated under possible curriculum/approaches/standards/what your children should be able to do by what age etc etc... So, for now my approach will be as follows: Take one step back, take a deep breath and take one day at a time!
I have been witnessing quite an interesting phenomena these last few months.... Since we made our decision to homeschool our children, amongst other, THE MOST ASKED question that I face is "What made you decide to do that?". Following this question my mind rambles through 30 000 possible answers to give, with this being such a complicated question. At first my reply wants to be "What made you decide to keep your child in school?" :), but in all honesty, this is such a loaded question, I could keep you busy for a day in trying to explain why we made this choice. We are quite normal people (or so I think!), lying somewhere on the spectrum between serious conservative Christians and total free-living Hippie's, and our decision to homeschool would most probably differ tremendously from both those extremes.
The most uncomplicated answer I could give would be that homeschooling just makes so much we believe in for our children and family, possible. I could carry on about the negatives of formal schooling, the unnecessary pressure kids experience etc etc, but in essence it is actually the opposite that made us look in this direction. After trying formal schooling for four years, we found that within a great school, with great values and two brilliant teachers teaching our oldest and middle child, we still couldn't satisfy the needs we find most valuable within our family setup. So here they are in no particular order:
1. Time! With the kids in school we could find very little time to invest into each of their characters to the extend that we would have liked to. And in the little time there was, everyone are either tired or being rushed to the next activity/thing. This includes their attitudes towards life and each other, their contribution to our household with each one pulling their weight, their world view and their whole belief system.
2. Whole person development: We found that in school, because of the very content heavy curriculum they follow, there is little time left for any development of the child as a whole person. The best part of their day was spent on very platonic academic content, and development of their other interests and strengths was not valued much and in many ways left behind. Also the fact that there is one teacher for 30 children tremendously inhibited her from being able to try and tend to every child as an individual.
3. Adventure and Experience: We have in so many ways seen the amazing fruit of learning through inquisitive experience. We very much try and veer away from the whole performance mentality and love taking the kids on various adventures and having them learn through experience rather than program. We have found learning through this way to be much more effective and long lasting rather than just pushing a bunch of information into the short term memory and having them relay that through tests.
4. Developing each child to his own: The last reason can basically be summed up as this. We would love to see each of our children develop into the very person each of them were made to be, developing and maturing at their own pace, and being raised with the knowledge that they can make a success from anything they wish to pursue. Although it's not only through homeschooling that you can achieve this, I do hope that spending so much quality time and discussions with our kids, building into each child's identity, we will be able to send them out into society with the knowledge that the world in its modern setting really is their oyster and that they can conquer anything they please!
Many other questions include: "How are you doing it?", "What curriculum do you follow?", "How do you assess your child's progress?", "What about social interaction?", "How will they get a Matric?"... and so I can carry on. I totally understand that homeschooling in South Africa (although not really new), is still such an uncommon thing, and that many people still do not understand what it's all about. I also understand that our decision to do this instantly make other people question their own decision to school. And so all of this creates a whirlpool of questions being thrown to and fro. Hopefully through this blog, we discover some of these answers together!
As homeschooling is just one of the many ways in which I am growing, I also love to have chats, laughs and vents about parenting, God and lots of other life issues. Would love to hear what you have to say about them!
