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!
So having to start from scratch and figuring things out, I know how helpful all sorts of schooling tools are. Be sure to find my best ones here.
