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...
