Over our homeschooling journey, there have been many, many times that I thought to myself, “Yeah! We have the perfect solution! Everything will be clear sailing now.”
And then a few days or weeks, or even months would pass. Bang! We would run into another snag. Another issue woud pop up. The curriculum wasn’t right anymore. The place we did lessons in the house wasn’t a good choice any longer. Why?
Well, I think the most important factor is your kids. They are constantly learning and growing and, yes, changing. The curriculum or learning style that suited them perfectly yesterday may be absolutely and totally wrong today. The beauty of homeschooling is that as parents who know and love our children more than anyone else, we can sense the change fastest and adapt to it.
And so I found myself needing to adapt last week. I realized it almost accidentally. Last Thursday we decided to rearrange our lesson schedule so that there would be time for a spontaneous morning activity. That meant that instead of skipping the morning lessons, we shifted them to the late afternoon. For us morning lessons are 3 hours spent reading aloud and discussion of the topics and ideas that fall out of the reading. It has always worked well, so I never suspected we needed a change. But that particular afternoon, when we got together at 4 in the afternoon for a 3 hour reading and discussion session I was amazed. It was as if there were now 3 of us teaching each other instead of one (me) teaching the other two (my kids). My kids were not only actively engaged in the topics we read and discussed, they also led the disscussion and added various other sources to support their thoughts and ideas. It was absolutely amazing. So amazing in fact that I decided we would make the change permanent (for now).
Ever since we made the change, both my kids have added new self-directed learning activities in the morning to fill the void. Our days are even busier and more delightful. Our evenings are wonderful.
While doing dishes this morning I realized that our homeschooling days seem so right with this new schedule and so natural that they no longer seem like schooling.
Everything is just activities in my day. I don’t feel like homeschooling is a special effort anymore, it is simply part of the overall lifestyle we live as a family. There is no school it just feels like family.
It just feels right.
