The "Problem" with our Homeschooling

Today I tried to work on a lesson from our reading program with JPD. He convinced me that we should, instead, build a spaceship. (I didn't have time to do both.)

The thing is, it's not hard to convince me that we should build a spaceship instead of working on reading. When you're five years old, what could be a better way to spend an afternoon?

P.S. We love these building card sets from Klutz. We have all of them: the spaceship, castle, pirate ship, and Hogwarts sets.

I Miss Homeschooling, Part 2

Back in January, when I was wistful for homeschooling (when am I not?), I promised to share my top ten things I don't miss about homeschooling. It's important to be balanced about these things, right? :) Without further ado, here are the things I don't miss...

10) When we were homeschooling, my house was impossibly cluttered with kids' work, toys, gear--just STUFF. And since I'm outnumbered 5 to 1 around here, I felt powerless in the face of all that stuff! Now at least I can pick up a little when they're at school.

9) One child's tantrum--any child's--could de-rail the whole day. That's all I'm going to say about that.

8) Figuring out how to motivate my precious little students, who may or may not have been self-motivated on any given day, was really hard for me.

7) I don't miss constantly feeling inadequate because I was trying to do 3 or 4 full-time jobs.

6) The holy grail of one-on-one time with each child was ridiculously elusive. Of course that is still the case when they're in school, but I do get lots of time with the little ones, which is so sweet and satisfying.

5) On one hand, it was frustrating to never have time for any of my own projects, such as cooking (nice cooking, that is), exercise, writing, or anything for me. On the other hand, though, homeschooling was my own project, and I liked it better than all that other stuff!

4) Homeschooling was not so great for my marriage. Not that it was terrible, or anything, but there were many days when Bill came home full of news to share and I was way too tired to fully appreciate said news. Without homeschooling, of course, I absolutely hang on his every word each night when he comes home. :)

3) I hated never being able to do anything exactly the way I wanted to, either in homeschooling or in the rest of my life. There was almost always a huge gap between my (ridiculously unrealistic) expectations of how a lesson or a day would go, and how it actually turned out. Good for my humility, that!

2) My Mommy AD&D--also known as utter failure to complete a thought or a task without getting distracted--reached frightening levels on some days. I won't think or say too much here about whether being a 40-something homeschooling mom had anything do to with that!

And...my #1 least missed thing about homeschooling (if you're a Mom, I know you'll agree!!)...

1) Sibling Bickering!! Just shoot me!!

Now, I know that there's a solution for each of these 10 items. In fact, I'm always collecting solutions to them! And the big question, of course, is whether the Ten Favorite Things outweigh the least favorite things, not to mention the availability of other appealing options for each student, financial considerations, etc., etc. This is quite a timely topic around here right now, as I'm very prayerfully trying to discern discern discern what to do for school next year! As with each year, I change my mind every week. :)

All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned While Homeschooling, Part 375

Yesterday I learned that my gorgeous, talented cousin-in-law hates doing laundry. She just hates it, apparently. And I found that startling--not because the "chore" of providing clean clothes for my family is so inherently enjoyable to me, but because I realized that up until a couple of years ago, I was quite a laundry-hater myself. Nowadays, though, I don't mind it a bit. What happened?

It turns out that "laundry maintenance" is just one of the astonishing things that God taught me during my past two years of homeschooling my sweeties. Three years ago, I pretty much figured that it was impossible to homeschool the kids while simultaneously managing the clean-to-dirty-to-folded-and-clean-again cycle that clothing must undergo. "Impossible," I thought. Way too much for me. Surely we'd have to find some domestic help of some kind--a college student, perhaps--upon whom to unload this overwhelming task. Right?

Problem was, no one else in my vast and wonderful homeschooling group seemed to need such domestic help. What did they know that I didn't? Was there a super-secret big-family laundry trick that I had yet to learn? Had they really taught some or all of their children to do this job? Could it be, perhaps, that laundry wasn't such a big deal after all?

Well, yes and no, to all of the above. Laundry for a family of seven, especially in the Wisconsin wintertime, could certainly be considered a pretty big deal. Once I acknowledged it as such, it helped me to approach this part of my domestic vocation with an appropriately structured mindset. Was it reasonable--valuable, even--to expect the kids to take time away from academics to participate? Oh, yes.

Laundry, in fact, was a great way to teach my kids organizational skills, teamwork, and responsibility. Once I looked at it that way, laundry became neither good nor bad--just an opportunity to figure out a workable system that maximized everyone's ability to contribute.

Homeschooling helped me look at many aspects of family life that way. I'm finding that plenty of daily domestic tasks--unloading the dishwasher, keeping the house reasonably tidy, planning meals--are now transforming from fearsome fire-breathing dragon chores into simple everyday parts of life.

No doubt this has all been part of the divine homeschool curriculum at our house--for the teacher.