How to Succeed at Home Education: Principle #1

You've decided. You're going to homeschool.

Excitement and jitters set in as September approaches. The smell of new textbooks permeate a perfectly organized and well-stocked schoolroom, complete with glue sticks and paint. A carefully planned schedule is prominently displayed on the bulletin board. Everything is set and ready. All that you're waiting for is the official beginning of the school year.

Then it arrives.

You gather your little ones around the table, hand out work-sheets and crayons, and begin the instruction. Between new books, new school supplies, and maybe even some new clothes, everyone has been anticipating this day for some time. And school at home doesn't fail to impress!

Until it does... about two weeks later.

By this point, it's like pulling teeth to get the kids to participate in the brand new curriculum which cost you a small fortune. You've tried everything from bribery to threats to get them to comply, but to no avail. You feel greater and greater anxiety setting in as each day fails to align with the schedule you set up. You are falling behind already and you have no idea how you are going to make up for the lost time. Your anxiety causes you to lay into the kids a little more than usual which, of course, doesn't help at all. In the midst of the contention and tears, you find yourself wondering, "Is this really what I signed up for? This is not how I imagined it at all! How do the other homeschool moms do this for years? This can't be what homeschool is supposed to be like!"

And you'd be right!

This is NOT how homeschool is supposed to be. But sadly, it turns out this way far too often, even for veteran homeschoolers.

If you want to succeed at homeschooling, I have some principles which will help you. They won't make homeschooling magically easy, and they WILL require you do a major overhaul on your educational paradigms. But I promise that these principles are the keys to having the positive and productive experience you want out of home education.

These principles are particularly applicable to the first ten years or so of your child's life. I believe they will still continue to be pertinent after that point, but they will have to be modified and perhaps applied in different ways or to different degrees. I will explain this in more detail later.

(Keep in mind that this is only part 1 of a series of blog posts, and keep on the lookout for future installments.)

Principle #1:  Keep it simple and inexpensive.

Especially when you are just beginning to homeschool and your children are very little, there is absolutely no reason to go out and spend a fortune on books, toys, supplies, or curricula.

If you determined early on that you would educate your child at home, you have the advantage of many birthdays and Christmases before you officially begin. Request educational and multipurpose toys. Ask for simple art supplies, paper, pencils, crayons, scissors, and glue. Buy your children books ranging in difficulty from very beginner to classic novels. In this way you will find it easy to gather ample resources.

If your child is already school-aged, keep in mind that all you really need is paper, pencils, the library and the internet. Seriously--that is ALL! Between the library and the internet, there is literally nothing you cannot learn. In my opinion, the best resources are absolutely free.

I suggest making weekly library visits a family tradition. Look at age-appropriate book lists, and take advantage of the holding system. Keep in mind that libraries contain more than books; there are CD's, educational movies, audio-books, magazines, and e-books. Explore the non-fiction section as well as the chapter and picture books. Check out books about math, history, science, and writing to fill out your homeschooling curriculum.

(I know this hardly needs saying, but it bears repeating. Read to your kids every day!)

As for the internet, make use of Google searches to find lots of free resources. Here are some that I literally stumbled upon in the last year:  Easy Peasy All-In-One-Homeschool, Solar System Scope, ABCya, Sheppard Software, Virtual Manipulatives. And here are examples of some other more well-known but equally awesome websites: Khan Academy, TED, Starfall, Google Earth, and Kindle Cloud Reader (free classics).

I'll add more as I discover them, but I hope I've whetted your appetite for finding your own free online resources and persuaded you that homeschooling need not (and in my opinion should not) be complicated or expensive.

Homeschool Memes

I hope you all will enjoy some of these as much as I did!  :)

How do you inspire writing?

As I write, R is doing her writing by herself.  She is sitting at a little end table in front of our family room TV which is hooked up to my personal computer.  Everyday she types into a word processor the words she wants to write, (I downloaded a special handwriting font,) and then she copies down her sentence with a pencil and special handwriting paper.

To be honest, I'm in awe.  She is doing this happily -- without me begging or even needing me to persuade her.  She's doing it because she WANTS to!  This is a huge advancement from only a few weeks ago when doing our writing each day was very much a challenge.  We often had to stop because I was losing patience and she was becoming frustrated.

So, what happened?  I'm not totally sure, but I'll give you my guesses.

For one thing, I think R has a pretty flexible nature.  She may resist things initially, but with enough prompting she'll easily jump on board.  I guess the best way to put it is that she's mold-able and easy to inspire.

I think another thing that helped was that I tried really hard to think outside the box about different ways to practice our writing.  (In the beginning I was tempted to do all letter drilling.)  I kept it light and fun.  I experimented with lots of different approaches until one in particular stuck with her:  writing notes.  She LOVES writing notes to her daddy, grandmas, and friends.  She also likes using the type of writing paper that has space at the top to draw a picture.

Writing has also been better since I stopped sitting right next to her and trying to tell her how to form each and every letter.  That was just too much pressure.  I have started sitting back and mainly praising, only giving a little bit of advice here and there.  I've been surprised by how quickly she has corrected certain mistakes without me having to tell her again and again.

I've learned to be largely flexible myself, letting little things slide, picking my battles, and letting her take the lead in her writing choices.  It's hard sometimes, but in the long run it's been refreshingly freeing.

What matters the most in all of this -- and this ABSOLUTELY applies to all homeschooling -- is that she is inspired and excited and enjoying what she's doing.  I feel strongly that this is the main key to seeing the best progress and educational development in children.  I know that when I feel interested in what I am doing, and when I really OWN it, I do far better than when I feel forced or pushed into things.

What does intentional parenting look like? And what does it have to do with homeschool?

Well, we've been plugging along and having a really wonderful time in our homeschooling adventures.  I haven't blogged for a couple weeks, not because I haven't had anything to say -- I always have something to say about homeschooling.  :)  Rather, I have been learning first-hand just how EXHAUSTING homeschooling can be!  It really takes it out of me.

The truth, though, is that it's not really homeschooling that is so draining per se.  It is intentional parenting that takes everything you've got.  And intentional parenting is the only kind I believe in.  In my world, it is synonymous with homeschooling.

Here's what intentional parenting has looked like for me in the last several weeks:

It means that when the girls wake up, I greet them with a smile and lots of loves.  It means me choosing to be chipper, optimistic, and enthusiastic about our upcoming day.  It means lots of listening, even when the story is unintelligible (with C) or nearly unbearably random (with R.)

It means sitting at the kitchen table with my girls during meals so that we can talk and connect in a casual and comfortable way.  It means taking time to do a little mini-gospel lesson with them during breakfast so that we can start our day on the right foot -- thinking and talking about God.

It means including them in the clean up and consistently holding them to their responsibilities, which at R's age consist of simply getting dressed, making her bed, and tidying up.  It means letting them help me even when it means it might take a bit longer.  It means saying yes whenever I reasonably can and should.

It means being ready to follow through with commitments such as "Yeah, I think we could do some painting this week."  It means jumping on as many little opportunities for growth and learning as I can handle.  (For instance, taking the time to explain -- really explain -- what power lines are and what they do when R asked me on our drive this morning.  Far too often we want to give a pat answer and be done with it.)  It means being seriously creative and innovative in my attempts to inspire R to want to do the things that I think she should be learning and working on now.

It means enduring consistently in my love and enthusiasm right to the very end of the day, right up to those last goodnight kisses and hugs.

It means sacrifice and lots of it.

But isn't that why we became parents in the first place?

I definitely don't succeed in this type of intentional parenting everyday.  (Frankly, I'm not sure I could honestly say I really succeed entirely on most days...)  But I have had many really good days, and that's what I aim for.  I strive for it with everything I have because it makes me feel so fulfilled.  It is without a doubt my purpose in life, even though it leaves me feeling completely beat at the end of the day.  I find myself releasing a HUGE sigh of relief when I finally close their bedroom door each night, and for the last couple weeks I haven't even had the energy or desire to hop online and write a blog post about all the fun we've been having.  But we have still been homeschooling, and loving it.

What about workbooks?

I find it beautifully ironic that when R goes off to play by herself she often chooses to "play school."  Some mornings she asks me to play with her.  There have been many mornings (when I had other plans and intended to let her and C just play on their own) when I just couldn't say no to that little face telling me, "You're the teacher," as if this weren't something we do all day every day anyway!

That's the thing: I don't think she realizes that what we do IS school.  There are some days that are more formal than others when I think she is aware that we're "doing school."  But other days she'll make comments to me about how sometimes we forget to do school, and I just have to laugh because she doesn't think that what we are doing counts.  I think that's a great thing, because that means it's natural and fun.  That's my goal.

Sometimes I think she craves the structure more though, and I'm happy to comply.  On those days I instruct her to get dressed, pack her backpack, and then have her sit in her little chair at her little table. C sits with her because she has to do everything big sister does.  I sit up front.  We stand and say the pledge of allegiance, recite our ABC's, and maybe read a book.

Then we break out the workbooks.  We don't do them very regularly because a four-year-old only has a limited attention span.  But when we start a page, I require her to at least finish what she began.  (It is very important to me that she learn to be a finisher.)  This requires me to get creative sometimes, to make it exciting even once the novelty has worn off.

The other day, we did our math workbook with Cheerios.  When R finished a pair of problems, (3+4 and 4+3 for example,) I would give her the number of Cheerios that were the answer, (in this example, 7.)  That was the extent of my idea; I figured she'd eat them and then move on to the next problem.  Instead, she decided she wanted to show me all the different ways she could make that number, (0+7, 1+6, 2+5, etc.) using the Cheerios I had given her.

So, what do I think of workbooks?  They're good occasionally.  They're a great tool in our bag of options, but never over-do it!  I may make R finish any page she begins, but I definitely don't require her to finish any workbook she begins.  We have a whole shelf of different workbooks that I let her choose from depending on her mood and our purposes.  They are great for practicing already learned concepts, but I try not to use them to learn things for the first time.  Mainly this is because I want to take full advantage of all that homeschooling has to offer, and one of the greatest things homeschooling offers is the ability to let your kids learn hands on.  When we first began learning addition, it was always using real objects or people.  (If there are two parents and two kids, how many are there in our family?)  When we were learning about trees, we went outside and felt them, smelled them, looked at them.  We like to get our hands dirty!

But some days I don't really mind "playing school."  :)

Questions?

I was wondering if anyone has any particular questions they would like me to answer about homeschooling here on my blog?  Is there anything you'd like me to elaborate or focus on for a given post?  If not, then I'll just keep on talking about whatever comes to mind or interests me for the moment.

But please don't hesitate to comment below and pose any questions you might have!  I promise I'll do my best to answer them!  :)

Why do I homeschool my kids so young?

After writing yesterday's post about it being an "off-day," I felt the need to clarify something.  I realized that I could come off as a seriously neurotic and controlling or perfectionistic mother.  I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old.  I know I don't need to be doing homeschool yet.  And trust me, we have had plenty of truer "off-days" than the one I described yesterday.

We have had days (particularly sick days) when we haven't done a thing, days when we DID watch TV all day long and I didn't lift a finger to do any chores or encourage any learning at all.  For me, those same days turn out to be the days when I feel the most anxiety.  Those are the days that I am least patient and loving with my girls.  Those are the days that my children argue more and listen less.  And those are the days when I come away feeling absolutely awful about myself.  I try REALLY hard to avoid days like that, but less because I'm concerned about living out some idealistic life and more because I just can't stand the way I or our home feels at the end of it.

Again, for the sake of clarity, why do I homeschool my four-year-old instead of waiting until a more "normal" age?  Because my personality is such that if we weren't officially homeschooling, I would still be looking for intentional activities to do with the girls; things to keep us occupied and busy and make me feel productive; things that allowed us to work together and interact and draw closer in our relationships.  So, for me, it just makes sense to let those activities be school centered.  Why not, when I'm going to be putting forth all this effort anyway?

The key is that we don't keep pursuing any course that is adding stress or straining our relationship.  It requires a sort of nonchalance about what we do and when and how.  I keep general goals in mind and then use all my creative and persuasive powers to make it desirable and fun.  If I really badly want to read a chapter of The Secret Garden, but no matter what I say R isn't interested, I drop it.  If we are working on handwriting and I feel myself losing patience, I take a step back and change my approach, or else bag it altogether for the day.  There are no requirements here, no necessary bench-marks.  Everything we do is extra!