Soundtrack for Springtime Homeschooling

SPRING FEVER! Out here in the west spring has arrived! Early and warm, it's making hanging around indoors to "learn something" next to impossible. If you are pulled in the direction of throwing off shackling schedules, here are some song lyric excerpts to roll (and rock) with.

"You Learn," by Alanis Morissette

You live, you learn
You love, you learn
You cry, you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn
You grieve you learn
You choke you learn
You laugh you learn
You choose you learn
You pray you learn
You ask you learn
You live you learn.

and "Rock Star" by Smash Mouth

So much to do, so much to see
So what's wrong with taking the back streets?
You never know if you don't go. Go!
You'll never shine if you don't glow!

I know, I know. These are hardly classic works of musical genius. But they make great ballads of escape from whatever is holding you back! Go live and learn on the roads less traveled. Have an adventure or two. Write your own catchy lyrics of rebelling against the status quo! Sometimes THIS sort of learning is just what the doctor ordered for spring fever! Enjoy the remedy!

Cleaning Tips for the Clean at Heart

Isn't it wonderful that God looks on our hearts! In my heart He is sure to find a well-ordered home....

This is a follow up post to another post I did many moons ago titled House Cleaning, a House of Order, and Homeschooling. Interestingly, housecleaning comes up often as something most intimidating to moms about homeschooling. "How do you ever get/keep a clean house?" they wonder. Mostly, as they are NOT homeschooling, or even over at my house as they are wondering this, I assure them I don't. It is rather difficult to live learning in any meaningful way without getting something out. And as we are here and learning, chances are if you stop by, everything will NOT be put away, which seems to be our cultural definition of "a house of order."

If my first post, I call into question that "things put away" is really what is meant by "a house of order." If you are interested, click the link above.

THIS post is for moms who DO homeschool and want to have a cleaner home than they currently enjoy. In other words, if you are already a "neat freak," you can skip this post because you have me beat! If I come over to YOUR house, I will revel and marvel at the order and beauty. And be secretly a bit jealous, because if anyone is clean at heart, it's me!

On the other hand, if you don't value having things put away, when I come to YOUR house, I will feel myself relax a bit in knowing my kids and the disaster they can leave in their wake won't be offensive to you. AND I will be secretly jealous of your ability to go with the flow and let go of the fleeting ideal of "clean."  

Now everyone knows how much jealousy is secretly in my heart (maybe it's NOT so great God is looking there!), I'll pass on to you my pointers on our "cleaning system" that has worked for a few years (NOT some incentive fad that my kids have yet to burn out on) and has brought our home into a livable level of orderliness.

First tip: give away things that have lost utility for your family. In our house we have a box high on the laundry room shelf where I can just toss clothes, toys, books, even kitchen utensils that I come upon while going about my day, look at, and think, "How is that out? We never use it!" Then, rather than return it to it's place, it goes in the box. (Which is high to prevent other family members from second guessing my snap judgement.) Yes, I do make the call in an instant, and I have made bad calls. But most things cost less than $5 to replace, should we discover we really, really DO need whatever it is that is gone. And meanwhile, less of life is spent tending to STUFF that keeps us instead of us keeping it.

In our case, this is not a large box, but it gets full about every month or so and then I toss it in the back of the car and drop off it's contents when I'm in the neighborhood of our local Deseret Industries.

I also make these snap decisions every time I help my kids organize the toy closet, or clean their rooms. Clothes that don't fit right, have a hole that bothers me, or cease to look good on whomever is wearing them disappear. If they are in decent enough shape to pass on to younger siblings or to friends, they are still placed elsewhere so I don't have to spend any time remembering, "that is for so-and-so."

This does mean we don't have a lot of stuff. Which brings me to my next tip: If your home allows, keep toys and clothes in separate spaces. We don't have toys in bedrooms. With the exception of a few items that are breakable or contain small pieces that should not be separated, all our toys are in our family room/play room. "All our toys" is about 3 shelves worth. Yes, we don't have a lot. But no toy is neglected. (And actually we DO have more than 3 shelves worth. But I keep toys in storage if I think they are worth keeping but MY kids seem to have lost interest. I may get rid of these stored toys some day, but in the meantime, it's nice to think I have something for grandkids to play with.)

Anyway, my kids share rooms. They aren't older, so we fit their clothes nicely in a few drawers and in their closets. They each have a drawer for their "treasures" - those toys that they want to keep safe from being lost or broken, and space for their "collections," but that is ALL that is in their bedrooms.

This means when friends come over that all the "play" happens in one spot. We have as a rule that friends don't go into bedrooms, simply because there is nothing in the bedrooms. Now my son is getting old enough that he tends to chat with his friends more than play with toys, I think we will adjust the rule to have friends in rooms to visit as long as the room is clean. (Which is much easier to keep with fewer clothes and no toys to sort out from everything else.)

We have a cleaning day once a week and on that day we try to have the whole house clean all at the same time so we know how lovely that feels. (I hope the feeling is something the kids pick up on. I would LOVE for them to be clean at heart too.) Outside of cleaning day, we let the toy room/family room be as trashed or as clean as the kids wish to keep it. And their rooms are similarly up to their own standards. Sometimes we try to clean up a bit before we have guests over, but as our guests have kids that pull toys out generally, we don't stress about it.

Next tip: Notice when your house tends to be more clean, and invite friends over around those times! I picked our cleaning day by noticing when the house tended to be the most trashed: after the weekends. So we clean on Mondays and enjoy guests on Monday evenings and Tuesdays. We DO have friends come over on Saturdays and Sundays, but prior to the invite from our family comes the understanding (and family discussion, if needed) that it means work to be done before guests arrive. If they kid gripe, my answer is always that we can forgo friends.

Tip #4: Keep cleaning efforts to emotionally manageable chunks. I remember when we were told to clean up when I was little. The room would be a total disaster and my parents would announce we couldn't come out 'til it was clean. That was DEVASTATION. In the first place, we had more stuff than we could manage, and everything was mixed together. The job we were locked away to do would take hours and we didn't have the attention spans to make it happen.

So not only does it help my kids that their toys are clothes are presorted, and there isn't too much of either, but when I ask them to clean, rather than make that direct request, I can ask them to "put their clothes in their laundry baskets," and follow that with, "now sort through that and get the dirty clothes in the laundry," and when that is done, "now clean off your dresser," "now make your bed," and finally, "get the garbage off the floor." 

"Shouldn't you be able to just ask kids to clean and have them do it?" you may ask. Yes. And when I've stepped them through these steps beginning when they are 3, by the time they are 6, they know how to do it, they know what comes next, they do it by themselves, AND (the best part!) they do it without a break-down or freak-out.

Even cleaning day (which can take anywhere from 5 hours on the mega-cleaning day once a month to one hour if we really focus and the house was mostly pulled together when we begin) is broken down into the kids doing their rooms, the play room, their bathroom chores, and their "after-lunch jobs." Four things. It doesn't sound so bad, right?

Bathroom tips: #1- keep cleaning tools IN the bathroom so when a kid is asked to do the work, the tools are where he or she needs to be; #2 - use liquid soap for body and hands to eliminate soap scum, making sinks and tubs as easy to clean as a wipe down.

Final tip/confession: It is SO worth it to call in professional back-up once or twice a year. After reading my tips, you may be horrified at how little is actually cleaned in the home of someone who claims to be clean at heart. It's true! There isn't time scheduled regularly for the fridge, the cupboard faces, the oven, the storage room, light fixtures, windows, etc. etc. etc. etc.. What I realized after trying to get to these things (and having sesame oil dumped on the carpet while I cleaned the fridge, for example) is that I already HAVE a full time job! I am a homeschooling mother of 4 children. They are my priority. No one benefits from crazy-high cleanliness standards and a mother gone crazy trying to keep them.

So once or twice a year I spend $100 and call in the pros. A team of women knock out in a few hours what would have taken me days of uninterrupted labor, or more likely, weeks of very frequently interrupted effort. While the pros clean, the kids and I join them, doing the stuff that is more easily undone, like the windows, or dusting the floor boards, wiping walls and doors, etc. Then, at the end of a very bearable length of time, I have happy kids, the energy to meet their ever-present needs, and the sparkling, truly clean home my heart craves. For me, this feels like money well spent.

Cleaning is NOT life. That seems obvious, but it is a lesson I had to learn early on in our homeschooling years. I found I could spend hours, day after day, pursuing my dreams of a clean home. I hope my tips might help anyone who feels similarly tempted to waste precious learning and childhood this way. And if that is NOT you, my admiration to your for sensing earlier than I what IS really important in life and finding the strength and courage to live it!

Pros and Cons of Intrinsically Motivated Learning

Learning is it's own reward, isn't it? Don't you love to experience learning that way? We roughly follow "Story of the World" for our history, and present our discoveries in Culture Club and Biography Club - giving us a fun way to remember, summarize, and present what we know. AND act it out - the ever-important costumed aspect of homeschooling in our home.

I was talking to my daughter's online school teacher recently about our woeful lack of progress through the free curriculum they provide. You see, however delightful learning is, when it's done for it's own sake, it can and often does get in the way of completing someone else's program or following someone else's time table.

We were lagging in medieval Rome. I just couldn't get the kids jazzed about it. But we went to Epcot and were fascinated by seeing mini Morocco. So in our learning we opted to skip Rome (for now) and we hopped over to catch a bit of Islam, another snatch of Africa, and supplemented with whatever we could get our hands on about Morocco in the library.

Having felt we wrapped our minds around Morocco, we voted to learn more about medieval Africa, and I hope that circles us back to the rest of Islam. And if it doesn't, between now and whenever, I'll be hunting for more reasons to get interested in all of what we may have missed.

We are blessed to be part of a school that is very supportive and understanding. As I explained this to the teacher, and offered no feedback on their incentive programs to facilitate curriculum completion, the teacher remarked, "I think it's wonderful that the kids can be intrinsically motivated."

I agree. And confess I haven't really tried to push any motivation beyond the fun of learning on my kids. I'm sure they would likely be interested in a "progress party" or their own personal pan of "progress pizza." It's hardly like my kids are immune to such bribery.

But I have concluded what you know doesn't mean much without a compelling, personal, "why this is important to me." In other words, I love that by homeschooling, my children's educations are filled with what is relevant, interesting, and important to MY kids. And I don't care much that whatever that is might be different from YOUR kids, or "Utah's kids" (a phrase that makes me cringe) or any other group of kids.

"But Stephanie," you might interject, spelling my name wrong, "don't kids need to learn that life isn't all fun? It's not all about what interests them? That sometimes they might have to just buckle down and do and learn something because that is what is done and known?"

Yes, kids need to learn this. But this is one lesson in a life-time of lessons, many of which WILL teach that very thing. THAT lesson should not underwrite all other learning. But too often it does. We drill that in so diligently in society these days, and never stop to consider first, that the rest of what we are teaching is weakened when we fail to worry about whether or not children care to learn what they are taught. So not only are we teaching that learning is an unpleasant, irrelevant task, but secondly, when we continuously disengage children from their own sparks of interest, we distance them from the self-awareness that brings meaning and joy to life.

I love homeschooling because we DO learn. It may not always be what some expert has deemed the most important learning of all the learning to be done. But the lesson beneath and through all other learning is always aiming to be: learning is a delightful journey you will enjoy in ALL the ups and downs of life. In fact, learning IS life! Today is a great day to follow the sparks!