Blessed Bedtime

I love homeschooling because being with family gets to be the natural state of our lives.

I've heard many moms remark that they can't wait for the winter school break to be over so their kids can get back to school. I remember feeling excited to GET back to school as a kid because I was sick of being at home!

So do we homeschoolers ever get sick of our families and being with them ALL THE TIME? Despite the impression a few glowing blog posts may convey, the answer is YES!!! That is why I LOVE bedtime! Many of the homeschoolers I know have comparatively early bedtimes for their kids. I've often felt this is possible because we get all day to do all the things we WANT to do - family time, lessons, playing outside. Whatever it is, we get it done and can then BE done!

But I also think early bedtimes (at least for ME) mean mom is ready to be "off the clock," doing whatever it is she WANTS to do which is NOT meeting a thousand real and perceived needs generated by her handful(s) of children.

I've been asked before, and wondered before homeschooling myself, "don't you ever need a break?" I can honestly now answer YES, and I get it when my kids go to bed. It's yet another GREAT time of day to be a homeschooler! :)

Your Beginning Homeschooling Plan in 4 Easy Steps

Like me, many parents make the decision to homeschool before their kids are of school age. This is a great time to begin. It's strength - that your child has nothing to compare learning at home to - is also it's drawback. YOU have nothing to compare what you are doing with either.

When I was in that boat, I found myself asking a lot of other homeschoolers what THEY were doing. I wondered, "Were we doing it right?" "Was there a better way?" and "How will I even know if I am doing it wrong." I suppose I still don't know if I am doing it wrong. My children have yet to venture out into the world to see if they can be of service to society, and discover what their service and skill set is worth.

Still, as I'm asked from time to time to "weigh in" on what a family about embark on the journey might do, here are some "guidelines" I put together the other night: . 1 - Don't interrupt the real "work" your child is up to playing or imagining without your help. I'm not fully aware of all the learning that occurs when children play and imagine. I can only observe that doing so totally engrosses them. That leads me to believe it is serving an important purpose in their development, about which their own minds probably grasp on a much deeper level than my outside "learning agenda." 

When you are asked to step in (often not so verbally distinct, but when your kid becomes interested in your interaction, or becomes needy): 2 - Engage him in what he is interested in. When you are 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 there is an entire world of information out there to make a part of yourself by learning and mastering. The last thing you want a child to take away from his or her learning experience is that the things he or she is interested in are of no value, and that the things that "should" be learned are of no interest at all. 

3 - Keep learning to attention-span chunks - why on earth we think enrolling 3 and 4 year olds in school all day will increase their knowledge is beyond me! The mind has REAL developmental limits to what it can absorb. In fact, down time is critical TO absorption. So try being done learning or discovering before your child's mind shuts off. Keep him or her anxious for the next time you get to discover together! 

Finally, 4 - Repeat as often as you and your child are having fun! If you can only pleasantly discover together once a day, begin there. Don't do as I did - get angry that some things aren't sticking, and make the entire encounter miserable for you and your child. If learning is something to be endured - a sort of torture - why NOT outsource? Then, at least, your relationship with your child can be preserved!

Now you may feel that these 4 pointers are completely obvious or intuitive. If so, congratulations! You are a parent more in tune with your child and the process of real learning than with public opinion or outside agendas. But some of us need the reminder that letting go of anxious time management or ambitious academic curricula will be okay. Yes, you can let go and just have fun. And if it helps, remind yourself that if you and your child, following the approach described above, become ornery or disengaged, you may simply return to a more intense, structured approach. There are no guidelines, truly, beyond discovering what works, and doing that, with your children's best interest in mind.

What Ballet Taught Me About Finding Balance

Have you ever felt that there are simply not enough hours in the day to do all that needs to be done? Oh, am I feeling it now! I woke up earlier than the kids the other morning and had several thoughts: I need to exercise; I have a pile of laundry on my floor (moved from my bed last night) that needs folding; I'd like to blog. And those were just the demands of the few moments I had before kids got up and I was needed elsewhere in the house. How in the world does one balance it all - keeping life going by cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, schooling, and parenting, with all the extras like lessons, sports, me-time, working out, journaling, etc. etc. etc.?!?

My husband always laughs when I respond to any question with the statement, "That's a good question." He has come to know in our 13 years together, that phrase is code for "I don't know." And honestly, I don't know how to keep life in perfect balance all the time.

That bothered me for a while. And then, once again, as has happened so often in my life, I plumbed my ballet experiences and found principles that rang true and applied beyond the stage or dance studio.

I began with thinking about what balance meant to me as a dancer. The complexity of the idea related so well to finding balance in my life. After all, a dancer is not an infant merely trying to stand erect. A mother (or father) finding balance is more complex than a six year old balancing work and play. Dancers balance in all sorts of crazy positions - on their toes with one leg behind them, arms who knows where, and not even looking strait ahead. The position of the arms and legs are like the complexities of multiple people's schedules and a host of worthy priorities.

First lesson: When I feel out of balance, I can see myself as a dancer attempting to strike some seemingly-impossible pose. What we all have to juggle on a daily basis takes strength and practice! But the good news is, with strength and practice, it gets easier. And likely, for us and for the dancer, as we master one level of complexity, another will be added.

Next, I remembered those glorious moments of perfect balance while I was dancing. I felt suspended. Somewhere in the middle of holding my leg up and arms out while on the tiniest toe platform, everything found it's place and the moment of balance FELT effortless. After all, it's much easier to stand if you aren't falling, right? Remembering this about balance helped a lot too.

In life, my expectation of balance was that when if finally did become easier that it would BE effortless. I think that is a flawed expectation. If life is like ballet (and if life can be like football in so many movies, it can certainly be like ballet too!) then perfect balance happens after you work like crazy and even with a bit of luck, and then the dance moves on. It is a moment.

Could it be that finding balance in life also means balancing those moments of control, and controlling the moments of falling? I always felt this was so in ballet. We use, rather than resist, the forces around us as we dance. The best way to get up on your leg is to first let gravity take your weight all the way down. Perhaps a balanced life is not a life always lived in perfect balance, but a life full of perfectly balanced moments divided by the falls, lunges and leaps that make those moments of stillness, of perfect balance, so marvelous to be in and magical to behold.

So I don't know how to balance life perfectly. That is why I'm still asking how it is done, and feeling it's a GREAT question. I'm hoping that a life lived with purpose and intention in ALL the moments will be as breathtakingly beautiful as a full ballet and not just a pretty snap-shot.

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!

Reason #232: Embracing the Season

When we studied Vikings, I learned something quite obvious. They took a winter break. It was too cold for raids. Being up north it was pretty dark too. They brought their animals into their homes and just hunkered down for a few months. And celebrated Yule.

I find myself thinking of the Vikings now at Christmas time. Oh, our town is SO COLD recently!!! I don't know that it's been above freezing for more than a week. And it's dark outside. We haven't let the chickens into our home, but we have noted we haven't seen them come out of theirs. We are hunkering down, and I love it!

I LOVE the winter! It is my favorite season. When you are a kid it's an easy season to love. I remember pretending for hours out in the snow. My dad built us ice-skating rinks in our back yard. Winter meant power-outages at our house, and snow days when my mom would wake me by putting another blanket on my bed and whispering to sleep on because school was cancelled. What could be better!?!

I think for many adults winter loses it's magic, but I was blessed to NOT have a driver's licence 'til I was 20 and didn't own a car 'til I was married. So I was still walking in the snow to and from work. I didn't have to scrape a car, or freeze as I waited for one to heat up. I trudged out, bundled up, into the wonderland of my youth and had streets to myself for quiet reflection and a dash of whatever I was imagining. Inside, I might have the lights off, snow gazing into the blizzard outside illuminated by the street light. (I wrote a poem about this. I'll have to post it if I can dig it up.)

Anyway, the magic lives on for me because I have kids. Kids are the best carriers of the torch of magic. But chatting with my husband today, I realized he isn't so lucky. Not only does he drive to work in a cold car he's had to clear the snow from, but he IS working. He is still out conquering the day. And his day doesn't get any shorter when the sun sets early.

It's not just my husband in this predicament, but MOST adults and even children. No one gets a season off anymore. We have light and centralized heat and so why shouldn't we continue being productive, right? We are in conquer-mode ALL YEAR LONG. Winter is just one more thing to overcome.

But I don't know that we, as a race, are wired that way. In fact, when you look at nature, to be in one setting ALL the time is down-right unnatural. Almost all living things have cycles and seasons. I wonder if the seasonal slump so many feel is really just wearing out from going all the time.

THAT is the beauty of homeschooling. We homeschoolers have the freedom to embrace what IS. (Of course, everyone - working adults and kids in school - has this freedom too. It's just harder to find time to exercise.) Anyway, it is cold. It is Christmas. It might be snowing outside. We might want to snuggle by the fire and read for hours. And instead of fighting all of that, we can embrace it! The Vikings didn't cease to be Vikings because they were hunkering down. And we won't cease to be families on a great quest to discover all life has to teach if we take a moment to relax and enjoy the season. Blessedly, THAT is one of life's lessons. Take a while to learn it well!

Of Broken Bones and Broken Brains

This blog post has existed as a title only for about a month. (And I'm adding it's original title was "Of Broken Arms and Broken Brains." My son suggested the title change. Good call! Loved the alliteration! so there you are.) I thought it fitting to actually write it today, as the same son busted his collar bone yesterday.

The following quote - my inspiration for this post - came from an article on the "benefits of roughhousing." Larry Cohen, quoted below, is a licensed psychologist. You can read the article in it's entirety here.

[When it comes to the issue of roughhousing and safety, Cohen said he prefers supervision and knowledge, rather than too many rules. It's an approach that really set in when Cohen's daughter was younger and climbing around at a playground, and he kept telling her to be careful, over and over. "My friend said 'You know Larry, she's gonna recover more easily from a broken arm than from being timid and fearful her whole life,'" Cohen recalled. "Yes, there's a risk that a child could get hurt, but a loss of an adventurous spirit, a loss of excitement, a loss of confidence is worse than a broken arm."]

So, now my son HAS a busted bone, I can speak to this with some authority.

Just kidding.

What I wanted to say, even before the broken bone, was that the sentiment above rang so true to me, and I find it to be a compelling reason to homeschool. When we homeschool, we DO face the "dangers" of "doing it wrong" - of neglecting the education of our children in one way or another. I suppose when I write WE face those dangers, I really mean our children do. THEY will live the consequences of their educations.

Like well meaning parents hovering near their children on a jungle-gym, we may be tempted to stand over their shoulders as they learn too. Certainly, we don't want them to fail. Failing to obtain the knowledge and skill necessary in life is, after all, far more painful and damaging than most physical injuries will be. So we stress, and "supervise," or outsource entirely to a stressful, ultra supervised environment so our kids will be "safe."

But when we homeschool, we CAN (if we chose to) begin to let our children LIVE the consequences of their educations NOW. We can nurture their adventurous spirits by committing to be more spontaneous and responsive to what THEY want to do and learn about. We can preserve their excitement by feeling our own as we discover things together. And we can allow their confidence to build, both as our children meet with success in directing their educations, AND as they meet with failures. (Yes, even failure can teach them how to manage time better, what they need to work harder on to meet their goals, or, if nothing else, that they CAN cope with failure and disappointment and move on - that failing isn't defining.)

So the next time we are tempted to step in, take over just a little, and "save" our kids from themselves, let's ask, "Broken arm or broken brain?" And make the choice to step back and nurture adventure, excitement, and confidence by allowing our kids to run some risk in their educations. We may be amazed at what their confidence and risk-taking produces!

Of Objectives and Obstacles

Have you ever thought something like, "I'd have a clean house were it not for my kids"? Or, "Were it not for my interrupting children, I could finish a 3 sentence email in under 27 minutes"? Or, "I would be amazingly efficient/organized/clean/social, but I'm too busy just being mom"?

I have had many such thoughts. Many.

Usually they come when I am stressed and TRYING TO GET SOMETHING DONE!

When these thoughts come I often let them trickle into my behavior and attitudes towards these obstacles, my children....

And then sometimes I remember that my children are NOT obstacles. And how did I ever forget? I love how beautifully this story illustrates what our children ARE.

It is said that in medieval Rome, the women used to gather and compare their physical appearances. (Not hard to imagine - don't we now?) Anyway, Cornelia Africana, a wealthy Roman woman (of so high a station that a King sought her hand in marriage after he husband's death), was questioned about her simple dress and adornment. She responded by indicating to her 2 sons and answered, "These are my jewels."

MY children are my jewels. They are my objectives, not my obstacles. Like Cornelia, I have chosen to be responsible for their education. I might have a gloriously fancy home, beautifully worded blog posts and emails, throw amazing parties, and live in a clutter-free environment, but if I fail to value my kids, their development, and our time together, I am poor indeed.

Child-led Learning - HOW

Originally, these thoughts were part of my first entry on child-led learning. I made them a separate post for two reasons. First, it was becoming an awfully long blog post to digest. And second, if one isn't convinced of the why's of child-led learning, the hows don't really matter. In other words, it's easy to feel that homeschooling is a daunting enough task in and of itself. Why complicate it with the additional goal of letting the content and method respond to each child? The schools don't do that, and we all turned out fine, right? In the WHY of Child-led learning I argue why this goal is worth the extra effort. And below I'll confess how that goal looks in my home.

My confession is prompted by these questions: "So, how do you let your child lead when you have lots of them, and none of them can read yet? I can't answer or research every question they think of IF I even heard them?" This was asked by a mom who had read my blog post, Courage to Be.

THOSE are great questions. They reminds me of my knee-jerk opposition to homeschooling when my husband first brought it up. I said something like, "That would never work. I want time for me. AND I want to have more than one kid. I don't think I could meet all the needs at once when all the kids are different ages."

Years later I can answer these concerns only with how I've done it. And while it might not be a formula to follow, perhaps my experience can serve as encouragement to find the hows that work for YOUR family. Because giving up on child-led learning is letting go of one of the best parts of homeschooling.

I interject here that our family's version of child-led learning is not as child-led as some families. Some families really do let their kids do whatever strikes their fancy, whenever. I have nothing to argue against that approach. But it' isn't how our child-led learning looks. There are a few reasons our child-led is less extreme than that. But certainly, if you are coming from a mind-set of recreating school at home, our approach may feel like a more comfortable toe in the waters of giving the kids more control over the adventure we call learning.

My first recommendation: Remember how wonderful it is to wonder.
Not every question needs an answer. When my own kids ask questions I don't know the answer to, I think it's really fun to join that questioning mindset. Can you marvel together? Can you come up with answers together? Inviting your kids to suggest what they think is the answer is a marvelous way to gain insight into their minds. My girls, when I do this, usually suggest fanciful and magical answers. I love this. I love hearing their imaginations run wild.

If the question isn't incredibly important, or if it's a question without a right or wrong answer, these imaginative theories are probably better than any fact that might be rattled off. These answers can morph into stories to share - your family's own fables. Or a wonderful guessing game where each person tries to outdo the next in wild suggestions.

Even if there IS a right answer, depending on the child, an answer which engages the imagination might still be a better answer. Is this encouraging our kids to live apart from the REAL WORLD - from the reality they'd better get used to, because life isn't always fairies and flowers? Yes.

But the cold, harsh realities of life have a way of hunting us down, it seems. Not to mention, if you pay attention, you will likely find some of the cold, harsh realities as themes in your child's imagination. So our kids, as they play and imagine, ARE preparing themselves for the world if we let them. And finding silver linings in rain clouds is a life skill too.

At some point, earlier for some, later for others, mom's best guess or a pretty story isn't enough to answer a question. In fact, some minds hit this point before they are able to read, and that is wonderful too.

Second recommendation: Allow curiosities to rise to the top, so to speak. My oldest used to ask "why" all the time. So much sometimes it was as if the question was an automated verbal response to anything I said. I might not spend too much energy researching answers to this sort of questioning. Not because I didn't value giving my child an answer, but because if the answer was complex, and he wasn't REALLY curious, he wouldn't really care or get anything out of the answer anyway.

But there were "why's" that came up more than once, or that my best guess didn't appease. These "rose to the top." Once there, these can be written down for reference at your next trip to the library. Or used to search for a good youtube video. The marvelous thing is, if YOU don't know the answer, YOU get to learn WITH your child. And most information suitable for kids not reading yet will be delivered in a way that is engaging to all ages on some level. So one child's why can be used to engage a whole family's discovery.

So your schedule may not include a regular science curriculum, but it might include a regular trip to the library. Or a regular call to grandpa, who is a science buff.

Which brings me to: Outsourcing. HIGHLY recommend it! I know in the post on the Why's of Child-led learning I asked why we might outsource something as fun as learning. Most parents who send their kids to school have other things that need to be done. Well, don't we all? We have food to cook, clothes to wash, a house to keep, and the non-learning needs of all our kids to meet. We might find it difficult to learn the science principle well enough to teach, or tricky to find the time to figure out how to make math engaging, or hard to let the house cleaning take a back-seat to a messy art-project. So I am all for outsourcing PART of learning. And one upside of doing so, aside from getting the expertise and enthusiasm of whomever we have outsourced to (AND not needing to cover whatever it is we'd be teaching if we hadn't outsourced), is that when one kid is off getting his math/science/art questions and needs met, we have time to meet the educational and life needs of our other kids. Now, finding help and tutors that are able and willing to allow learning to be child-led and not curriculum dictated IS tricky. But it CAN be done.

And you just might have a science curriculum too. We do. I'm not a science buff so I felt I needed one to explain my kids' science-driven questions. (We've also used a science tutor.) We use our curriculum in a few child-led ways. First, I offer to do science with the kids on a regular basis and see when they take me up on my offer. They have never experienced science as "something mom makes us do" so to them it sounds like an offer to have fun, and I can usually get them to say yes to the offer once a week or so. And WHAT I'm offering is child let too. Rather than say, "Would you like to do science?" I notice what they have been wondering about/experiencing, and my offer sounds more like, "Should we learn more about why our muscles get sore?" or "Let's play with the magnets in our science kit!" So though it may negatively affect test scores, we don't follow the curriculum order but insert it's content into the learning we feel inspired to do.

So that's my first big confession. I use a curriculum in our child led learning. The second is that we follow a schedule at home. Like the pirate code that's more guidelines than rules, our schedule is more of a rhythm that we try to sync up with that follow. And I chose the rhythm, but I based it on what I observed the kids naturally do. My son wants to knock any unpleasant or mandatory tasks out in the morning and have the rest of the day free. So our rhythm includes time for him to self-manage through all of that first thing, and a lot of free time whenever he finishes. And unless we have an engagement, I do mean whenever he finishes. The schedule has time frames in mind - they are broad and generous - but it usually means something like, "When we are done with breakfast, whether it's 8:30 or 10, THEN we'll move on to XYZ." The girls, on the other hand have each other to play with, and when they are well rested, they love to play. I don't interrupt that. Handily, their best play time comes when my boy needs more school support. My daughter gravitates towards school activities after lunch so I support her then. And we all like to relax after working hard, so when chores are done, we have family reading time.

My last confession is that I do require my kids to work on certain subjects. I wait until it seems they are developmentally ready, though. My boy didn't grasp math 'til second grade. So he didn't do math 'til then. He is older now, and math is a requirement. And he self paces through his math instruction online. Or we play a math game. Or I invent engaging story problems when he's bogged down in annoying long division work. (I myself HATE long division, but really enjoy figuring out how much I need to save each month so I have an adequate Christmas budget.) My school-age daughter still is frustrated by doing things anyone else's way, so we are still waiting to work on stroke-order for penmanship. When she gets there, it will be something I require because the muscle memory involved can't be built over sporadic sessions. (Math is another "practice subject" in my estimation.)

If I were more extreme in our child-led approach I would probably wait for the kids to initiate both the interest and consistency in these disciplines. Like I said, I have no objection to doing so. We don't.

Outside of those things which need practice (3 R's),  we are opportunistic in what we try to learn. For example, next week someone organized a cheap trip to a historical reenactment park. Knowing my daughter's interest in poetry and powerful women, I suggested she and I learn a bit about a famous poet/prophetess from the time shown at the park. She'll present what we learn together in our Biography Club, and the next day get to step back into the world her subject lived in. Cool!

So that is how child-led looks in our home. Practicing can be done alone. And we do practice. But a lot of our learning we do together. We don't worry too much about whose suggestion or curiosity it is to do so. It might be mine, or one of the girls', or my son's, or pertain to a curriculum, or relate to where we are going or what we are doing in life. We don't try to find answers to all our questions. We do try to ask more than we can possibly answer, and enjoy both the learning and the wondering. And all this is done in snatches between and woven into the lives we live together. It is a fun, sometimes crazy, sometimes stressful, always adventurous life!

Taste of School

Way back when, when school vouchers were being debated in Utah, one common objection to them was that the taxpayers would be subsidizing private educations, which didn't "seem fair." I thought it was an amusing objective, since the parents using the voucher money were taxpayers themselves. "Well, if you want a private education, use your own money!" It may have been the argument that killed vouchers. And all the people worrying about "fairness" went happily on to spend everyone else's money on their kids' public educations. (Current education figures in Utah put a k-12 education coming in at more than $100,000.)

Homeschooling ranks on the inexpensive side when it comes to alternatives to traditional public school. And yet, sometimes it feels a bit hard to know I'm paying into the public system I'm not using. Like having membership in a club or gym you never hit.

So we have been successfully tempted into schools that promise either their learning supplies/curriculum for free, OR reimbursement for tools/technologies/and curriculum providers of our choosing.

This relates to my confession about being child-led. I need to get to that. But before I do, briefly I confess that both my school-age kids are enrolled in public online schools. For the goodies. I LIKE the laptop, the field trips, the class offerings like Lego Robotics and Digital photography. And I like having access to MY tax money for MY kids.

BUT there are drawbacks, and we ran into one yesterday. My son and I spent a full 2 hours yesterday trying to figure out how to submit 3 simple assignments to his school. Now I understand all technology has glitches, and as a confirmed technologically challenged adult, I should expect more than my fair share. So in the grand scheme of things, perhaps 2 hours should feel small. But that is 2 hours that could have been used in other endeavors.

FINALLY, having completed all the school was requiring of us, I sat back and did my cost/benefit analysis and concluded for all that time, we gained not one shred of knowledge usable in the outside world. (My husband argued we gained software/website savvy. I argue we didn't. The website we were interacting with was unique to the school. All the training pertaining how to use it will be worth nothing once we don't use it.) But before I let my cost/benefit really get me down, I reflected on school as I knew it.

How long did I spend in school for how much knowledge and skill I could use on the outside? Of the 8 hours kids attend school, how much info enhances their being? Really grows their minds and capacities? Maybe no one measures that way. Maybe they don't because the answers would be too painful. So after a frustrating 2 hours, I had to conclude that it was just a taste of school as most know it.

So, SO grateful that MOST 2 hours spent homeschooling yield greater, more meaningful fruit.

House Cleaning, a House of Order, and Homeschooling

I love homeschooling because it allows us to strip away the unessential in learning and life and focus and fall in love with what IS essential.

It's a common complaint among homeschooling families that it's difficult to have a clean house and homeschool. There isn't a break for the house when the mess makers are finally out the door and the parent can begin to repair the chaos left in the wake of the rush to meet school deadlines.

But like recognizing that most of school deadlines aren't about what essential but what is merely convenient, or what is done, cleaning a home has those layers too - arbitrary expectations just waiting to be peeled away.

I begin with the concept "a house of order," and our cultural equivocating of cleanliness with holiness. For starters, I'm not convinced "order" relates mainly to being clean. I don't want to argue that living in a sty is MORE holy. But I think if we want "holy" order, we do things as God does them. So how DOES that work, anyway? Well, God is a creator, and I can't think of one creative process that isn't a little messy. So forbidding our children to create in the name of "order" won't bring us any closer to God, in my opinion.

From the creation of the world, we learn that it took time. It was a process. God did a little each day. He wasn't tossing about rocks and animal parts - tearing every creative element off the shelf at once, so to speak. Rocks had their time. Animals were a different day. And so we CAN teach our kids to assemble what they need and complete their work. So they can be ready to create something new tomorrow. THAT is order: first we create, then we clean up after ourselves. And we even rest. Praise be to God for not leaving THAT out of His role modeling. :)

I try to be very careful to not apologize for the state of my house at any time. I can't imagine God apologizing, had you visited the earth in the first few days of creation, "I'm so sorry. I've just got rock and some water and light right now. I promise, in a few days, it will look great!" So if you happen to stop by when we are creating, be that creation a meal, a blanket fort, or a science experiment, you will see a "mess." I am confident that I am not the mess, nor is the mess me or my children. If our guests have a moment of confusion, labeling our family as "messy people," that is simply unfortunate for them.

I feel confident that we are not a mess because I take the time to teach my children how to clean. THAT is order as well: mom is in charge of our home, she delegates and instructs the children on how to care for it. Cleaning day is Monday. I used to clean every day because I like things clean. But I realized that I was wasting my life on tasks that were undone in less than 5 minutes of fun. I could clean away my kids' childhoods. I could stress that their childhoods interfere with my clean home. But I've fallen in love with another essential: that my kids have the skill to clean, NOT that they have a clean home.

Because I want them to know what clean feels like, we moved all the cleaning to one day, and after the few hours it takes of team effort, I have us all take a moment to walk through the house taking it in. (Please stop by my home Monday afternoons if you want to think of me as a "clean" person. I generally try to have any guests I'm worried about come Mondays or Tuesdays for just this reason.) The kids like our home to be clean. I see the satisfaction in their eyes after their work on cleaning day. But part of our "order" is knowing that children are children. Just like we don't expect creation to be clean, we don't expect children to honor cleanliness above all else.

Speaking of arbitrary expectations, I wonder that culturally, we have an expectation that Sunday is the best day to HAVE a clean home. Saturday is "the day we get ready for Sunday," we sing at our church. And then the song goes on to cheerfully describe all the work of Saturday. I hear adults quoting this song as the reason their families clean on Saturdays. Apparently it's "what is done." I assert that there is nothing holy about Saturday as a cleaning day. If that works best for your family, great. As for me and my house, Saturday means yard work (more training on physical labor and gardening for my kids) but it also means fun with Dad, and getting out in the community to enjoy it's offerings. We don't have the stamina to do it all, and if we really rest on Sunday, the house is a complete disaster by Monday mornings after all that work. We DO really rest on Sunday, so I've moved cleaning to Monday and Saturdays have become much less stressful for everyone, and a lot more fun.

Is it less peaceful on Sunday to relax in a house that has been largely neglected for two days? Yes. But it's also less peaceful to rest in a house you have just cleaned and don't want anyone to use again for a bit so it can stay clean FOR FIVE SECONDS! I've just traded one relaxation for another, and experienced more peace for the trade.

It IS a challenge to homeschool and maintain a perfectly clean home. But we've peeled away that non-essential expectation and strive instead for a house of order. I strive to teach my kids there is a time and season for everything, even a time to make messes. And then a time to clean them up. I lead, even in cleaning, by example, because part of our order is who is in charge and how she teaches. And we live by the order of knowing our limits - what there is time in a day to do, and what there is NOT time to do. We try not to run faster than we have strength. We try not to set "faster" expectations for our children.

 I love the peace doing so brings!

The Upside of a Failing Schedule

One of the comforting sentiments when I began the homeschooling journey was that I would not have to spend as much time teaching as children go to school. We could "cover more ground in less time."

Good, I thought, because that would be exhausting. And I had other things to do with my time. So I set about planning a reduced teaching schedule. Each day would begin with the pledge of allegiance, a song and a prayer. Then we would sing the ABC's while I pointed to the letters. (My oldest was 3 or 4). I don't remember what was supposed to come after that, though I know we did something. But usually by the singing of the ABC's, I was frustrated that he didn't seem to be connecting in his mind the song and what I was pointing to, so we'd start over. Or the phone would ring. Or his little sister would wake up. (She was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad napper.)

At some point I realized that my frustration with our inability to follow even the simplest schedule was getting in the way of our relationship and my son's enthusiasm for learning anything with mom. This may sound very wise, but it was just a bumping up against the harsh reality that I could not homeschool (or parent, really) according to MY capacity to focus, stick to it, persevere, be engaged, or instruct. Why? Because it wasn't about me. The end goal was not that I had tried my best, or stuck to a schedule, or covered certain material, or had taught well. The end goal was LEARNING, and that was the job of my son.

So I backed off and began to notice how it was that he was already learning. When your children are as young as 3 or 4 you can SEE them learning - they are making new discoveries, asking TONS of questions, exploring everything around them. Watching the learning process happen, I discovered 2 things: it was always fun and it was rarely related to "instruction."

I decided that I wanted in on the fun. I scrapped the idea that we had to cover what the other preschoolers and kindergarten kids were learning. (Yes, this process of letting go took all that time, filled with more scheduling attempts and failures.) We began to study what I wanted to learn about - the cultures of the world - and we began to make learning the basics more fun. We went on treasure hunts to find objects that began with a certain letter. Inspired by my son's love of super heroes, I had him put on a cape, fly in, and wipe out the bad guys, whatever the offending letters were, on a whiteboard filled with the letters of the alphabet.

Did we do this every day? No. Our treasure hunt walks came when his little sister needed to sleep and being outside in the stroller would help her. Our games came when he wanted to play and had run out of his own ideas.

We had a blast, learned a lot, and the best part was, this little guy, whom I wanted to keep with me instead of send off to a stranger to be taught, was my best buddy.

He is now 10. He reads. He writes. He still pretends to be a Super Hero. We still study the cultures of the world together because we love it. He and I are still close. I have another daughter who is as old as he was when we began, and a baby the age of the little sister who didn't nap. (And THIS baby is not the best napper either.)

I'm so glad I let go of schedules long ago, because I would be spending so much energy now trying to keep 4 children on one. Now we follow rhythms. I watch when my kids, individually and as a group, naturally play together, naturally need a break or a snack or an outing. I encourage my oldest, when he is fresh in the morning, to hop on the computer and do the stuff he needs to do. (Yes, we have arrived at some drills and practicing. Is it surprising that he handles them much better as an older kid than he did as a 4 year old?) When it's hot outside in the afternoon, I read to them in the basement, or we paint castles made from shoe boxes. When they are stir crazy in the morning, I'll announce, "Let's learn about the BLACK DEATH!" and so we study and imagine. And when one day seems filled with my suggestions, even happily taken, the next I'll pull back and let them sort things out and find what they want to do.

I'm so glad my attempts to schedule our lives failed. Why? Because learning is fun, it is not about me, and it happens regardless of what we think should be going on, if we are wise enough to let it.

The Economics of Homeschooling

This isn't a post about how much homeschooling costs. I don't imagine anyone knows. Well, most homeschoolers know, but the answers would be so varied they could not come under the title, "The Economics of Homeschooling."

But I do want to delve into some costs of education because a friend of mine whom I admire very much recently said that it seemed to her that sending her kids to school was the easiest, cheapest way to get them their educations.

That is certainly one point of view. I commented a year or more ago about the cost of education in the editorial section of a local newspaper. Judging by the comments made in response to mine, many hold the opinion that for what it provides, a public education is a great value.

Interestingly, as of 2010, Utah (where I live), ranking dead last in the nation, spends $6,500 per pupil per school year. (Go here to check it out.) That figure includes costs like administration, but doesn't include things like busing, or the buildings and maintenance of the schools. So a student entering kindergarten this year may expect the state to pay $84,500 for his or her high school diploma. (And of course, that is a low ball park, because per pupil spending increases by several hundred dollars every few years.)

When one considers the knowledge a high school graduate has, the skills he or she has mastered, and the preparation for life it might be said he or she has "completed," I would argue that we are getting very little for the price. It is interesting to do the math and consider what the state is spending on families. When I think that my family costs $338,000 to be state-educated, I can't help but feel that if I were given more say about how that money should be spent, that firstly, my children might have a lot more to show for it, and secondly, that they might show a great deal more for a great deal less. Certainly families who feel they can't homeschool because both parents need to work to keep the family afloat, might have a different experience entirely if THEY got more say over how that figure is spent. (And remember, this figure doesn't represent the physical costs of building and maintaining a school.)

I am not trying to start a movement by sharing this information. But I do wish the public at large would be educated themselves about the costs of our "free" public educational system before they comment on it's value.

I actually am posting because there is a far dearer price being paid in the name of receiving a public education.

When my friend mentioned that to her it seemed the cheapest way to come by an education, I wondered to myself how her children would vote. In fact, I do know this friend has discussed homeschooling with her kids and they largely have voted to stay put in their public school. That is fine. But there is a price. It is this: 2,340 days, or 16,380 hours spent on obtaining the knowledge and skill one derives from a public education.

Lest that seem reasonable, let me further explain that if the average school aged students sleep 8 hours a day, watch TV for the current average of 3 hrs/day, spend 9 hours in school, getting ready for school, and getting there and back, an hour for breakfast and dinner and just an hour on homework, they are left with only 2 hours (assuming they have no lessons or sports or extra-curricular activities) - not solid, not back to back, not uninterrupted, but 2 hours total a day with which to find their paths, their voices, their souls, and their reasons for being on this earth.

THAT is the price of public education.

What are the economics of homeschooling? Spending a childhood on adventure, discovery, and the sort of soul fashioning that will serve our children throughout their lives.