Mama Learns to Home School

Play. Creativity. Art. Music. Games. Recess. Story time.

I still have an inner voice that tries to scream out (I think I might name her Karen) “That isn’t school!”

And yes, Karen, it is true that playing and drawing are not the same kind of school that we remember from the 90s. Although, I don’t remember much about my own kindergarten experience and I’m largely drawing on memories of years later, probably from fifth grade onward. But my formation of what an official education looks like is based on an experience mostly in public schools. And, I did get an adequate education that lead me to my current love of reading and constant curiosity. So, all in all, it wasn’t terrible and had a lot of merits. We could argue this type of school experience doesn’t exist anymore, but I’ll skip that for now.

We went from around 8 to 3 with very, very short breaks. I remember not having time to stand in line to both purchase lunch and eat it, or go to both my locker and the bathroom between classes. Getting a tardy was a disciplinary mark. I strived constantly to never, ever make a teacher unhappy with me. So, it was quite a stressful time and those memories are a big reason why I decided to homeschool my kids.

I just want the tempo to be better. I want education to be a delight and not a stress. I desire for them to learn to learn and then fill in the blank hours of their days not just now, but forever, with what delights them.

So, this year when I started with my first ever year of homeschooling, I thought that would come easily. But in fact, I daily had to fight it out with myself internally over what an official school day looks like. At the end of the day, if I had not opened every single one of our curriculum books in each subject and finished everything in the teacher’s manual and the student workbook for that lesson, then I had a voice in my head saying “you didn’t actually do school today, did you?” But, as the year went on, I learned that I could keep reminding myself of my reason for homeschooling. My reason was/is to preserve the delight of learning for my children. The very reason that I wanted to homeschool was to avoid forcing my six-year-old to do an hours worth of math when she was frustrated after 10 minutes.

We simply do not have to do an hour of math today. The only reason that we would do that is because someone else somewhere decided that that is the type of math that a child her age should be doing and that is how long she should be doing it. Their opinion of what is important in education is no more valid for my family than my own. In fact, it’s less valid. My opinion of what is important is the deciding factor for our homeschool. (Well, in combination with my husband!)

So as the year draws to a close for most children of public school, they may have learned more math skills than we did. Or, some kids in those classes may have learned more while some kids were struggling and found themselves left behind, never actually mastering all of the concepts that rolled into their books as the year went by.

I know for sure that each concept that we flipped through was mastered AND we maintained a level of joy and excitement for school.

My daughter still asks me even on the weekends if we can do school today. There is no sweeter teacher-joy than knowing that she eagerly wants to do school. When I asked her about doing tutorial and co-op again next year, she looked at me and she said “no mama, I want to homeschool again!” Obviously, we have a little misunderstanding about what that means, but she was afraid we weren’t going to homeschool! And here I am afraid she’s missing out by not going to a bigger school with more rigid scholastics.

It brings me so much joy that I’ve made a choice that has preserved her joy for learning for another year. Each year will bring its own choices and challenges, and we may not be able to do this forever. We will pivot if needed. But for today, I am full of gratitude thinking of our plans for first grade.

Speaking of that, when will first grade start? I don’t know. I think that we might be your round homeschoolers. We took a long break in November and December because honestly it was a super busy time (so. many. events.). I wasn’t feeling well mentally, and I wanted to slow down enough to enjoy that time with my family without the added pressure of curriculum. We still did arts and crafts, story time, she read to me from cvc books, we went to church a lot where we learned about holidays and Jesus, we went on outdoor play dates with our friends and a weekly tutorial with other kindergartners. So lots of learning was done, even though we didn’t crack open a single curriculum teacher’s manual from November through December. When January came, I was excited to start again with those lessons from Math with Confidence and All About Reading.

When I look back at where she was with reading at the beginning of the year and where she is now, I am brought to tears. I just can’t imagine how, with such a relaxed pace, that we went from just knowing alphabet sounds in August to sounding out multiple syllable words in April. She surprises me by reading words with phonics principles that we haven’t covered yet, and her brain is starting to map out how reading works even without me teaching every single digraph or unusual sound that is possible with each combination of letters.

Her brain is designed to do this, and I just have to guide her to the right approach and attitude. So, for my voice (now named Karen) in my head telling me that it wasn’t good enough… I want to remember and confirm that yes, it has been beyond good enough, and in fact was everything I hoped it would be.