The "Home" in Homeschooling

"All children are born geniuses. 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently degeniused by grow-ups." Buckminster Fuller
 

You know you’re a homeschooling mom when…

 

You step on math manipulatives on your pre-dawn stumble to the bathroom.

Your formal dining room now has a computer, copy machine, and many book shelves and there are educational posters and maps all over the walls.

You live in a one-house schoolroom.

I thought it would be a good time to talk about a very important component of homeschooling— home—and what homeschooling will mean to that home. I don’t want anyone contacting me in the future and saying, "You never told me!"

Let me say it right up front—yes, your house is going to get messy. Yes, you will quite often not have time to do the all the laundry, and dishes may have to sit overnight. That’s why you will have a better chance at succeeding with homeschooling if the whole family—dad included--is involved. Last week, a homeschooling mom I know confessed to me that she is thinking of quitting. The reason? She feels she can’t homeschool and take care of her house and husband as she should. As much as I enjoy this homeschooling mom and her 4 homeschooled kids, I can’t agree with her arrangement of priorities. The housecleaning will always be there—the children and the homeschooling will not.

All of the "you know when" sayings above have—at one time or another—applied to my family. If fact, they still do. And I hope they continue to apply for at least the next ten years. Our home has become our school and always has various projects and materials throughout. The dining room table is rarely ever clear—if we want to actually eat a meal at it, I have to assign someone to clear it off. The tables in our living room-- ditto. Couches? Ditto. In fact, any available flat surface in my house is covered with books, pencils, paper, laptops, projects, and whatever else we are studying. Housekeeping for my family consists of daily pick-ups and occasional bursts of scrubbing—but sometimes we are so engrossed in whatever we are learning about that neither gets done. It’ll just have to wait until tomorrow.

It took me a little while to realize that if I spent all of my time trying to clean everything up and put it away, I wouldn’t have much time for homeschooling. It takes a lot of valuable time to put everything away, then take it all out again. I will admit that sometimes I hit my limit—the kids refer to it as "Mom’s cleaning rampage" but I try to stay level headed as much as possible.

We do have a schoolroom. A rather large one. But no one does any schooling there—all the kids prefer to be comfy in the living room. We have shelves and workbenches in the schoolroom now, and it’s great for storing craft items so the kids have easy access. The only rooms not affected by our homeschooling are my bedroom and my writing office.

I believe a home should be a school. My children have always had access to paper, crayons, glue, paints, glitter, stickers, scissors, fabric, and whatever else I could provide to spark their interest. Our house is full of Legos and books. So of course they are going to use these things. And make messes with them. Sometimes the glitter gets spilt, or the paint spatters. The books get left open on the couch, and the papers pile up. These are all facts of life for homeschoolers. Remember, our family motto is "learn by doing." And we do. And it gets messy.

Not that it is always easy-- I’m a perfectionist. I’ll admit it here and now. And sometimes we perfectionists can be…challenged. Challenged to lighten up and not take everything so seriously. Not to stress. To stop and smell the roses. To quit trying to put everything away. And to try to remember to laugh—a lot.

If you are currently homeschooling, or contemplating homeschooling next year, I’d like you to visit the Milpitas Mom’s Favorite Jokes website at: http://www.gomilpitas.com/homeschooling/humor/143.htm

It’s where I found the above sayings about homeschooling moms. I found them under the "You know you homeschool when…" section.

It would help if you read all of the entries at the above site—some of them made me chuckle out loud. Humor makes all difficult things easier, don’t you think? Sometimes, it is easy to get so wrapped up in the "have to" and "get it done NOW" mentality, that you lose sight of the wonderful humor of everyday life with children—especially homeschooled children. I try to always stop, at least once a day, look around me, and make a "memory picture." And to remind myself that someday soon, everything that we are doing today will be just a wonderful memory. Nothing lasts forever.

I hope you are enjoying the new summer season as much as we are. With the unusually hot weather, we have been spending a lot of time outside in the yard swings. We have two, so all six of us can sit out in the shade and enjoy each other’s company. All of our rose bushes are in bloom, as are the flower boxes and our home is beautiful.

We’ve been working on the house again—got a lot done this week. We just received the Glass bead kit in the mail, and are all set to learn to make glass beads. The bookbinding stuff is here, and the Tri-loom weaving books are on the way. It looks to be another wonderful homeschooling summer. I hope yours is too.

Resources:

Milpitas Mom’s Favorite Jokes : http://www.gomilpitas.com/homeschooling/humor/143.htm