Recently, I was interviewed for a podcast about homeschooling. I was nervous. They sent me the questions ahead of time, and because we scheduled the interview quite a ways out it put me in a somewhat weird position. I read the questions right before my daughter started attending school, but we did the interview didn’t take place until she had been in over a month.
One question in particular stressed me out. They wanted to know if we still planned on implementing any home education stuff around the school schedule, and if so, what we would do.
My gut reaction was “absolutely nothing.”
Why?
Well, I reasoned that kids need lots of time for free independent play, overscheduling can be a real problem for today’s kids, and me planning lessons “after school, on weekends, or on breaks” would cut into that too much. I also figured that school would be really demanding overall and I didn’t want to contribute to stress! Frankly, we “did school” for a maximum of 3 hours at home, and she would be at school for 7 (and only a small portion of that would go to lunch and recess). Kids are people, and people need breaks!
Long before we committed to trying school this year, I was in conversation with my partner about it and floated the idea in a homeschool group. I mentioned that I would really miss home educating, and several people encouraged me to think of it as letting the school tackle the “boring” subjects (reading and math I think is what they meant), while I could do the “fun subjects” at home. I frankly thought that sounded bonkers. If I was going to give this school thing “the ol’ college try” I would have to just let go.
Two months in, I am surprised by what feels different about having a kid in school, but also by what does not. In fact, over the last two months, educational activitis have krept back into our routines in a very organic way. And while I’ve never considered myself a full on unschooler, I thank having some grounding in an “unschooling lite” philosophy.
Because when you stop cateorizing “fun time” as mutually exclusive from “learning time,” and when you stop grouping types of learning into “boring” and “fun” subjects, there is this openness that allows for so much learning and enjoyment of learning. In fact, I find myself thinking about her experiences at school the same way an unschooler might think about any experience! Kids can learn in all kinds of different environments! She’s not required to master anything specific there in my mind, and I’m just as interested in her learning new recess games as I am in the multiplication tables (ok, almost as interested).
I’m no longer requiring myself to be ready to teach multiple subjects a day, it’s true. But I’m absolutely still homeschooling. Here are just a few of the home education things that have found their way back into our lives.
Phonics and morphology practice
My daughter’s school asks that students do 20 minutes of reading at home daily. For the first couple of weeks I tried to do it the way I imagined other parents would: the kid picks the book and simply reads it to the parent, who corrects mistakes. This was frustrating for my kid because she didn’t have all the tools she needed to read the books she wanted to read. It was frustrating for me because she started guessing at words rather than sounding them out.
So instead of just jumping into books, what I have started doing is taking the books that interest her, and pulling out the longer words to break up into syllables and do activities with. Then I type up a passage from the book in a larger (less intimidating) size, and she reads it right after attacking the phonics (and some morphology) in isolation. After she reads it in the larger size, she’s ready to read it in the book. She’s still reading, but it’s a better use of her time and allows her to actually move her skills forward.
And yes, it feels exactly like homeschooling.
World History
I’m a big fan of world history first, because our kids aren’t just citizens of one country or community, they are part of the world! And since history is all connected, teaching it in isolation can create a false narrative. So far in our homeschool, we’ve done ancient history, and some “medieval” history, using History Quest and a few other resources. I thought we would drop this for sure, but as history is a pretty fun subject and her school’s social studies program for the year is very focused on local issues, we started reading History Quest Middle Times on weekends. We don’t do all the activities we used to do for history because time is an issue, but we’re still excited to learn about the postal service in the Mongol Empire!
Read Alouds
Do you ever stop reading to your kids? Maybe one day she’ll tell me not to but until then, I’m happy to keep it up.
Extra math practice
Math seemed like the one subject that I would definitely just let the school handle. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Last year we established a pattern in which she could earn extra screentime by doing extra math work, either on the free online program Zearn or in her Math with Confidence workbook. Once school started, she wanted to keep that option on the table. And it’s worked out beautifully! She’s not at the same points in these programs as she is in school, so it functions as review, and a way to tackle math concepts from a slightly different angle.
Arts and crafts
This was one of my favorite parts of home educating, which probably isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows me. Honestly, this is probably the aspect that we have kept up the least, interestingly enough! She has an excellent art teacher at school, and the set up and clean up after art projects can make finding the time for them a little harder.
And yet, we still do art together at least once every couple of weeks.
Special Interest learning
I’ve always encouraged her to follow her curiosity and learn about the world around her, whether that means trying experiments, watching youtube videos and documentaries, or checking out cool books from the library. She has two parents with ADHD who always have a special interest they are deep in research mode about, so it’s a very natural and normal part of our family life.
Currently, she’s very busy making stop motion animations with lego pieces and is writing a live action movie with a friend.
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A social studies program that leans heavily into local issues sounds super rad! I really wish my schools did something like that growing up (maybe they did as part of an extracurricular or something, but certainly nothing I can remember in the everyday classroom).