Ready to throw in the towel with all this school-at-home stuff? The end is nigh, my friends! (Excuse the language. I’ve been watching alot of Downton Abbey, lately.) Some of you may be considering homeschool for next school year, but concerned that you can’t do it yourself. I’m here to tell you — you can!!
First of all, homeschool – real homeschool – looks nothing like what you’ve been doing the past few months. But that’s a topic for a different post.
You may be nervous that if your kids aren’t doing worksheets, they’re not learning. I spent a lot of time before I started homeschooling reading homeschooling literature about how children actually learn. What I learned was that 1) kids are learning all the time and 2) you are never going to be a perfect educator, but you know your kids best and that makes you a super-qualified teacher. That being said, there is lots you can do that is considered “school” even without the formal instruction you think they need. By no means a comprehensive list, herein are some of my favorites.
- Read-alouds. Pick one book that you remember enjoying as a kid, or do what I did, and pick a book that has a movie version that you can watch when you’re done reading the book. These are usually best done first thing in the morning, during mealtimes, or at bedtime. (Pro tip: I found a few free books on Audible and sometimes press play while my kids eat lunch. They get “read to”, and I get some peace and quiet – win-win!) We usually do ours just before bed to help motivate the kids to go through their bedtime routine with the promise of read-aloud time at the end. So far this year, we’ve read The Phantom Tollbooth, Because of Winn Dixie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr. Poppers Penguins, Pippi Longstocking, and we are currently working our way through The BFG. Also, it isn’t important that your kids are sitting at rapt attention while you read. For some of my kids, their hands need to be busy in order to quiet their brain enough to listen. That may mean brushing a doll’s hair, tinkering with legos, or playing with kinetic sand. Whatever it is, it should be quiet enough that you don’t have to strain your voice to read aloud.
- Baking or Cooking. Baking or cooking together is a time-honored homeschool activity to help hone your kid’s math skills. You don’t have to do anything fancy, like convert a recipe from the metric system to the American one. Just bake! Measure the ingredients together. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. (A Duncan Hines mix requires measuring too!) And then enjoy the treats.
- Poetry Teatime. This one is one of my favorite suggestions from my all-time favorite homeschool blogger and expert Julie Bogart, otherwise known as The Brave Writer. It’s just like it sounds. We get a few books of poetry out at the table (Shel Silverstein and Jack Perlutsky are my favorite kids poetry authors but any kids poetry book will do) with tea and cookies or brownies or whatever floats your boat. Everyone takes turns reading a poem or picking one for me to read to share. You don’t have to explicate it afterwards or find the hidden meaning. Just have fun takings turns reading, and laughing, together.
- Friday Freewrite. Another favorite of mine from Julie Bogart, we pick a topic to write about once a week where the kids have to write for 10 minutes uninterrupted. The assignments are not graded. The topics range from “What would you do with 3 wishes?” to “What is your greatest fear?” to “If you had one place and time to go to in a time machine, where would you go and what would you do there?” No matter the topic, they have to write for at least 10 minutes. I like classical music playing in the background, but my kids, not so much. No bother. We do what works for them.
- Use TV as a tool. This year in science, we are learning about weather. We have some good days and some bad days, but I gotta be honest, my kids were much more interested in last year’s science topic – zoology. I myself was getting bored, and I knew that was a bad sign. So when we got to tornadoes, I turned to my old friend YouTube and watched every episode of Tornado Chasers we could find. Science for the week: Done. A nature show can be just what you need to reset if you’re having a hard day, without the guilt of another episode of Captain Underpants.
- Let them play. Today, we didn’t do school at all. In the formal sense, that is. This morning, the kids helped me organize their rooms, then they watched Lego Masters, tinkered with their own Lego creations that have been taking shape throughout the week, and created treasure maps for each other to follow. Am I sort of concerned that we didn’t “do school” today? Kind of, but I’m also counting today as a win in terms of building my relationship with my kids.
Remember, you know them best. And this time when they’re still young is time you’ll never get back. Love them. Hug them. Look them in the eyes. These are the things that matter. That’s it. Everything else is commentary. If there is one thing that’s important these days, it’s maintaining a sunny atmosphere in my home (or at least a partly-cloudy one). If my kids go to sleep feeling loved, that’s enough for today. As a matter of fact, it’s more than enough. It’s perfect.