One of the most frequent frustrations I hear among homeschooling moms is that they feel pressured by time constraints. They haven’t completed the day’s lesson in the time they should so they have the option of being “behind” or making everyone finish, regardless of the emotional costs.
I would challenge moms feeling this pressure to first ask themselves a few questions:
- Who is setting your pace?
If the answer is “the curriculum guide”, remember that no curricula can fit your family’s needs exactly, and because you are the only one who knows your children’s individual needs, you reserve the right to override the guide. (Oooh…I like the sound of that–chant it in a sing/songy kind of way and let it become your mantra
)There are advantages to “school in a box” but you must remember that no child is really “in a box” and tailor it accordingly. Let them be who they are in terms of speed and learning ability. This is precisely why the classroom model is weak….it is tailored to “the average child” and there is really no such thing. One of the very big advantages of homeschooling is so we DON’T have to usher the kids through an academic maze in the same time everyone else does it. Utilize your freedom!
- Who defines “being behind”?
A question related to the first, let’s do a little de-programming. Because most of us went through the system, we think in terms of grade levels, school years, and chunks of time. In school, if we didn’t finish a certain subject in a given time period, we were “behind” because it was necessary to keep everyone at the same pace. Not superior, mind you, just necessary.
Time frames and schedules are good and necessary for all of us. But they shouldn’t rule us. Education and the learning process doesn’t have parameters. We can learn in the evening just as well as in the morning if need be. We can learn about the Civil War in the fourth grade or the tenth, and we’re none the worse for it. What we didn’t do today, we can do tomorrow and it’s OK!
Do we simply want to check off an assignment, finish a book or complete “a grade”? Or do we want our children to learn, to retain the natural curiosity that causes them to see everything around them as a “classroom”? I know when I was in school, it was really just about jumping through the hoops to get a grade to complete the year to be able to graduate. And if we’re honest, did we really retain the majority of the information we were given?
I want my schedule, my lessons, my textbooks to be servants, not slaves. It may take a constant reminder of our purpose in homeschooling, but we owe it to our children to attempt to inspire in them a love for learning, not a contempt of “school” where it’s all about getting done.
Practically speaking…
Some moms need more structure than others, for sure. And I am a strong believer in structure. I am going to throw out for you how we handle schedules just for your consideration. Again, every family is different and I think it’s so important to make your homeschool work for you and not try to emulate someone else.
We simply start in the front of a book, whether it’s a text book or a reading book, and we do what I feel is a reasonable amount each day for each child. If we have to miss a certain subject for a certain day, we just pick up where we left off. We don’t try to double up. We school year-round, so technically speaking, we can afford to miss quite a few days of our text book work. We don’t really even keep up with “grades” simply because I don’t see how it serves a real purpose as it does in a school setting. I asses which grade level each child is on and purchase materials accordingly. One may be ready for 4th grade math but still need 3rd grade English. They may be reading 6th grade level books, so it would be more of a burden to try to keep up with grades. (And I keep asking myself, “why” do we need to be in a certain grade?)
This alleviates any stress from feeling “behind”, and truthfully, we probably cover more than is standard in a year simply because of the dynamics of the year-round schedule and being able to do more with fewer children.
One more hint…
Lots of things are taught in text books because a child in a classroom doesn’t have another option for learning them. Learning how to tell time, for example, doesn’t require worksheets. It makes much more sense to a child to learn it in a real setting. All three of my oldest children learned to tell time by asking me about the clock when they wanted to know the time. I don’t ever remember even announcing, “OK, today we’re going to learn to tell time”. The same with counting money, liquid measurements, and many others similar concepts. Even with reading, it was simply a matter of teaching letters, sounds, then “sounding out” the letters together. I have never even used a phonics curriculum to teach any of my children to read and they all read very well.
Sometimes just looking at things more practically can free us up from those pre-conceived ideas about how things must be done. And believing…believing that God has already done an amazing thing inside those little brains, and that you are well-equipped to lead them to the answers they need at the right time!