Homeschooling and the spring wiggles/ year-round homeschooling.

It’s like night and day, cold and hot, white and black. Kids who can sit still and concentrate on their school work when it’s 32 degrees out with snow on the ground absolutely can’t keep their bottoms in the seat when it’s sunny and 79! I saw a perfect example of that between last week’s spring snow storm and this week’s return to seasonal temperatures!

Thinking back to my own school days in regular school, I remember longing to be outside instead of in the class room too. I remember letting the teacher’s words drift over my head and figuring I’d just try to pick up what was going on by reading the textbook – later! I thought it was silly then and I think it is silly now to have young energetic bodies and minds stuck inside when everything in their nature is calling them out!

This isn’t just a problem for our regular institutional school friends. A lot of my homeschool friends who suffer from gotta-get-all-of-the-workbooks-finished-itis have it too! They push hard on their children to get all the blanks filled in so that they don’t have to do school again until September. Some of my friends are even done now but many of them are feeling burned out from the effort!!

I’m finding as I get older, I’m not about the pressure any more. Guidelines and deadlines are nice and life presents enough of them on their own (April 15th anyone?) without my adding artificially to them! So for my own sanity and for the sake of my children’s education, we homeschool most of the year, but with frequent breaks during the summer. So if my children just aren’t into it today because it’s one of the first freaking nice days we’ve had this spring who am I to argue? We did our math and then they were free. We’ll make up some of the stuff we missed later this week when the expected rain clouds roll in!

I also think that in spring and summer it works well if you can use the extremes of morning and evening. I will try to get my kids up earlier to do math, phonics, copy work etc. in the morning so it’s done. If at all possible, science will involve something outdoors! The cool of the evening is the perfect time for literature, and I would include the neighbor kids and dad too if they want to listen.

This all reminds me that homeschooling is a LIFEstyle with the emphasis on LIFE!

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