I recently listened to an episode of the Read Aloud Revival podcast (which is one of my favorites, highly recommended) and Sarah Mackenzie, the host and a veteran homeschooler, was sharing some of the mistakes she made in her early years of homeschooling. Number five on the list was "thinking that my homeschool needed to be extraordinary." She says in this episode,
"We see them on Instagram: moms who go on epic field trips or who read all the books or who garden and homestead and raise chickens and grind grain or bake bread or do amazing crafts or take amazing nature hikes or seemingly do all of these things combined."
But she goes on to explain what we all know, deep down, to be true - we can't do everything, even though we might try, and even those "Instagram moms" who might appear to be doing Everything And Then Some most certainly either a) have a lot of outside help in the form of grandmothers or nannies or, more likely, they b) have just as many mediocre, ordinary areas of their life as you and I do - we just don't see them.
This encouragement is needed and truthful, and it reminded me that I do not want any readers to think that we are somehow extraordinary or "have it all together" or that "homeschooling is fine for you but it could never work for us"! Instead, I would like to share a glimpse of our Real Homeschool Life so you can see that much of it is truly ordinary, even mediocre, and yet it still works. This is good news because it means you could do this too. No superpowers required!
My suspicion is that every homeschool family has a few things they do really well (which is usually what they end up talking about and sharing on social media - myself included!), several subjects in their homeschool that are quite mediocre and ordinary, and a lot of things that are not important to them and don't happen at all. The problem, of course, occurs when we see many families each sharing a few of their priorities, at which they excel, and we then combine them all together in our minds into one Ideal Homeschool Family and imagine that we must do all forty-eight of those items in order to be a good homeschooler. This is neither true nor helpful.
First and foremost, The Family Situation. Every family's circumstances are unique and will affect the way their homeschool looks and operates. If we had more or fewer kids, more or less money, relatives in town, a different job, lived in a different location, or any number of possible different circumstances, our homeschool would look different!
Here's where we're at now: we have five children, ages ten and under, at five different stages of growth and development and all with their own individual strengths, weaknesses, and needs. The grandparents all live out-of-state so we do not have regular help from them that we can depend on (although they are all lovely and very helpful when they visit!). I have responsibilities at church, at our homeschool group, and on this blog which all take time. My husband works hard as an engineer, and while it's not the sort of income that would encourage us to eat out every week or take frequent exotic vacations, so far it has been more than enough for our needs and I am very grateful that I have not been forced to take another job (besides the Mothering Job which is already full-full-time). We live in southern Wisconsin near a large metro area, and while we do our best to get out in nature, our life is definitely more city than country.
What do we do well in our homeschool? I would say we do a really good job reading aloud. Every single weekday we read part of a chapter book during lunch, and *most* days there are several picture books thrown in too. The kids and I enjoy this and it is just a part of our routine, all year long! I think we also do a good job getting outside and enjoying nature together, and, this last year especially, music has grown to be more of a priority in our home (through choir, piano, and listening and singing together) - which my pianist husband and I are loving! I love cooking and having the kids help in the kitchen, so putting tasty homemade food on the table and eating dinner together is a priority for us. We do a pretty good job spending time together as a family, having long conversations with the kids, and making sure they understand what the Bible says and why it matters to them.
What are doing okay at? These are areas that either don't come quite as naturally to me, or have been hard to fit in, but we are still working on them. Math comes to mind, as I talked about at the beginning of this year. Housework and cleaning is another area - it's definitely not my strong suit, and most of the time our house is messier and less organized than I would like it, but we keep working at it and are slowly improving. You are quite welcome to drop by unannounced some morning and judge me based on how my house looks - I assure you it will increase your confidence dramatically. Science and History are pretty ordinary around here - we read books about them together but don't do much else. Handwriting is another mediocre subject; we've been working on it, but I have a hard time staying ahead of the kids (they all started writing early, before I could teach them how to form the letters) and I've tried to correct some of their bad habits but it hasn't been entirely successful. Finally, although we love our CC group, we are not good classical educators and we don't review the memory work at home.
What do we not do at all? No sports, other than sporadic swim lessons. I had good sports experiences as a child, and we most definitely want our children to be strong and active and confident in their bodies, but at the same time we cannot easily fit them into our schedule at this time and I value a calm weekly schedule more than I value sports involvement. We also don't do any craft projects besides the occasional one at Christmas - they get enough when Grandma visits and through Classical Conversations. I do not bake bread, I'm a lousy gardener, we don't have any pets, I don't sew, I don't research natural health remedies, we don't take many field trips, we don't do notebooking, and our kids have not learned to knit or crochet or cross-stitch or type or use power tools or speak any foreign languages. This is not an exhaustive list. Let me know if you are not sufficiently convinced of our mediocrity and I will send you a longer one.
However, not one of these things are bad. NONE OF THEM ARE BAD! Many of the things we don't do might be priorities for you, and vice versa. Some of them might later become priorities for us in a different year, at a different season of life. The point is simply that we don't do everything, and neither will you, and it's okay. In case you did not know, let me assure you that public and private schooled children are not doing Everything either. All children who reach adulthood will have gaps in their education, because the world of knowledge is increasing exponentially and no education can cover it all. The difference with homeschooling is that you get to choose where the gaps will lie.
I hope this is encouraging! We most certainly are not doing everything, nor do we excel at every subject. I sometimes wonder if we are doing enough (whatever that mythical "enough" might entail), but it's generally a useless question because we are doing as much as we can do. Anything that doesn't happen on a given school day is not because Mom was sitting on the couch watching Netflix; it's simply because we ran out of time and more important things carried the day - as they should.
And now I am going to contradict myself and tell you that, in spite of the ordinary days and the bickering between siblings and the mountains of dirty laundry and the days-old noodles stuck to the floor, there is a bit of magic, a touch of the extraordinary, in homeschooling. "But, Emily! You just said that your homeschool doesn't have to be extraordinary!" Yes, I did, and I still mean it - in the sense that you need not feel pressure to cover All Subjects Before Graduation or provide Daily Amazing Experiences for your children. The magic I speak of is not in how perfectly behaved the children are (mine are not), nor in Mother being a marvelously patient teacher (HAHAHAHA), nor in the carefully curated curriculum that is joyfully finished every semester from the cover to the appendix (an Unachievable Fantasy). In short -- it's not up to you. Whew!
What is extraordinary is simply the choice to be together all-day-every-day in a culture that would rather shuttle children off to the nearest Facility For Keeping Them Out Of The Way While Adults Do More Important Things.
What is exceptional is rebelling against our entertainment society by pursuing a life with fewer screens and more books; a life with a little less hurry and a little more connection.
What is magical is filling your child's mind with stories and ideas and beauty and God's glorious creation - however you might choose to do so - and then seeing the fruits of this in their lives, little by little.
Giving them a childhood - with time to be little, and time to be silly, and time to be bored and creative and annoying and fascinating and adventurous and curious - that, my friends, is anything but ordinary.
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