Hope For Your Homeschool: School and Home Are Different

If you are thinking about home education or have already decided to embark on this amazing journey with your children, one thing to keep in mind is that "school" and "home" are different.  Schools were started to organize, train, and educate groups of children from multiple families in a central location and schools became an institution of our modern society.  Schools are effective and efficient for educating large groups of students, as well as helping parents who need to work to care and watch over the children during many work days.  I loved being a music teacher to elementary children in a brick and mortar school before I had my own kids and I was sad when I left my job there, even though I was excited to be able to be a full-time mama to my first baby.

Home is a whole different thing.  In a healthy environment, home can mean a safe place for everyone in the family, a place to relax and be yourself, to be real.  The word "home" can evoke deep memories and meanings for people, many that are filled with comforting and loving thoughts.  Home is a place that we sometimes long to be, with those that we love dearly. It is a place where we are known intimately.

The term "homeschool" combines these two words with very different meanings in an attempt to describe a way that some families choose to educate their children at home.  It has been very unusual for so many parents this past spring, during the COVID pandemic, to say that they are now "homeschooling".  I used to wait to open up to people about our home education journey, but now I have become the expert and the person with experience in this arena.  So many families are struggling with "school" at "home" through e-learning and they are trying to figure out if that is really the right thing for their children.

Using Your Home

I can't tell you what is right for your particular children, but I can encourage you to look at the benefits of being at home.  If you have chosen to keep your kids at home for school this year, use your home to your advantage!  You may feel more comfortable with a designated "school" area so that your kids can understand that they will have times when they are supposed to focus on learning and school type work and that's perfectly okay.  I did the same thing!  However, you can also use other parts of your home or tools that you have there naturally.

For instance, we really scheduled our days around our meals!  Breakfast signaled the start of our learning time as the children were eating, I would read aloud at the kitchen table.  We would usually do work together in the morning and always had a longer break for lunch, where we would eat and then each have our own free time for a little while before we got back to work again.  After our lunch break, I usually worked with each child individually and we would have a mid-afternoon snack and wrap up our school day together.  Then, the kids had some free time, while I did other tasks, before we ran errands or started preparing supper. So, planning chunks of focused learning time around your meal schedule is pretty natural.

Although we had a more traditional "school area" of our basement, with tables, chairs, computers, and bookshelves, we would also go upstairs to a comfy couch for read aloud time.  When the kids were little, we had lots of imaginative toys, puzzles, games, and activities that they could do as part of their school days.  We read many wonderful books and I've kept quite a lot of them to share or pass on to others later.  We also had a mini trampoline that the kids could take turns jumping on while we practiced memorizing math facts or other rote memory work.  I would toss them a ball while they jumped.  One year, we would create an "airplane" with folding chairs to "fly" us to another country when we learned about world geography, we even had little "passports" to stamp each time.  Our kids also loved growing up with their dogs by their side and playing with them in the yard during "recess".  These are really cool parts of our home that the kids would not have experienced the same way in a "school".

Use your home to benefit your school.  Don't feel like you have to confine learning to your designated school area alone.  To me, "homeschool" or my preferred term "home education" is really about a lifestyle of learning all the time, throughout the day.  Don't be afraid to do messy art projects, crafts, cook with the kids in the kitchen, play games, read together, play music that everyone can listen to, go outside and enjoy being outdoors, and use your home to your advantage.  Your children can enjoy the peace and comfort of home even while they learn each day and they can experience joy while learning.

Resources

Some great resources about using your home as a learning environment are Sally Clarkson's Educating the Wholehearted Child and Julie Bogart's The Brave Learner.  Both of these women have been virtual mentors to me through books, online discussions, podcasts, and social media.  Both have a wealth of knowledge to share about these ideas.

 

Your kids can learn so much at home, even if it doesn't exactly look like school!