Most of us choose the homeschooling life for the freedom it provides. It really is a lifestyle, and you have the power to create a homeschool that works for your children and family.
Here is a list of what we -do not- do in our homeschool:
Have a homeschool room
Although this is a dream of mine, it just isn’t a possibility at the moment in our home. You don’t need a Pinterest-worthy homeschool room to teach your children. To be honest, even when we did have a dedicated homeschool room, we typically did our lessons in the living room, its cozy and inviting and creates the atmosphere of connection and “home.”
Morning Baskets
When planning this blog post I listed many things we don’t implement in our homeschool, morning baskets being one of them. We don’t have a basket where we gather around each morning. We love our slow mornings and use this time to connect and spend time as a family. I will note, we prefer to school in the mornings but –my husband had a change in his work schedule, and he is now home with us in the mornings — we adjusted and now school after lunch. Back to my point… we don’t have that basket full of lessons dedicated to morning work. We do have a shelf dedicated to our Bible, History, Art, Unit Studies, Reading, and Read-Alouds that are all specifically for doing together as a family…this my friends, is a morning basket (in essence). In the homeschool world you really do learn something new every day!
School 5 days a week
We love our 4-day school weeks, do we always meet that goal? No, life happens. When the weather is nice, we do try our hardest to complete our schoolwork in 4 days so we can have a day to enjoy the weather or go on a field trip. Sometimes we have to push it to 5 days, sometimes we only do 3, the most important things are that we get our lessons completed and are able to have the flexibility and adaptability to create a school schedule that works for us.
Take summer breaks
Our main curriculum is designed to be completed in 36-weeks, we start our “new” school year each fall and have the goal to complete that particular curriculum by the warmer months – usually the end of May. We love to be outdoors, but we don’t necessarily take a summer break! We enjoy nature schooling during these months, although this is a (much) slower pace, it is our favorite time to explore and inevitably learn new and exciting things. We continue our read-alouds and Unit Studies as well as a few other supplements we use throughout these months.
Have a strict schedule
Listen, I’m a planner through and through, but here’s the thing: I can plan our homeschool year and it will never go as originally planned. I learned this at the very beginning of our homeschool journey. Being a perfectionist, or type A, just doesn’t work (well) when you are in the homeschool world. Life happens, illness happens, schedules change, burn out creeps in, sometimes you just need to take a break. That’s OK! We definitely have a routine but there are no strict schedules over here!
Assign grade levels
It never fails that no matter where we go or what we do, the questions always come up: What school do you go to? Followed up by: Oh! What grade are you in? My children have become very good at fielding these types of questions, “What school do you go to?” Home. “Who’s your teacher?” Mom. “What grade are you in?” We rehearse this response year by year (to satisfy the population of individuals who are not accustomed to the homeschool world) to answer appropriately, they do respond with a grade level, but our curriculum is based on age ranges not labelled with a “grade level.” Now… I can go off on a tangent about grade levels and the educational standards our education system has labelled as so-called standard… but, for now I will stay on task.
Busy work
I don’t have much to say about this one, except no, thank you. There is no need to fill your time with unnecessary worksheets. I’d rather do an impromptu lesson or go down a rabbit hole that benefits our minds and that we are actually learning and interested in.
Recreate the public school
This is another one of those topics I could ramble on and on about, but homeschooling is a lifestyle not school at home. We chose this lifestyle because we do not want anything to do with the public school system. We are not replicating the public school system. Homeschooling is a completely different way of approaching education. We are creating an individualized learning approach with free-thinkers, who have the flexibility of creating a homeschool how we want it to be – after all, it’s our homeschool.
Compare our homeschool to others
Honestly, this is one I struggled with at the beginning. As a human being, it’s normal to compare ourselves to others… but why? Don’t do it, it’s a trap. Trust me. Create a homeschool that works for you and your family. You don’t need all that fluff.
Attend a co-op
We are homebodies. Simple as that. We prefer to be home. It’s what works for us. We do attend several extra-curricular activities during the week, we are even a part of a local homeschool group that gets together once a week, but these are flexible, and we don’t have to commit to them every single week.
What are things you don’t do in your homeschool? I’d love to hear! Let me know in the comments!
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