First Week Reflection.

We have officially completed our first week of homeschooling. Many people have inquired about how the week has gone, and it is really difficult to put it into just a few words. This venture really has changed how our entire family interacts and operates. Our routines, our chosen activities, the organization of our house......everything is in a major overhaul! So here are a few of the major experiences and observations that we have had over the past week.

• We love that homeschooling means no more rising at 6:30 and starting your day out rushed and hurried and stressed. We usually get up around 8:30 or so, make beds, and actually enjoy a nice breakfast together. We don't worry about specifically what time we start learning activities....because in so many ways, you look at everything as learning! Usually, it is about 9:30 or 10:00 when we settle into some more structured activities such as practicing penmanship, math, and Bible/history.
• It really feels NATURAL. It hasnt' been hard. It hasn't seemed foreign. It just seems to flow. We have had some points of frustration, but they have been minimal.
• The kids do miss their friends. Hayden, especially, has asked a few times when he gets to go back to "real school." But when we explain that this is how we are going to learn now, he accepts it and moves on. He got to go to a friend's birthday party with all of his school friends on Friday and sees several of his friends a couple times a week at basketball practice and games.
• The kids' reading is thriving! We spend A LOT OF TIME reading books together. One of the things that Hayden really seems to enjoy is when we take the book he is reading and act it out while he is reading. He wants to read these again and again! While it gets a little bit old to act out the same scenes over and over, we really have to get creative and make it humorous!
• We love studying the Bible together. We are almost to the end of the days of creation and the kids have done a series of colored pencil art depicting God's creativity of the world. This will culminate in a trip to the zoo and some animal theme studies on Wedesday. I love the challenge of finding field trips and activities that help them make important connections with the information they are learning.
• With a study of creation under our belts, we are ready next week to launch into the secular "Story of the World" series which really brings history alive starting with the nomads. I can hardly wait to get to the medieval history, as I picked up a great knights of the roundtable/castle PlayMobile set at Target at 90% off last week! This will make a fun, creative series of history lessons for less than $10.00!
• We have rediscovered the joy of our local library! With our crazy school schedules, we really didn't take advantage of the wealth of resources there. Now, we are really discovering the joy of so many resources in one place, and we plan to go weekly if at all possible.
• Play and creativity! One of our main reasons for choosing to homeschool is to ensure that play and creativity and central to our children's learning. They are, after all, the major languages of children! And our kids are reconnecting with play sets (horses, barn sets, wooden blocks, human and animal figures) and enjoying lots of unstructured play exploration time. We are doing lots of drawing and storytelling and painting, and this week we will add puppets and clay into the mix!
• I have fallen in love with Matt all over again as I watch him work with the kids. I love that he has taken the Apologia science material and jumped into it! The kids are loving learning about astronomy, and the photo above shows the very cool model of the solar system that they made together using decorating balloons. He really is a great teacher, and he commented on how "right" it seems to be teaching your own kids because you are so heavily invested in their understanding and development.
• It is true that everything becomes a learning lesson when you start looking at things that way. Making brownies this weekend became a lesson in fractions and even life origins (as we talked about the egg vs. baby chick issue).
• Our house is actually more picked up! We have integrated chores into our daily learning schedule, and so the kids make their bed each day and keep their toys picked up.
• More deliberate use of media. Because we are home all day, we have set strict limits on the television and Wii. It would be all too easy to let these things slip in and steal time. We have basically said that the Wii does not come on until after dinner, and then only for one hour at the most. The kids can earn a "technobuck" which allows them to buy the one hour of Wii time. As for the television, it stays off, too, unless we are viewing a video related to our lessons. And we haven't used the computer a whole lot, yet, but we will soon be starting to use it for research, typing, doing PowerPoints, etc.
• Reorganization of our home space. We have a lot of space in the basement where we could keep all of our supplies; however, we are finding that we are most apt to stay right around the kitchen, as that always seems to be the center of family activities, doesn't it? So, I am working to transform our front family room into a learning room/library. I spent most of the weekend organizing the wall of shelves that we have in there, to make the books and materials more accessible to the kids. I threw away 6 GARBAGE BAGS of old papers, files, etc....and it felt so good to purge. I organized the books into major categories, packed away the baby/preschool books (for now), and got some idea of the types of unit studies that we could do with the materials that we already have. This weekend, we are going to purchase a new table/benches for that room, along with a desk and a file cabinet. We also need to purchase a new printer/copier and maybe a bigger computer, but those will likely wait until summer.
• Overall, there just seems to be a stronger spirit of unity, peace, and cooperation around the house. We don't feel like we are constantly rushing to get here and go there as much, and that in itself just feels so freeing.

So, in a nutshell, we are loving this new "learning lifestyle"....I love that term so much better than "homeschooling", don't you? There is so much negative connotation surrounding the term "homeschool" and I think a lot of conceptions are outdated and inaccurate. After all, learning at home is not as much about "bringing school into the home" as it is about challenging the traditional way of viewing learning and transforming it in a way that makes the most sense in the context of home and family. If you have questions or are intrigued by the process, I urge you to read up on the topic. I know that my understandings were greatly challenged and changed through my own research....and here we are, celebrating our first week. I want to pick up a new book that I learned about entitled "Family Matters" that addresses more of the heart-matters of the home education movement.

So our second week is off to a slow start. We have a few things like Bible and language lessons to do later on, after basketball practice for both kids, but the flexibility is the beauty of the whole thing. Enjoy your new week!