Here is a small glimpse into Leslie Howard’s day as she homeschool’s her daughters. Remember to leave your comments and tell your friends.
“Wake up everyone!” Morning comes in the Howard household. The shower runs, its sound giving solace to this 31 year old mother of five. The baby sits in his bouncer chair and wiggles his arms and legs and watches as his various sisters wander into the bathroom, sit on the fuzzy purple rug in front of the space heater, and slowly wake up and hear a bit about the plans for the day to come. On a really good morning I get up earlier and renew myself with Kundalini yoga but I am resisting giving a picture of an ideal day because I think so many of us regularly fall short of our ideals and I fear that discourages many people from homeschooling.
We are often chronically late to get going in the morning. My oldest usually is awake first but has given up eating breakfast an hour or more before everyone else and hangs out it her room and waits for everyone else to go downstairs. She is usually to be found reading. The middle three girls like to play. Oh how they love to play and they play nice games. Beads are in favor right now since I scored a $10 box of many various beads in a local art store. They serve as much more than jewelry around here. Glittering containers of them stand in a row in a Webkinz stuffed animal’s store. They are food and prizes and over time as they spread themselves over the floor they serve to hypnotize children and make it impossible for them to clean their rooms. But, I see with this recent box they are really trying to keep it tidy. After I presented them with it I regretted not saving it for Christmas, but hey I really bought it just because I love them.
So, much like the above paragraph there is lots to do upstairs before breakfast. While the kids get in their morning play I sort the basket of clean laundry I washed the day before, into piles for each person. That is about where my laundry mastery stops. I get it washed, fold it as I take it out of the dryer, and my folding is lightning fast and produces nothing like the crisp folded items my mother and other elder females of my line create; and forget about folding underwear- but I get the job done. Usually I actually toss the clothes into piles in front of each person’s dresser plus one for Radha (the oldest) next to the rocking chair because she actually has her dresser in her room. I’m afraid that reduces their folds a bit more and occasionally gets the two year old’s attention too much and she starts throwing clothes around the room. On an ideal day everyone then puts their pile of clothes away in their drawers and that is becoming more common but not yet the rule, although I’m trying to make it one and I feel a sense of motherly and teacherly accomplishment when someone remembers to do it on their own.
So why am I going on about laundry? Because I believe that homeschooling is about life and is inseparable from life in general. I think that makes me something like an unschooler but I also believe that it is a parent’s job to provide instruction a child may need but not know it. I also think we learn much better if we are interested in something and the presentation is palatable.
So, we come down to breakfast approximately together, which I think is nice. Radha, my oldest has been making her own oatmeal with oats and fixings instant style and I’ve been cooking some oats and water on the stove and adding sugar and such for the others. Cereal and bagels are also popular. But figuring out the homemade oat thing has given me a thrill of money saving and independence from prepackaged foods.
Baby care is mixed in throughout all my activities. Nursing and diaper changes abound. I spend a few minutes at the computer and then school begins with the blowing of a conch shell! All the girls love that (the baby boy does get frightened sometimes) and it gathers everyone together. It is one of the first steps in the devotional practice I am teaching them about this year called Arati, or ceremonial Deity worship. We have in our home an altar with Deities on it. In our religion, called Gaudiya Vaishnavism, or more commonly “Hare Krishna,” Deities are regarded as visible forms of God. Each day I introduced different elements of Arati starting with the conch shell, adding incense, a flower, cloth, yak tail fan, peacock feather fan, water, and other elements like purifying water with mantras and mudras (hand positions), and taking a mental bath. They’ve really gotten a kick out of all of it. Our next element is to sew clothes for the Deities (they already are sporting new bead necklaces). Offering the items challenges them to count concentric circles with the item, recite the accompanying mantras and ring a bell with their other hand.
Next we try to do something fun especially for our two year old. I do fingerplays, yoga, a bean bag toss with math or spelling, or a finger puppet show, basically Waldorf-style circle time. She has been a challenge to incorporate this year having various tantrums and a problem with head banging. But things are generally improving as she gets older and we figure out what works for her.
This particular day we did fingerplays and one called, “Peanut Butter Jelly” went over very well. Then we read from our main scripture, the Bhagavada Gita. We try to learn about a verse a week for memorization and I’m reading through the verses to them as well so they can begin to grasp what the whole story and lessons of the text are. My 11 year old likes this the best and the rest go along with it pretty well.
My teaching style is basically a mixture of unschooling, Waldorf, and Charlotte Mason, but really it is ever evolving and tends to defy labels. My most recent educational reformatting happened when I discovered Charlotte Mason (CM) this past summer. So, I’ve been using Ambleside Online, a free CM based curriculum as my basis. We’ve been following it closely for grades 6, 3, and 1, excluding the history which is just too prejudiced for me and the books we’ve already read, like some of the literature selections, which I hope to replace with some other books soon.
This week I’ve dropped most of the usual schedule in order to spend some time doing handwork with the girls. I regularly knit, sew, or spin, but to take time with the children to teach them things takes special effort. So, the special project for the day was especially directed to my 8 and 6 year old girls to teach them how to sew. They each chose to make a small toy which they chose from a book I got at our last library sale. (I love library sales!) Vrinda is making a kitten and Visakha is making a witch, who is really going to be Marcia Overstrand from the Septimus Heap stories we’ve been listening to in the car.
But, before we can even begin the stage has to be set, and that is why I allow a lot of time for these things if I really want them to happen. First we collected all the sewing supplies we needed in a big basket (I previously took a trip to Joann Fabrics for most of said supplies). It was a beautiful day so we decided to work outside. Our cow was in the backyard, so we needed to move her so she wouldn’t disturb us and really we are a bit afraid of her because she can be aggressive. It could be because of loneliness, but we did try to get her pregnant so she could have a baby for company. It didn’t work out, but that is another story! So, we headed up to the barn to give the animals some apple peelings from our recent applesauce canning project and thus lure the cow to the back pasture where the barn is. Everything went pretty smoothly. It is always refreshing to visit the sheep and goats.
Then we headed back to the house, laid out some blankets, and got to work. Sometimes I contemplate the four armed forms of God and demigods and imagine what it would be like if I really had four arms. Many a time I’ve thought a few more could be useful and today was no exception. The girls had previously cut out their paper patterns that I enlarged and printed with the computer. So I pinned them onto their fabrics for them to cut out. For the two year old Madhavi, I planned on just doing it all for her, making her a swan. She still learns from watching the process and handling all the pieces as things come together. I would go from one to another helping them and when they got tired they would go and swing on our tire swing, which worked out nicely. But it was difficult for me to help everyone, especially when the baby got tired of sitting in his stroller or laying on the blanket. I had hope that my 11 year old who is rather adept at all things artistic would assist me at this point. But, and I will use this as an example to make a point, this was not to be. She was incredibly against it, calling the project, “stupid, icky, terrible.” I insisted she help with Madhavi and had her cut out two like pieces at once to save her time (since she seemed so unenthusiastic) by folding the fabric, which ended up failing miserably. One swan’s head got cut off and I discovered the fabric fur was going the wrong direction. So Radha was released and she went and got her quilting which is a project she chose for herself. Sadly that also came to a bad end when she freaked out over her younger sister singing as she took a break and swung on the tire swing, which Radha sees as making noise to bother her.
This is an ongoing challenge for Radha, but mainly I want to point out that things did not go perfectly. They never really do. But this is no reason to feel that one is not qualified to homeschool or that homeschooling is hopeless. This assumes that school is perfect but it isn’t! I’m sure teachers in public schools miss out on important teaching moments or get disappointed over children not getting along every day! I homeschool my children, well for a lot of reasons, but one is so they can live and grow outside of an artificial meaningless structure. Sometimes that is messy, and takes a lot of time, and can be unpredictable and even bring to our attention our other shortcomings but that is why there can be so much growth in it and that is why they can’t do it that way in school. It is harder to measure and may be impossible to standardize but it is what genius is made of. With homeschooling all are challenged to strive for improvement, even if they are better than everyone else at something, in which case they may be called upon to teach. If there is something a person is good at, that is even more reason to pursue it and get better at it. I think those principles are seriously lacking in American education.
The tendency I have for ‘day in the life’ homeschooling writing is to share an ideal day and show how much we get done. My hope was to not do that with this. Time marches on and the sewing project was definitely the main accomplishment for the day. Since I didn’t get to write this all the same day it is hard to remember exactly what else occurred. The usual is lunch, usually too late, like 3pm or so, and then some computer time for the kids. They play games or watch a movie. Radha is usually working on something or other on her own. She would be a good unschooling poster child. Then they may disappear upstairs and play in their rooms while I make dinner. About once a week I do a Vedic Math curriculum with Radha while I cook. Two nights a week we have lessons. Vrinda and Madhavi take gymnastics, Visakha dance, and Radha English horse riding. That pretty much ruins having a proper dinner, although on a really good day I may get a soup or something started before I leave, but usually lesson night means can or freezer eating. Really if I have to go anywhere in a day it greatly limits what I get done at home, which makes me see that sending kids to school and often to activities like gymnastics in addition to that would make it pretty nearly impossible to teach things likes sewing, paper making, or knitting.
After dinner I take care of our rescued tropical bird, do laundry, and on a good night I get to knit or spin. My husband may play a roleplaying computer game and the girls like to watch and hide during the fights. Then it’s up to bed. I read to them. They love Andrew Lang’s Fairy books. We have about six well read copies from his series. I usually choose various classics to read, but I also believe in being well rounded so we are reading, _The Kitten in the Candy Corn_ from the Animal Ark series which was a book Vrinda got from the library through the summer reading program. Then each child says goodnight to me as I lay nearly comatose in bed and then I drift away into dreams where I still usually remember I have children.
There are old Indian stories that tell of meditating sages who somehow get interrupted or offended and spontaneously proclaim a curse on the offender. However there is often a blurred line between what is a curse and what is a blessing. Sometimes they are even interchangeable terms. I think children are like that. Blessings aren’t really just fluffy nice dessert topping sort of things. And a curse can be just the challenge we need to face in order to grow. Children challenge us to deepen our wisdom in all areas of our lives and bring us the kind of immeasurable joy we can only experience after sacrifice. Homeschooling means living with our children through their early years, staying aligned as a family, facing those trials and tribulations, and sharing the new discoveries and joys together day by day.
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