| | Awhile back I wrote about needing to make some changes to our daily lessons. I needed to loosen things up some. Lessons had lost their spark. Well, I made changes, but there was no immediate change in the basic state of affairs. Our homeschool had lost its focus. I was drifting along from day to day, not sure what exactly I was trying to do. I was feeling a general confusion about whether we should be more unschoolish or less. And if less unschoolish, then more what?
Earlier this week something happened that brought the purpose of our lessons into focus for me, and that focus has made a world of difference. We were sitting on the couch and I was reading a rather boring bit from a usually interesting book about weather. Tom was restless, occasionally getting up and bouncing around the room and making noise. Katie was sighing and rolling her eyes. I was stubbornly trying to plug on through the material and get it over with. No one was having a good time, or learning anything, and it was getting on my nerves, so I stopped.
My first impulse was to get angry. To yell at the kids for not paying attention. But I managed to stop and take a deep breath. Still, I couldn't resist the impulse to talk about the frustration I was feeling. I started telling the kids how hard schooling was feeling to me. To give them some context, I stated talking about why we do lessons and what we are trying to accomplish. Because I was explaining myself to children, who do not carry the same assumptions as, say, homeschooling parents, I had to strip what I wanted to say to the bare bones. Take everything back to first principles, so to speak. As I was explaining why we do lessons, the confusion I had been feeling settled down. I was on solid ground again.
So, here is what I am trying to accomplish in our family homeschool:
1. I want to give the children practice at following my direction, and me practice at directing them. As I have mentioned before, I tend to shun the authority of parenting, but then get upset when the kids won't listen to me. Daily lessons are a good chance for us all to get more comfortable with me being in charge. I could do this outside of the educational arena, but lessons are a logical place for it.
2. The kids need to get lots of practice in math, reading and writing. It needs to be as fun as possible, but it still needs to happen. Being able to write, read and do basic math without having to stop and think about it opens the doors wider to learning from the written word, expressing oneself clearly, and thinking mathematically.
3. I want to show my children that life is full of interesting . . . stuff. A big part of lessons is simply to offer up a sampler platter of interesting things to pursue. It doesn't matter if Katie knows all about the Civil War, or if Tom can play the piano. It doesn't matter if either child ever understands the Krebs cycle. But they do need to see that history, music and science can be worth learning about. As well as art, literature, languages, crafts, physical exercise, cooking, and on and on and on.
So that's it. Three things. Three simple things.
I don't know if it will last, but once I got that straight in my head, what to do each day for lessons, and how to do it suddenly seemed simple. We need to do some math most every day (nice, because that's Tom's favorite part of lessons). The kids need to write most every day (nice, because that's Katie's favorite part of lessons). They need to read most every day (which they do anyway, but out loud is good practice once in awhile). And it needs to be as fun as possible (which, surprisingly, isn't all that hard). I need to be the one telling them that it is time to do it, at least part of the day (not easy for me, but sometimes I get it right). And we need to explore fun and interesting stuff, like history and science and art and music and so on (And if something we started to explore turns out to be not so fun, we can, and should, stop!).
Easy peasy, right?
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| | Posted 4/16/2009 11:56 AM - 18 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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