Unexpectedly Homeschooling?

Hi to all the parents who now, unexpectedly and suddenly, have found yourselves responsible for facilitating the education of your child/children. As many of you may know I’m a single Mum who has been homeschooling my 9 year old son Miles for 4 years now. I am also Mum to 2 adult sons and 2 x 2 year old grandsons!!

I can imagine how daunting it might be to have this responsibility of overseeing schooling suddenly thrust upon you, especially with all the other huge concerns happening in our lives right now. So I’m hoping this might help with some of the overwhelm people might be experiencing.

As homeschoolers we don’t usually spend all day sitting at home, so that’s going to be a bit of an adjustment for us too. We usually get out, meet up with people, visit libraries, participate in homeschool group activities etc etc, and as many of you may know, we’re often travelling and experiencing new places, going to museums, staying with other families, and doing lots of volunteer/community work. The benefits I have at the moment is that my homeschooling journey didn’t start unexpectedly, it started a long long time before Miles began kindergarten. I spent more than a year researching, reading, learning, asking questions from more experienced homeschoolers, looking at different resources, deciding what methods best suited Miles, deciding what our home education ethos would be etc etc. I also have the benefit of being very used to being around my kid 24/7 365 days a year…in the very small space of our caravan so I’ve not got the issue of having to adjust to that side of it either. So to be honest, I’m feeling pretty blessed. Our life (although it has, and will change further) will in many ways just continue as normal…

I know teachers have, are, and will continue to make sure your child is getting everything they need for learning in the home with both resources and support…so what I hope to do is help you with the emotional side…the worry about what your day should look like, whether your’e doing enough, whether your child is learning, and to offer some suggestions and tips for how to create an environment at home that facilitates learning and fun all wrapped up in one so there is minimal struggle and stress…it’s not like they’re going to get to leave this ‘school’, so you don’t want them, or yourself, hating it.

I’m not going to mislead you….it’s hard sometimes, and some days I’m ready to give up, but don’t we all have moments in life where we feel that way? Although, I’ve got to admit my hard times have mostly come from my own anxiety about whether I’m doing enough, doing a good enough job, offering enough, and whether I’m doing the right thing by having my child grow up outside of the ‘system’. So let that shit go….it’s not helpful, and leads to me pushing Miles to do things that don’t interest him which is usually met with opposition and leads to conflict. What does make me confident is the results I see…Miles is a joyfully happy kid who is resilient and adaptable, who knows what his passions are, and seriously doesn’t give two hoots what anybody thinks of him.

Trust me folks…there is absolutely no wrong or right way to do this…as long as you are connecting and engaging with your kid and providing opportunities to explore, learn and grow, you are totally doing the right thing and your kids are going to be awesome functioning adults. Seriously (speaking from my own parenting experience) it’s more important that their emotional development and human connection is on point.

If it was me I would start this time off by taking a break. Your kids (and yourself) might be feeling a bit confused, anxious, and worried themselves with everything that’s going on and the changes they are having to deal with…so I would start by taking a week to adjust…spend time together, sleep in, relax, connect, have some fun, let kids rejuvenate and settle in to life at home. Don’t forget learning can be done through the holidays while stuck at home so if they miss a week now, they can easily get back on top of it in a few weeks.

Work out what is going to work for YOUR family…don’t compare your day and experience with other families! Spend time talking to your kids about anything and everything…what they are interested in, what they might like to do and learn, and what they want their days to look like over the next few months (in my experience kids find things to do and work out what they are interested in pretty quickly if you let them be bored). If you have some ideas of what they want to do this will give you some direction to what you might need to acquire, buy, download etc to keep them occupied after they’ve finished their lessons set by their teacher. Try to be creative in the way you think about things. This is certainly a time where we all need to be thinking outside the box in how we live and do things. I can imagine many of us may be dealing with financial difficulties in the coming months and may not have the money to go out and buy things. Also, put some thought into what YOU want from this time and experience too!!

The biggest difference between ‘school’ and ‘school at home’ is that at all of life is learning at home. Every minute of every day can be a learning opportunity…there’s no log in and log out time, we just have learning moments scattered throughout our entire lives, 7 days a week. You’ll learn very quickly (probably through opposition and whinging from your child haha) that to keep a child engaged and excited about learning at home it means being flexible and creative. For us, it doesn’t look like sitting at a desk with structured learning tasks. We actually don’t even have a desk, and do most of our learning outside, sitting, laying or squatting on the ground.

So, we did two things last week in preparation for staying home/self isolating….we went to the library to get some books (sorry folks, but we did a #panicborrow) and visit the local art store to get art supplies, so we are set!! So that would be something I would suggest anybody does as a start…head to your local library, become a member (if you’re not already) and borrow a variety of books…fiction and non fiction, books with science experiment ideas, art ideas and concepts, anything your child is interested in. While you are at the library ask what apps they have available for e-books and audio books. Our local library uses Borrow Box and RBdigital. They are free, you just need a library card membership number to sign up. Sorry folks, NOTE: I wrote this yesterday…As you are all probably aware libraries have now been closed, but don’t let this deter you. Our local library is setting up a click and collect borrow system so we can continue to use their services…AWESOME!!!

So what do our days look like????

For starters we don’t follow a curriculum so our day may look different to anybody who is following directions from a teacher. I do my own homeschool plan yearly which I submit to the home education department for approval. We also don’t have a television and live with limited power and internet (solar power, 1 battery storage unit, and 50GB/month of data) so we are pretty savvy with power usage, charging laptops/devices etc. and data usage, and therefore have minimal screen time. Minimal screen time is what best suits Miles anyway…and I find if the choice isn’t there he can’t choose it.

We usually start our day like this… Miles wakes up, reaches for the current book he is reading and reads until he’s ready to get up for breakfast. Unless we need to be somewhere (which now we wont), I let him read for as long as he wants. Sometimes he puts down his book and tells me about what’s happening in the story or asks me questions about things/concepts in the book. Can you see English learning happening already??…and he hasn’t even got out of bed yet!!

Over breaky we plan our day…we discuss what we need to get done that day and he tells me what he wants to do that day. This might sound like… “I want to do some guitar and science today”, or “Can we do a science experiment today?”, or “I really want to watch that documentary today”, or “I really want to learn how to build a….”, or “Can we play a game of scrabble today?”, or “I just feel like reading all day today, I really really want to get this book finished”, or “Can you teach me how to….today?”. And mine sounds like….”we really need to do some washing today”, “you haven’t done any science yet this week, do you want to do some today?…What do you want to do?”, or “we really need to go grocery shopping today”, or “I have to go to work this morning, so you need to get some things organised to bring with you”. (Don’t think that part will be happening for the next little while though).

We usually do some form of English and Maths every day and the rest is all covered through the week by choice. We are super flexible though…some days Miles does music all day switching between trumpet, guitar, singing, and piano. Some days he does art all day, some days he spends hours doing maths, some days he spends the entire day reading. Some days he’s feeling super inspired to write a story so off he goes. Some days he gets a super awesome idea of something he wants to design and build so I let him go and he literally spends hours drawing designs, working out the materials he’ll need etc etc. Some days he feels super enthusiastic about making a video of a science experiment, some days he sees a bird he doesn’t know and then spends hours pouring over his bird book trying to figure out what bird it was and learning about all kinds of birds (my 9 year old child literally knows more about fauna than I do!!) My point is he’s mostly given the freedom to choose what he wants to do and learn and I’ve learnt that these spontaneous learning moments are the ones that give the best outcomes. All I do is encourage, facilitate and make sure the resources he needs to achieve something are available to him. Like right now at this very moment I’ve just looked over at him and he’s picked up his book called ‘Tracks, Scats, and Other Traces’ (a resource book about tracking Australian native animals) and is flipping through it all while singing ‘Uptown Funk’ at the top of his lungs!!

Life is Learning…Learning is Life

At home, life is learning… you can use all sorts of everyday activities as a learning opportunity. You don’t need to plan it or schedule it in, you just need to get your kid/s involved in your everyday home life….cooking, baking, cleaning, organising, planning, writing shopping lists, budgeting, meal planning, washing, gardening, fixing things around the home, helping build something etc etc….the possibilities are endless depending on your own home environment.

Some ideas…

Cooking can be maths and science (measuring liquids, weighing ingredients, learning fractions, volume, grams, understanding what measuring tools are best for different ingredients, temperatures, time, seeing what happens when you mix a liquid with a solid, the change in properties when you apply heat, or cool certain ingredients etc etc. And they don’t even know they’re learning!

Maybe you want to move the furniture around the lounge room to create more space for your family over this time in isolation…so in this instance your kids could help re-design your living space, drawing a floor plan or doing a new artwork for the wall etc. This might include measuring, drawing to scale, perspective etc.

Perhaps you want to plant a veggie garden…your kids can help choose what veggies they want to grow and research what plants are best planted at this time of year, and some resourceful ways of building garden beds using up-cycled or readily available products. Most of this kind of learning is done through discussion and spending time together…but includes learning to work as a team, develop research skills, learning about soils, compost, how seeds grow, parts of a flower, healthy diet, ecosystems, microcosms, where our food and water comes from, and the list goes on.

Board games!! We play heaps of board games including Yahtzee, Boggle, Pass the Pigs, Scrabble, UNO, Chess, Rubiks Race, Trivial Pursuit, and Trouble. Again, this is learning where kids don’t know they’re learning. I swear Miles is so quick with addition (so quick it annoys me because he can beat me adding up haha) because of all the time he has spent adding up scores in Yahtzee, Pass the Pigs and Scrabble. And obviously Scrabble and Boggle are great for vocabulary and spelling. They don’t have to be BORED games….we seriously spent two hours the other day playing a game of scrabble and were both in stitches laughing and joking with each other.

Art!! When Miles is in the mood for art he can spend all day drawing and creating. Some of the progrmas he uses include Art for Kids Hub and Muffalo Potato (both free on YouTube,) and we use a paid program called Art Venture. These are all great, although I do think programs that instruct a child how to draw is not really art, in fact I think it thwarts creativity, so Miles more often just does whatever art he’s ‘feeling’ in the moment. We have recently enrolled in a free edX online drawing course called ‘Drawing Nature, Science, and Culture: Natural History Illustration 101’ (these are more adult learning courses so check it out if you are wanting to learn something that interests you), and we have also joined a virtual art group on Facebook set up by one of my super creative friends where we have a theme every fortnight and we create art in whatever form we choose in line with that theme.

Quiet time!! My favourite way to get some quiet time is to put on an audio book (Miles has been listening to the Tom Gates series, which we find hillariously funny, through BorrowBox) and get out a jigsaw puzzle. If Miles’s hands are busy his body is still. If not, he’s usually bouncing around all over the place. Having his hands busy while listening is super calming for him…and therefore me too!! On that topic, one of the things that I do that helps him settle and focus is put Spotify on with some soft music…some forms of classical music are great for kids focus (there’s been studies done on this), but I also use just any soft instrumental music.

Mix it up!!! We love being outside and get outside as much as possible…. I believe being outdoors barefoot also helps with mood and focus (lots of studies have been done on this also). Where we’re staying for the foreseeable future we do most of our learning outside on a picnic rug under a beautiful Frangipani tree. I make lunch and we have a ‘picnic’, we lay out on the rug and read, chat, play games, listen to music, do a meditation etc etc. Get out and observe nature, draw nature, research what you find, photograph nature, make art with nature. Again, we don’t plan this stuff, if Miles is inspired, he commits so much time and energy to it. He might just be wandering around and sees something (an insect, a leaf, feather, lizard etc) and starts asking questions, which a lot of the time I can’t answer, so we go look it up and investigate it.

So I’m going to end this here….cause too much info is so overwhelming when we’re adjusting to an unfamiliar situation…but I’ll definitely share more info down the track with how we fill our days. I hope this has helped alleviate some of the overwhelm. Don’t forget, these are just suggestions and there is no one way to get through this. You know yourself and your limits, your child and your child’s limits so go with what works for you. Let me know if you have any questions, are looking for ideas on certain subjects, or to address certain situations/issues.

I believe the best thing we can do for our children right now is to calmly take things in our stride…confidently model adaptability, connect with our kids, get creative with our time, and understand that we and our children are going to need some time to adjust…so choose to let things go. It’ll be fine…I promise!!!

Peace, Love and Good Health,

Daniela xx