7 Ways to Homeschool Flexibly

There is this tab at the top of this blog called “Scheduling”, and if you click on it, it will say “Coming Soon!”.  It has said that since I put it there in July.  Really, I did make out a schedule.  And attempted to follow it for, what, a whole day.  No, to be fair, I have tried more than that to order our days in the same way every day.  After all, if you read any of the homeschooling experts, among the first things they will tell you is that your life will fall apart without a schedule.  But so far, all schedule has done is sit there in my binder and look pretty.  For that, I feel guilty.

But only a tiny bit.  Because in the meantime, somehow–not at consistent times or days, necessarily, but definitely, nonetheless, progress has been made.  Actual things have been learned.  Chapters have been covered.  Novels read.  Poems memorized.  How did this happen?

I don’t know (other than God), but I’m going with it.  The schedule says that from 8:00 a.m. to noon every weekday, we should be in the school room, and that the afternoons are reserved for my work.  It says that by 8:00 a.m., I will have been up for two hours, have exercised, made breakfast, sent my husband off to work, having kissed him with pointed little toes in my pointy high heels, and have my darling daughter scrubbed, polished, curled and beaming with anticipation of the grammar definitions we have slated to learn for the day.  Well, it doesn’t say all that, but something close.  The reality has involved a lot more post-noon pajama parties spent snuggled up together reading, a lot fewer of the subjects I planned being covered (French, Latin, and art, for example).  It has involved some marathon sessions, where we get into what we’re doing and are better off sticking with it for a while.  It has also included some realizations that we don’t need to cover material we already know.  (For example, Mustard Seed already got it that any number plus zero equals that same number, so we could move on to her learning math facts that weren’t intuitive to her.  Or, I personally found it unnecessary to have her repeat, for the umpteenth day in a row, as she sighed and her eyes rolled way back into the back of her head, that the definition of a noun is a person, place, thing or idea.)  So things have had a way of evening out.

I really feel like spreading the learning out in little chunks over the day allows Mustard Seed not to feel like we have to cram.  We could take on an unanticipated Bible craft if we wanted to.  We could read an extra chapter of our book if we were really curious to see what was going to happen next.  If I have a babysitter/mother’s helper scheduled to show up at 1:00 every day so I can work in my office, as I had planned, it will be much harder to go at that leisurely enjoyable pace.  On the other hand, sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.  I have considered perhaps not having the babysitter and having Mustard Seed sit next to me while I work, doing any seat work she may have or listening to audio books, and then using our mornings to cover the topics that require a lot of instruction from me and do crafts.  The jury is still out on how I will juggle this.

In the meantime, I think it’s important to realize that it’s okay not to do schoolwork at certain very conventional and fixed hours (usually people think of the morning as the “right” time).  It’s possible to get the content covered.  Here are seven ways to make sure your family gets its school work done, even if your bell doesn’t ring at 8:00 a.m. every day.

1. School at bedtime. If you’re given to reading for long periods of time at bedtime anyway, why not make history, science or literature selections a part of this routine?  Some students are even more receptive at this time of day than in the morning.
2. School in the car. If you find yourself out of the house a lot because of activities and errands, don’t let that time go to waste.  Listen to Story of the World, a foreign language CD, or an audio book.  Keep a math workbook or maps to color in the back seat.
3. Make a list of what has to be accomplished. When we don’t follow our schedule, we can feel daunted and give up.  It helps to make a list of everything we need to have accomplished for a given week to be up to speed.  You can even prioritize it, if you like.  That way, if Johnny is particularly excited about math one day and does two chapters at once, you know you can relax a little in that area the next day and use part of the time to work on other subjects.
4. Sit the kids nearby you to do schoolwork while you do housework. A school room can be a blessing, but so can the kitchen table.  Some assignments don’t require your direct teaching as much as periodic guidance.  Have the kids do their copy work while you wash the dishes.  Have them sit right by your side to read aloud while you fold laundry.  What’s wrong with them coloring their maps while you prepare dinner?  This way, you are right there to still talk to them, correct any mistakes and answer questions, but you can also get some of the necessary jobs done around the house.
5. Teach things through informal conversations rather than formal class sessions. One strategy that’s worked for me is to peruse Mustard Seed’s books a chapter or two ahead to get an overview of what her books teach.  Then, instead of teaching her out of a book in the school room, I’ll tell her a story of something that happened in ancient history while we’re in the car or say “Oh, I have a little poem for you!” while we’re wrestling and laughing on the bed.  When she earned part of her fundraiser money for American Heritage Girls the other night, I showed her in fractions (“pie pieces”) how far along she was toward her goal.  Many of these “conversations” hit home even more than school time “lessons” do.
6. Don’t feel like reading marathons are wasted time. If you have a child that will sit and listen to you read for a long time, as long as you’re not reading Powder Puff Girl books the whole time, this is valuable learning time.  Sure, it’s “only” literature time.  Mingled with vocabulary.  And, if you have them read some parts, reading.  And, could be, geography or history.  Depending on the topic of your book, your child might learn the fauna of northwestern Canada, how maple sugar is made, what malaria is, how a railroad is built, or what kind of monks live in Peru.  Reading story books and novels is probably the single most important thing you can do for your child’s all-around education.  Next to reading the Bible.
7. Choose activities that kill two birds with one stone. Have kids practice handwriting and Latin by copying Latin vocabulary or sentences.  Have them learn history and read literature by reading historical novels.  Have them learn math and life skills by measuring or doubling recipes in the kitchen.  If you’re studying Moses, do it through all the beautiful art that depicts his life (art appreciation and Sacred Studies).  Any time you can cover two or more subjects in one activity, you win and your kids win.

The world mostly tells us we’re “too hard on ourselves”.  Does it mean we beat ourselves up about things too much or that we expect too much from ourselves?  Personally, I don’t think I expect enough of myself, and it’s all too easy to find validation for this from the culture around us.  By all means, apply the highest work ethic to the job of teaching your kids, and if that demands making a schedule and sticking to it, then do it.  But if the scheduled approach hasn’t worked for you, look for equally conscientious and rigorous, but more flexible, ways to make learning happen that are more in tune with your family’s rhythms.

To the Seashore We Will Go

Whoever said learning can’t be fun never took six first-graders to the beach.  What better way to find out about about not only the creatures of the coast, but also the coast itself, than by taking kids there and showing it to them?

That’s what I was up to Friday as I hosted our second mini-coop meeting/science club.  This was something that came about at the end of last school year as a way to hold on to the relationships that Mustard Seed had formed, as well as to do some of the learning activities that just aren’t as much fun by yourself.  Like putting on plays or playing catch at recess.  See what I mean?  Not as much fun by yourself.

At the same time, I’m sort of commitment-phobic (to misuse a term I so often get annoyed with myself), so I didn’t want to bind myself to a full-fledged weekly co-op where I would be responsible for teaching one of the subjects every week.  In fact, my throat just closed a little even typing that.  Instead, we’re doing a “mini-coop”.  We meet every other Friday, more or less, and alternate covering history and science only.  Each family hosts 5 meetings per year, so it’s a good way to spread the burden–I mean, joy–of preparing all the activities.

Since all the families are studying biology this year, I thought that as hostess for the first science meeting, I’d kick it off with a field trip to Galveston Island State Park.  It’s easy to go to the beach a hundred times and not ever pay attention to the wildlife that lurks just under the surface or the important landscape, so I tried to open the kids’ eyes to the nuances in habitat, the important environmental functions the island serves, and the teeming fauna to be found if one knows where to look.

Galveston is a long, skinny barrier island that’s basically a glorified sandbar.  It’s situated just a short way off the mainland, and the bay between the island and the mainland is an important estuary environment that serves as a spawning ground for lots of species.  First on the agenda was a visit to the Gulf side of the island.  Here we learned that there are actually 3 different sub-habitats: the dunes, the surf line and the subtidal (the area that’s in the water).  We talked about why the dunes are important (so the island doesn’t erode) and the fact that different grasses and plants hold the dunes together with their roots.

We discussed the five different kinds of vertebrates, especially going over the specific characteristics of mammals and fish.  The kids named some sea animals, and we talked about what kind of animals they are.  We discussed the fact that not only fish live in and around the sea; there are also birds (herons, sea gulls, pelicans), reptiles (sea turtles in the water and rattlesnakes on the dunes), and mammals (whales and dolphins; and there are other animals that have a shell on the outside instead of a backbone (crabs and clams).

We dug unsuccessfully for ghost crabs, but they came out and paid us a visit later in the evening.

We found these guys right at the surf line and put them in a bucket to observe.  After they got over their shyness, it was fascinating to watch them put out a little gelatinous foot and squirm around the thin layer of sand in the bottom.  When we put them back on the ground, they quickly wiggled their way back under it.

The gulls were ubiquitous and eagerly relieved one of the kids of his lunch.  In the evening, sandpipers came out as well and scurried across the beach.  We learned that the more birds you see overhead, the more critters you can be sure to find under the sand and in the water, since birds come out to feed on them.

One word got thrown around a lot that day: sargasso.  Many beaches have seaweed.  In Galveston there is sargasso.  It floats all the way from the Sargasso Sea between the West Indies and the Azores.  It also plays a big role in preventing erosion, and it hosts a variety of life as well, while it’s in the water.  After it hits the beach, most of its residents jump ship, so it’s best to catch it in a bucket fresh from the water if you want to inspect them.

Next up was a short drive over to the bay side of the island, where calm saltwater marshes dominate the landscape.  Tall cordgrass flanks the shallow water.  Off in the distance, large herons and brown pelicans glide low, looking for a meal.  We sidled up to the marsh’s edge and were immediately rewarded with a find of lots of hermit crabs.  The kids had fun picking them up and peeking at them inside their shells.

Peeking at a hermit crab

A fisherman standing nearby was kind enough to point out the fiddler crab holes in the bank nearby.  The balls of dirt are made by the crabs.  The bigger the ball, the bigger the crab.

Fiddler crabs make holes in the banks of salt marshes, leaving large dirt balls outside (shown at center).

He also let me take a picture of the sheepshead fish that he had caught and was just about to throw back.

Sheepshead fish caught by a fisherman and about to be released

Other cool discoveries were some bird tracks and a pair of disembodied crab pinchers.

Who's tracks could these be? A heron? A spoonbill?

Examining a find

To wrap up the day, we made two models to help the kids understand the concept of an estuary.  We colored one bottle of water blue and another yellow.  I had a volunteer add lots of salt to the blue bottle to represent the salt water coming from the ocean.  The yellow was to represent the fresh water coming from the rivers and runoff from the mainland.  Then we passed the bottle around and the kids mixed the yellow fresh water and the blue salt water, yielding green estuary water.

Mixing "salt water" and "fresh water" in our model estuary

For the next demonstration, we poured water down a baking pan stood up at an angle.  Of course, the water reached the bottom side quickly.  This was to show what would happen with water if there wasn’t an estuary.  Then the kids filled the pan with some damp sand mixed with sargasso and some shells.  (Grass and sticks are another option.)  Then we poured the water down the pan again, but this time, it took the water longer to get to the bottom side, representing the fact that an estuary slows water’s flow into the ocean.

Demonstrating the purifying function of an estuary

Finally, we sprinkled some pepper up near the top of the pan to represent pollutants that might be in the water.  Then we poured the water in one last time, and the kids were able to observe that most of the pepper got trapped among the sargasso and shells and didn’t make it to the bottom of the pan.  This demonstrated how the estuary acts to filter out pollutants and keep them from reaching the ocean.

Of course, mixed in with all of this, there was much giggling and frolicking in the waves, running along the beach and digging sand holes.  (Socialization and physical education: check!)  Did the kids learn something about the flora and fauna of Galveston?  I think so.  But if nothing more, we made a fun memory with friends at the beach and they learned to love playing in nature, seeking out all its curiosities, and enjoying it for what it is.  The kinds of things that will inspire them to keep learning about Creation as they grow older.