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The Imperfect Homeschooler |
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Cardamom Publishers P.O. Box 4 Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235 |
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Take Control of Your Family’s Schedule
By Barbara Frank
The doctor found Mrs. Smith sitting in his office, sobbing quietly into a tissue. “Why, Mrs. Smith,” he exclaimed. “What’s wrong?” “Oh, everything!” She began crying louder. “Now, now…” the doctor soothed. “Tell me what’s made you so unhappy.” “I’m just so tired all the time, and I feel so overwhelmed. Each day is harder than the last.” The doctor’s look of concern eased a bit. “Are you trying to do too many things? Many women today have that problem. Tell me, what’s a typical day like for you?” “Well, I have three children, and I homeschool them. Every day we do school from 8 to noon, and then we grab a quick bite and head out to Spanish class, and then we go to…” And Mrs. Smith spent the next five minutes describing her weekly schedule of soccer, co-op, music lessons, language classes and field trips. By the time she was finished, she was crying even harder, and the doctor looked somewhat distressed. “Mrs. Smith, I’m afraid you’re on the verge of a nervous collapse. You need some rest, that’s for sure. You can’t keep on this way. I recommend that you put your children in school and get a job with far less stress than you’re used to….say, as a 911 operator or an air traffic controller.”
The good doctor has a point. Once we become slaves to an overscheduled homeschooling life, we’re living in a high-stress atmosphere. There really is no opportunity for us to rest. Believe it or not, this wasn’t really a problem when I began homeschooling. For one thing, there weren’t nearly as many opportunities for outside activities. In some states, homeschooling parents were being put in jail, and so we tended to stay at home a lot during school hours. When we did venture out, it was often for field trips to plays and museums, places where people expect to see schoolchildren in the middle of a weekday. As homeschooling became more accepted, parents began to feel more comfortable about going out and about during the day, and so we had weekly park days, where the kids played freely and the moms sat with their babies and ate and talked. It was all very low-key and relaxing. Occasionally, we’d gather at someone’s house for a visit, and once again, it was the kids’ job to find something to do while we relaxed and had our own “socialization” time. There were few if any outside classes or lessons other than organized sports or swim lessons at the Y. And yet our kids did not grow up to be slackers. Almost every child my children knew back then turned out to be a responsible hard-working adult, at least that I’m aware of. I look back very fondly on those days, because everyone was having such a good time. It made for a very nice lifestyle, one that I’ve tried to replicate with my younger kids. That’s not easy, because there are so many “enrichment” options today that weren’t available back then. But I’ve lived in that low-stress atmosphere so long that I’m not willing to give it up. I just wish I could convey to some of the moms further back on the homeschooling road that it can still be done. I get email from them about how stressed out they are, and how much trouble they’re having keeping up with everything, and I feel sorry for them. Some give up and send their kids to school. They can’t keep up the pace, or they’re tired of the responsibility of keeping their kids occupied 24/7. We do our kids a disservice by keeping them busy all the time. They need to learn to keep themselves occupied. They’re completely capable of learning and playing freely, but they have to be given the opportunity. And when they are, we’re given a break, and that’s what moms like us need. Driving kids around all the time means you get very little free time for yourself, much less time to cook or pay the bills or touch base with extended family. Those things on your to-do list get pushed aside because there’s no time after the kids’ activities. Those neglected responsibilities weigh on your mind, adding to your stress level. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You’re in control of the family schedule. Unless you thrive on a very booked-up agenda, one with enough stress to wear out an air traffic controller at LAX, consider paring down the number of things your family is involved in, so that all of you can have a more relaxed way of life.
Copyright 2008 Barbara Frank / Cardamom Publishers
Barbara Frank is the mother of four homeschooled-from-birth children ages 15-24, a freelance writer/editor, and the author of “Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, “The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling,”and “Homeschooling Your Teenagers.” To visit her Web site, “The Imperfect Homeschooler,” go to www.cardamompublishers.com.
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Changing My Game Plan
By Barbara Frank
(excerpted from The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling by Barbara Frank, published by Cardamom Publishers, April 2008.)
Like many people, I began homeschooling by imitating the schools of my youth. I bought a boxful of curriculum, divided it into daily assignments, and taught my kids right out of those books. And there wasn’t anything especially bad about that, except that after the initial excitement wore off, my kids started to get bored. Instead of being excited about doing school, they ranked it right down there with making their beds and setting the table—something we have to do, so let’s get it over with. That was not in my game plan. I didn’t want them to be bored. I was bored in school, and I still recalled how bad that felt. I wanted my kids to enjoy school. What I soon realized was that while they might have been bored with school, my kids still loved learning. They enjoyed visiting museums. My daughter read through stacks of books without my telling her to do so. And my son drew beautiful, detailed pictures that were not assigned by me. I even became bored by the assignments I was teaching the kids, and it must have been around that time that I came up with the idea of playing store. I labeled some items in our pantry (using prices written on sticky notes), then dug up all the spare change I could find. I became the storekeeper, and the kids became the shoppers. They’d choose an item from the pantry and pay me for it. Often I had to make change for them. Soon they were buying more than one item at a time and figuring out how much they owed me. Before long, they started taking turns being the store-keeper. This became a game they enjoyed for a long time, but I think I probably learned the most from that experience, because I saw that homeschooling didn’t have to be boring, like formal school was for me as a child. This success led me to become more creative with our homeschooling. Since my first two children were only 18 months apart, they studied most subjects together, and that made it easy to come up with math games. Their favorite math game came about by necessity. I was pregnant with our third child, and spending a lot of time on the sofa. While beached there, I’d hold up a flash card, and throw it to whichever child gave the correct answer first. The child who collected the most cards won. Since the kids were very competitive with each other, they soon learned their math facts (which I’d been unsuccessfully trying to force into their heads by using written timed drills, as advised by our curriculum). This way was much easier and a lot more fun. Making learning fun started to seep into other areas of our homeschooling. I made a little game out of putting the books of the Bible in order. I made small cards with the name of a book on each, and then let the kids put them in order. This way they were using their hands along with their minds, which is always a good way to learn. Soon they could get those cards in order pretty quickly, so they began timing themselves. Naturally, they began comparing their best times, and that led to me making two sets of cards so they could compete directly against each other. Before long, they could quickly find any book of the Bible. And they’d had a lot of fun getting to that point. Such successes led me to loosen up in our homeschooling, and to be open to using games and other activities. More importantly, I soon came to see those things as at least equal in importance to bookwork. I bought Cuisenaire rods for math, which worked so well that I ended up giving up the formal math cur-riculum we’d been using, and buying the Miquon Math series instead (you use rods with them). Three of my kids eventually worked through Miquon with the rods, and then went straight into Saxon 54 or 65 with no difficulty. I also used treasure hunts to teach them, first to follow directions (they were small then so I put pictures on the clues instead of words), and later to read (I switched to clues in short sentences). They begged me to do this all the time. There was no boredom or sighing in this kind of school! Of course, as they reached their teen years, our use of games decreased, and they had to buckle down to more bookwork. I was concerned that at some point they might have to go to school, and I wanted to keep them at approximate grade level in case that happened. Fortunately, it never did, but by high school, they had regular bookwork and the games had run their course (other than playing educational games like Rummy Roots™ or ElementO®). But while they were younger, we had lots of fun learning through play and games, and I think I learned a lot from seeing that. Maybe that’s what it takes to get a formally schooled mom to let go of that old training and accept that learning doesn’t have to be boring for kids, and shouldn’t be boring, either. It’s a good thing I learned that lesson too, because playing games has become the backbone of Josh’s homeschooling experience. I’ve used games to teach him the alphabet, sight words and numbers. He can’t just sit and learn easily from formal schoolwork. I’ve had to get creative when it comes to teaching him: letting go of my overdependence on bookwork with my older kids prepared me for working with him.
Copyright 2008 Barbara Frank/Cardamom Publishers
Barbara Frank has four children, ages 15-24. “The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling” is packed full of Mrs. Frank’s advice gleaned from over 20 years of homeschooling her children, including one who has Down syndrome. “The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling” is now available at Amazon.com, BN.com, Rainbow Resource Center, Christian Book Distributors and other fine booksellers. Learn more about this book at http://www.cardamompublishers.com/guide-to-homeschooling.htm |
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These articles may be freely reprinted or forwarded as long as the entire article and author bio/postscript are included. These articles may not be sold. |
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Our Entrepreneurial Homeschooler
By Barbara Frank
Way back when I read the book that turned me on to homeschooling, Home Grown Kids by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, and then their subsequent books, one of the things the Moores described that fascinated me was the opportunity homeschooled children had for entrepreneurship. My older kids were babies then, but I could just picture them someday sitting behind their own little lemonade stand. They did have lemonade stands when they got older, and I remember one summer when they made a killing by selling cold pop and homemade brownies to people attending one of our garage sales. Our younger daughter also sold handmade cards door-to-door. I’m sure there were other entrepreneurial experiments that I’ve since forgotten. They learned so much from those experiences; lemonade stands were just the tip of the iceberg. Back when I first read that book, how could I (or the Moores) have foreseen the advent of the Internet and its usefulness for entrepreneurs of all ages? Indeed, I never would have imagined that I would someday be writing and selling my own homeschooling books via the Internet. Well, homeschooled children have that same opportunity, and our dd16 has taken up the challenge. She’s gotten so many compliments on the funny stuffed fabric creatures she makes that she recently set up her own online shop to sell them. She’s still in the process of adding her products to her shop, but already has quite a few creatures online. You can see her shop HERE*. Feel free to look around; she loves having visitors browse her shop. This has been a great exercise for her. She keeps track of all her expenses very carefully, including the time it takes her to make each creature (around two hours including design time). She’s careful to use her raw materials conservatively (no waste). It took her a while to figure out how to use etsy.com, and she discovered that the site offers very cleverly designed virtual forums where she can learn more about marketing her wares. All of this has taken a lot of time, but being homeschooled, she has more free time than she would if she were in high school all day. She is in 11th grade, and we’ve been studying economics (Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell) since the fall. But I have to think that the things she’s learning right now by setting up her little business are at least as valuable, if not more so, than what she’s learning from Dr. Sowell’s book. Add in the dinner time discussions her dad and I have about our own businesses, and I have to think she’s fortunate to learn real-life economics in her daily life. That she has the time for all of this is yet another blessing of homeschooling.
* http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5611012
Copyright 2008 Barbara Frank / Cardamom Publishers
Barbara Frank is the mother of four homeschooled-from-birth children ages 15-24, a freelance writer/editor, and the author of “Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, “The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling,”and “Homeschooling Your Teenagers.” To visit her Web site, “The Imperfect Homeschooler,” go to www.cardamompublishers.com. |
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►New Articles◄ Updated June 29, 2008 |
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