Easing into Homeschooling

It is a 90 degree day, and the children in our district went back to school today. I remember wanting to wear new clothes on my first day of high school (1983), so I dressed in a fall outfit comprised of a wool argyle sweater and corduroy pants, with penny loafers, of course! I was sweltering hot all day. Very uncomfortable. I think kids in the present era might be allowed to wear shorts to school. I hope they did today!

I was going to wait until after Labor Day to start our homeschooling, but since the streets were quiet and devoid of the neighborhood children Beezy usually plays with, it made sense to go ahead and ease back into our lessons. And this way we can be finished by early May. After my whole foray into researching unschooling and practicing natural learning over the summer, am I going to do anything different this year? Yes and no.

I kept a notebook all summer of our activities, and certainly there was much learning that happened naturally by simply living life and doing the things we enjoy doing. Beezy attended three vacation bible schools, went to the pool often, and played with many friends, including having lots of sleepovers. We had two family reunions and visited my husband's dad in upstate New York. We watched movies and played video games. Beezy participated in parks and recreation activities such as gardening, cooking, crafts, and a week of a special program at our library. She continued with the dog obedience classes begun in the spring and is still working on her 4-H program book for her dog project. Beezy and her dad played a lot of board games together, and math skills were reinforced this way.

While she did read some books over the summer, I didn't think that enough reading progress was happening through "unschooling". We go to Mass every week, but I feel that more is required to really learn about our Catholic faith. Weekly religious education classes at our church will begin next week. As Catholic homeschoolers, religion must be the center and foundation of our studies and our life. Also, math is one of Beezy's strengths, so that subject needs more formal attention to maximize her skills. I will continue to keep a record of all of our activities in my small, leather bound book.

What we did today was very simple. I have all of the books we will be using for the year already collected, except for whatever we may check out from the library. This way I can relax, knowing that we don't have to get every resource out and start using it now. We have the whole year ahead to explore...

Formal lessons will be worked into the day, not as a set schedule, but in the context of a natural and relaxed rhythm. With my recent exploration of the French way of life, la joie de vivre, it seems most logical to structure our days around meals! This probably seems obvious to some, but my family had habitually become grazers. I would often have only coffee for breakfast, and then a very small lunch, snack throughout the day, and then make a nice dinner, later snacking some more. But even sitting down together for at least one meal a day was not consistently happening. Now we are eating a real breakfast, a substantial lunch, and a lovely dinner. I am not snacking, but dessert is allowed, and usually I have one or two squares of Ghiradelli chocolate a day. I am paying more attention to eating slowly and really tasting and savoring what I put into my mouth.

We did a little homeschooling after breakfast. While I prepared lunch, Beezy played "girl games" on the laptop, which I am assisting her in learning to use. She also played outside. After lunch we did more lessons, then walked the dog together as a family. Beezy and I ran an errand, and then we played together with Monster High dolls. After that her dad read to her.

We began and ended our homeschooling with prayers from the Catholic Treasury of Prayers. I read the 20th chapter of John to her, and we prayed the first Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Resurrection, using a book of Our Lady's Rosary Novenas. Beezy worked on her dog project book, which uses writing skills, and read the first story in the Ginn classic reader, We Are Neighbors. I began reading the historical novel, St. Elizabeth's Three Crowns, to her, which I will sometimes have her narrate. That was it for today, just a gentle beginning to get back into the swing of things. Oh, and the soccer season began last evening, which covers physical education!

The difference in approach this year is mostly one of attitude rather than methodology. The focus is particularly Catholic, and I am not going to allow myself to feel pressured to achieve specific academic goals. There are no check lists or a scope and sequence curriculum to follow. We will live and learn at our own pace, with no separation between "school" and "home". Learning happens through the rituals of family life, and my goal is to make that life one of beauty, elegance, and refinement, celebrating tradition and experiencing joy in the smallest details. God alone, with a little help from the French and the Blessed Mother, is my guide.

The Vintage Homeschool

Recently while traveling in upstate NY, I was browsing at a flea market when I thought of a new blog concept: the vintage homeschool. I have a lot of antique, vintage and second hand stuff in my home, plus Amish furniture, my own collage art creations, and shabby chic influences. I had picked up the vintage Catholic school book I mentioned earlier, and something clicked. I want to give my child an old-fashioned Catholic education, but at home and without the mean nuns. Actually, I have heard mostly of nice nuns. Anyway, I googled to see if anyone else had come up with this idea already and found Karen DeBeus' blog, "Simply Living...for Him". She has two ebooks which I have purchased, so once finished reading I will review those.

Karen's take on the vintage homeschool is different form mine, but in a way it's along the same lines. She and a friend coined the term while discussing simplifying their homeschooling. She refers to the pioneer homeschoolers of 25 years ago, who began educating their children at home with none of the modern conveniences, such as large curriculum fairs and the internet. They must have relied on libraries and garage sales mostly...and God. Mostly God. While I was obsessively studying unschooling, it occurred to me that I was losing focus on my Catholic faith, and that wasn't a good sign. When I put my focus back where it belongs, I started to see the negative aspects of radical unschooling, and I wrote about them. I witnessed some worst case scenarios and couldn't see how a "freedom without limits" philosophy could be Catholicized. At the core, I don't think it can. At the same time, the simplicity, joy, gentleness, and peace being portrayed by unschooling advocates like Dayna Martin really appealed to me--and still does.

It seems like being a Christian parent should lead to respecting children, but I have noticed by observing myself and others that it doesn't necessarily follow. I remember taking my parents to the counter-cultural art and music festival called ComFest (Community Festival) in Columbus when I lived there. It was begun in the 1960s as a Vietnam War protest, and to this day is put on entirely by volunteerism, with no corporate sponsorship. Free music concerts all weekend on five stages! My mom commented that people at ComFest were even nicer than people at church. When I think in terms of radical unschooling simply, without getting caught up in the secular, anti-teaching dogma, I parent better. I am kinder, and I feel so much more peaceful. And it's important to say, I can do this without abnegating my parental authority. Children and parents are equal persons in the eyes of God, but we are not the same. We have different roles and responsibilities. I had to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there is gold to be found in embracing the freedom that this life offers, but for me only in terms of putting God--and the teachings of Jesus' Church--first.

Those pioneer homeschoolers were unschoolers. They had to start from scratch and figure out how children naturally learn, and how to relate differently to their children, to find better ways to educate them and be with them. They had to shift the paradigm. I am beginning to see life/natural learning as part of the simplicity movement, and of getting back to a healthy family unit as the bedrock of society. Entrepreneurship, family businesses and farms of which children are a part, self-reliance, safe food and products, environmental sustainability, voluntary poverty, and thriving local communities do not have to be a thing of the past. We can live it, starting today, one holy day at a time.