In my last post, I described our core subjects.  I did not add our religious education and science or any arts, physical education or character building because as homeschoolers, most of that isn’t offered in a tidy curriculum.  You can buy curriculum for everything mind you, but we usually meet those areas in other ways.

So here’s the part 2 of our homeschooling year 8:

Religious education: Attend church! We are members of a local Baptist church that is pretty traditional in its schedule. There is a Sunday school class, Sunday morning service and Sunday evening service. Our kids love Sunday school for the friendships, the novelty of being taught by someone other than mom AND they love the crafts, doughnuts, bible lessons and taking turns to pray. Our church also has activities on Wednesday evenings for children and youth.  If you grew up in a Baptist church that had more than 40 people in it you may recognize the program names; GA’s, RA’s and Mission Friends. Usually in the winter, Bible drill practice is added on Sunday evenings. I appreciate my kids being able to participate in Bible drill because in our homeschool we are pretty laid back and there isn’t much memorizing going on.  Their brains are getting a good workout with the best content.

Arts: Chris is a natural artist, although he doesn’t spend much time drawing these days and he has a banjo that he desires to learn to play and actually can when he’s trying. I, on the other hand, well, I’m just not crafty. My creativity is limited to organization and words.  I suppose that’s why none of our children have taken formal music lessons at this point. We do tell them all the time that if they have the desire to learn to play any instrument we will support that.  I know very little about musical training, but I do know that my brother didn’t have formal music lessons but instead taught himself to play the keyboard, guitar, banjo as a teen and young adult, just because he had the desire to learn. I feel pretty confident that if my kids wake up one day and decide they want to learn, well, then they’ll figure out a way to get that done. The kids do attend children’s choir at our church and Katie has just joined the youth choir at a local college.  Katie, Theodore and Parker will also get a chance to start learning how to play hand bells at our church this fall. As far as other art forms, painting and those sorts of things, again there is not formal training. They draw and color and cut and paste and build beautiful creations every day. I gave Jonah a small sliver sparkled clothes pin to play with the other day and he runs to Theodore and Parker and says “Wook guys! It’s boot-i-ful!” And therein lies my defense that my kids are learning to recognize beauty in the world.

Science: Oh poor science.  Constantly planned for and never actually taught. I used to start each school year with a plan for science. I really did. This year though I completely left it off the assignment sheets and told the kids that we will add it in a little later in the semester. It was honest. Does that mean my children are not getting any science education? HA! This is how science goes down in our house.  We watched an episode of Reading Rainbow (I know. Thank you, Netflix. You have my heart.) the other day and it was about chain reactions. But it wasn’t boring and described like that…”chain reactions, blah, blah, blah”. No! It was reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and watching some guy build these awesome domino creations and knocking them down. After watching the episode a few times (it was fascinating stuff), they ended up with some old Jenga blocks and other wood blocks on the garage floor building and building and building.  Lots of trial and error and what made the blocks continuously fall down or what made them stop on turns. From there the kids begged us to watch domino YouTube videos and so we spent some time doing that. You think you know what people are up to out there in the domino world? Well, you have no idea. That is a good description of how science gets done around here. Natural learning, unschooling, whatever you want to call it.  Also, a couple of my boys are growing tomato plants and they hunt and fish and take care of a real live dog. So they get plenty of science, for now.

Physical Education: Again, the reason this subject would have to be planned out really escapes me. If someone asked “what about PE?” I would answer “Tell them to go outside.”  I would mean it too. They have a trampoline, a basketball goal, bikes. Children naturally want to move. Even the ones who don’t love to go outside, they like to roll on the floor or spin in their seat or jump on the couch. I think the only way you could not meet this requirement in the 13 and under crowd would be if you tied them up for 12 hours a day. Foster will be playing soccer this fall for parks and rec. So he’ll have practices and games.

Character building: Also known as parenting. If you are any parent worth your weight you’ll care to teach your kids to share, be kind with their words, don’t punch people, ask about others feelings, take initiative, practice self-control (like not punching people).  This is tied in with our religious education but is also just boiled down as much as possible around here. As in, if you don’t want someone to punch you, then don’t punch them. Don’t like getting your toys taken? Don’t take someone else’s toys. Pretty common sense stuff but this type of teaching is what the majority of my day is all about. I actually told one new homeschool mom I was talking to that this is THE biggest challenge in homeschooling. Not the price of curriculum or the fact that they are with you all the time. No, it’s the constant shaping of character. I have ages 3 to 11 in my house right now and when I talk about character building or putting out fires you may think I mean just the youngest kids? Oh no, even my intelligent, sweet, funny 11-year-old son has to reminded not to throttle the 3-year-old when he messes up his army men that he’s been working on for an hour.  And my super responsible 9-year-old girl? The whining and arguing that can come from her when she feels something is not fair. It’s ugly, folks. Just ugly. So I have to address this about a zillion times a day. That is a pretty big challenge considering I’m human too and have my own bad attitudes and ugliness that God points out to me. So, yep, turning them into decent human beings? That’s the hardest part of homeschooling.

As you can see from this post, homeschooling is far from getting together simple lessons plans. It’s really all about life. I have friends who have homeschooled and now their kids are in public school and ones who are on the flip side and are homeschooling for the first time this year. All of these parents want what’s best for their kids and doing the best with what they have. Which is exactly what I’m trying to do.

Tagged: homeschooling