Do you ever have times where everything feels easy in your homeschool? On one of those days:
- My children greet my suggestions with enthusiasm (or better still, make their own suggestions).
- We flow effortlessly from one happy learning experience to another.
- I don’t have time to worry about whether I’m fulfilling my responsibility to provide my children with “an education” – we’re too busy having fun learning.
I am blessed with two outspoken children who have approximately zero tolerance for tasks that don’t inspire them. It means there’s no margin for pushing ahead with what’s not working – I get immediate feedback as to whether we’re on the right track. As Michael Neill puts it:
Moving forward when you are inspired is like climbing into a canoe and going for a ride down a river. Trying to move forward when you are out of touch with your inspiration is like carrying the canoe up a dry riverbed.
Some days it’s easier to get into the flow than others. During the recent schools half term holiday I found it easy. Because local schoolchildren weren’t spending hours doing sums or memorising spelling words, I didn’t worry that C(9) and J(7) weren’t.
Instead, we were free to play with magnets, make salt dough maps, and try art journalling. We had a great week and the kids learnt loads. It struck me that I could choose to take this same relaxed approach whenever I wanted. Why should I let the quality of our time be dictated by whether or not schoolchildren are sitting in classrooms?
So this week, I chose to stay in the flow. Learning has been organic and abundant. Here are some highlights. I’ll say more about most of them in separate posts.
Science
When we studied magnetism I noticed the children were especially interested in magnetite and the magnetic field of the earth, so this week I strewed some resources about rocks and minerals. This has been a success! Even reluctant reader J(7) eagerly reading me extracts from the books they’ve found lying around (yay!).
We also watched a few You Tube videos to review the continents and for me to gauge their interest in volcanoes and earthquakes. We will definitely be following this up!
History & Geography
We’ve reached the history of medieval Japan in The Story of the World vol 2, so I brought out the lapbooks the children had made when we looked at Japan for geography last year. Happily looking back on what she’d made, C asked, “Why don’t we make lapbooks any more?”
This was a useful reminder to me that just because children lose interest in something (“I don’t want to make lapbooks any more. I much prefer notebooking now!”) doesn’t mean their interest won’t revive a few months later!
We also painted our salt dough maps (having finally given up waiting for them to dry and baking them!).
Art
C and I used kneaded erasers to “draw” on charcoal. This was such a different way of looking at things, I could almost feel new brain connections forming as we worked!
New Projects – Kids’ Blogs
I was delighted when J(7) decided to create a blog to review video games, and I was even more thrilled when C(9) offered to type for him. These two do not often collaborate, so my heart sang as I heard them. C(9) meanwhile also learned how to scan her artwork and post it with commentary into her blog, Comics Are Fun.
Maths
Two successes here:
- The children enjoyed practising their maths facts playing against children around the world in preparation for World Math Day on 6 March.
- I introduced C(9) the relationship between fractions and decimals. Not only did she get it straight away, but she turned to me with a smile and said “You know Mummy, you’re getting much better at explaining things.” That made my day!
Poetry Tea
Friends joined us for poetry tea (and I discovered a new gluten and sugar free lemon drizzle cake – delicious! I just substituted a gluten free flour blend and added xanthan gum).
I hope you’ve had a great week too!
To see what other homeschoolers have been enjoying this week, visit It’s A Wrap at Hammock Tracks and Collage Friday at Homegrown Learners.
I feel like I’m utterly lacking in flow at the moment, but I dream of having the kind of days (and learning) that you describe! Maybe after a nice holiday, things will fall into place!
Holidays never fail to recharge me – I’m sure Italy will work wonders! For me, the elusive secret is staying in flow as the tan begins to fade. That’s my holy grail!
i hope you guys have checked out the new pbh kids tumblr blog — maybe you’ll want to share some of your project work there! 🙂 http://pbhkids.tumblr.com
Thank you for the reminder, Lori, I’ve been meaning to link up there for a while – I just have to figure out how to do it! We’ve been really enjoying looking at everyone’s projects there – such a great idea to have started, thank you!
awesome — just e-mail me when you have something you want to share! 🙂