One of my favourite things about homeschooling is the never-ending learning opportunities it offers me. Not only do I get to facilitate and witness my children’s learning, but every year I get to learn how to be a better homeschooler.

Since love of learning is  – according to the Authentic Happiness Centre’s VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire – my greatest strength, this means I get to live a pretty charmed life!

Here, in no particular order, are three of the many things I’ve learned about homeschooling this year.

1. You don’t need a curriculum to learn maths

I have friends for whose families maths curricula work wonderfully, and I’m delighted for them. But although everyone in our family likes maths, we’ve never got on with a maths curriculum. Back in April we gave up trying to find one, and began a living maths experiment.

We love being able to choose which maths topic we learn about when, and what resources to use. I am more in tune with my children’s needs and abilities than any curriculum could be, so as well as being more enjoyable, learning maths this way makes much more efficient use of our time.

C(10) and J(8) benefit from one-to-one attention learning maths this way. With any curriculum there is the temptation to leave a child to get on with the set number of pages while you get on with something else. My long-term goal is for my kids to be independent learners, but the best way for that to happen is for me to be by their side now, enjoying puzzles and stories, asking good questions and modelling creative problem-solving strategies.

We’ve recently looked at some of the maths test papers English schoolchildren sit in Year 6 (Grade 5). Sitting comfortably at my side, my kids approach the test questions as fun puzzles. Even if they haven’t come across a topic before, they don’t panic – they try to figure out a way round. (And I make a note to explore the topic together another time.) Homeschoolers don’t have to take these tests, but I find it reassuring that C(10) and J(8) would have no problem passing if they did – no curriculum required.

2. My children learn a lot from videos

When my kids want to find out how to do something, the first place they go is YouTube.

In the last few weeks, C(10) has prepared illustrated essays on fossils and the history of skateboarding using YouTube as one of her primary research sources. She also teaches herself drawing, sewing and cooking techniques, and guitar chords from videos.

At the moment, J(8) mostly uses YouTube to solve specific problems in his computer games, but that doesn’t make the critical thinking and writing skills he’s acquiring during the course of his research any less valuable.

For some reason it took me a while to catch onto this trend and use videos in the learning we do together. I guess it’s another layer of my deschooling (“learning must come from books”), combined with having grown up in a different technological era.

I can’t skim videos the way I can books or web pages, so it can take a bit longer to pull together strewing material. But as more of us use video in our homeschools, the more links to good quality material are being shared, which makes the task easier. (I love the way Hwee, for example, includes videos in most of her blog posts.)

Next year I intend to use video much more in our homeschool. {Perhaps my children will give me some tips on where to look.}

3. You can do less than you think in a year, and more than you think in three years

Sometimes when I look back on a school year, it feels like we haven’t accomplished much. Yet when I look back on the three and a half years since we began homeschooling, it’s obvious my children have learned heaps.

Similarly to the way they get taller when we’re not looking, children seem to learn in spurts rather than in one continuous steady flow. Or perhaps learning is more like the movement of waves in the ocean – always happening, but only visible at certain points in the cycle.

The more of these learning cycles I witness, the easier I find to stay relaxed during periods when not much seems to be happening.

J(8), for instance, does a little copywork or handwriting practice most days, but until recently had never written more than a few comic strips of original writing. Then last month he sat down at the computer and wrote a 1,500 story for NaNoWriMo. A story filled with the rich vocabulary he had apparently acquired over the previous two thousand hours he’d spent lounging around wearing headphones listening to audiobooks.

Talking of audiobooks, I used to wonder how J(8) would ever learn to spell, without seeing actual words in books. Then suddenly, about a month ago, he began inundating me with “How do you spell…?” questions. These come at all sorts of odd times, like when we’re out walking or he’s in the bath, rather than while he’s writing. Meanwhile I’ve started receiving perfectly spelled emails and text messages from him.

To the untrained eye it might appear that J(8) did nothing for several years and then learned to write and spell in a month. But really, like a wave steadily moving towards the shore, he was of course learning all the time.

And so am I.

To find out what the other Homeschool Help ladies want to remember about 2013, head over to:

Every Bed of Roses – Our Year in Review 2013

Highhill Education – Looking Forward – Best College Degrees

Barefoot Hippie Girl – Looking Back: Our 2013 School Year

One Magnificent Obsession – The Days are Long and the Years are Short

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I’m appreciatively linking up here:

Hip Homeschool Hop

Anything Goes #4

Collage Friday

Weekly Wrap-Up

We’re lucky here in the UK that we don’t have to keep homeschooling records or prove we’ve done school for a minimum number of days per year.

Although this means we have complete freedom to choose our schedule, in practice our family mostly follows the local school terms. We also take off several term-time weeks each year to travel. Since my kids probably learn more on these vacations than they do at home,  I’m good with this.

How we benefit from “school holidays”

1. Better strewing

The way we homeschool doesn’t involve any lesson-planning as such, but I am kept busy finding and strewing interesting resources to enrich my children’s learning environment. Breaks give me time to replenish my strewing resources and inspiration.

Some strewing is quite routine. For example, I try to offer at least one fun science activity each week. Once a week I reflect on what the children are interested in, and find a related hands-on science activity. I do the same for maths.

But breaks from our daily routine give me time to delve into subjects more deeply –  to read whole books, even! Books about homeschooling, about particular subjects, or historical fiction for grown-ups, for example – all of which contribute to my children’s education.

2. Recharging and Modelling

Having more time to myself on our breaks also gives me time to pursue my own interests, which not only recharges my batteries but often also inspires C(9) and J(8).

This summer, for instance, I found time to begin learning German, which I’ve been wanting to learn for twenty years! After seeing me having fun on the Duolingo app, C(9) decided to learn too.

3. Breaks are good for the brain

I come away from our breaks refreshed, inspired and enthusiastic to begin homeschooling afresh. The children benefit just as much.

Neuroscience tells us that taking breaks improves learning.  Our brains need time to process and consolidate what we’ve taken in. And time away from studying allows C(9) and J(8) to make new connections and creatively apply what they’ve learned in novel ways.

And of course, we never stop having conversations or reading great books.

4. Friends, Camps and Hobbies

School holidays are when there’s time for my kids to hang out with their friends, both schooled and home-educated. To do sports, art and drama courses. To spend hours on a hobby, making daisy chains or just relaxing with a book without being interrupted by our usual extra-curricular schedule.

And quietly observing how my children choose to spend these long chunks of unscheduled time helps me be a better homeschooling mum.

Our homeschool routine helps create momentum that carries us towards our learning goals.  But from time to time it makes sense  to slow down and check we’re all heading in the right direction.

For more perspectives on year-round homeschooling (or not), visit:

Barefoot Hippie Girl – School Year Round or Not on Your Life

Every Bed of Roses – Year Round Schooling

Highhill Homeschool – School Year Round?

One Magnificent Obsession – Summer: Repair and Prepare

Next week the Homeschool Help team will be considering the subject of grades. If you’ve visited before, I’m sure you can guess which way I go on that topic. 😉

Here at Navigating By Joy I post regularly about how we homeschool science, maths, history, English, art, geography and a lot more besides.

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