We had a great first meeting of this school year. Our topic was, "What am I doing?!" and we basically covered choosing what to do and what to let go in our homeschooling. Contrary to some teachers, who believe that if you just follow the steps they lay out, your parenting (or homeschooling) journey will be successful, I believe that homeschooling and parenting are most successful when they are personalized. So our meeting focused on several questions that we can ask ourselves in order to personalize our homeschooling and time priorities.
First, we asked, "Why is your family homeschooling right now?" We may want to have more time with our children, focusing on building up strong family relations with them and between siblings. We may want to focus on academics and providing a better education than what we had. We may want their education to be more Biblically based or more experiential or more age-appropriate than what the public schools offer. Our answers to this question can help us to determine which curriculum to use (if any), whether or not to join a co-op, how much time to spend on school each day, etcetera.
Secondly we asked, "How do you learn best? How does your child learn best?" This was a consideration of what time of day we learn best; the amount of light, space, noise, and clutter we can tolerate in our learning/work environment; if we like to be more or less scheduled; and if we are predominantly visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. After considering each of these for ourselves, we need to consider whether our children are the same as we are. If we don't know, we can start with our own preferences, but just be aware that we may need to change if we discover that our preferences aren't working for our child.
Next, we asked, "What do you hope to accomplish in your homeschooling?" This is a consideration of long-term goals. Whether our long-term goals include college preparation, character training, life-skills or business learning, strong family relationships, or a combination of some or all of these, there are things that we can teach our children now to set them further along the path toward these goals. As with the first question, this question can also help us to make decisions about homeschooling direction (curriculum and like decisions).
Similarly, we asked, "What life-skills do your kids need to know before they leave your home? What can they learn right now?" Nearly all children can be learning some life skill. A young child may not be able to do laundry or cook on his own, but he can fold washcloths and help you in the kitchen. Making it an activity that you do and enjoy together will also help shape his view of work as something that can be fun, or at the very least, can be done with a good attitude since it has to be done anyway.
Finally, we asked, "What are you willing to sacrifice for homeschooling?" Some of us are willing to sacrifice a clean home, others healthy meals. Some are us are not willing to sacrifice either, and so choose to have a less rigorous homeschooling program. All of us have things that we are not willing to "let go." We need to be aware of those things. Homeschooling does require us to sacrifice some things, and it is good to know our own limits. However, things that ought never be sacrificed for homeschooling are our relationships with God, our husbands, or our children. If we are sacrificing those things, we need to re-evaluate our priorities.
Thinking about each of these questions can really help shape our individual homeschools into places where our family's goals are well-thought out and achieved, where our children's individuality is honored and accepted, and where we know our own limits so that we can choose wisely when opportunities come to us.
