Despite the Big Yellow Bus

Welcome to the September Carnival of Natural Parenting: We’re all home schoolers

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how their children learn at home as a natural part of their day. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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Here’s something that seems to surprise people about us: Our children go to the regular public school. Every morning at just before 8 o’clock, they trudge down the driveway to wait for the big yellow bus, wearing backpacks that dwarf them, and carrying lunch boxes full of foods that perplex their classmates.

It occasionally catches me off guard. People that have just met us often ask (after other conversations about our world views, lifestyle, political beliefs, what have you), “So, you homeschool then, do you?” Once they have known us for several months, it often becomes, “Well… why *don’t* you homeschool, then?” Oddly, nobody ever seems to simply ask, “Have you ever considered homeschooling?” Clearly, they assume that we have considered it, and have rejected it for some reason. We have, and we have, but that is beyond the scope of this post.

We are all Homeschoolers

In the spirit of the current Carnival theme, then, allow me to consider what it means to homeschool children that spend 6 hours of the day in a typical institutional school setting. My kids go off to school most mornings excited, happy, and interested. They come home knowing things that I wouldn’t have  thought to teach them, speaking languages I don’t know, and with art projects that I could not have begun to envision. I have political beliefs regarding schooling, standardization, and What Education Is For that are not strictly consistent with the modern approach to schooling, but my kids seem to be thriving in this system. So far.

This pleases me, because not everybody does.

Different Kids, Different Needs

My oldest has a brilliant and incisive mind, but struggles to place ideas on paper and relate to other people socially. He absorbs information through his pores and makes sense of the world the way that a fish swims in water, so I primarily consider the school to be a place for him to practice relating to the rest of the world. The academics will come regardless of the learning environment, so for him my main goals are to provide emotional stability, resilience, and opportunities to exercise his strengths. We need to feed his intellect and grow his emotional intelligence simultaneously.  This involves keeping an atlas, globe, and flip-charts in the living room (for impromptu brainstorming sessions and sketches), a subscription to National Geographic, screenings of documentaries as requested, regular trips to the public library, and actively seeking out other kids with similar interests, including the ‘full time’ (or “real”) homeschoolers from the next town over. It also involves an unusual amount of intentional “check in” time with Mom. When gifted with a gentle, loving, curious child, I am responsible to make sure that he gets to stay that way, because the world needs more gentle, loving, curious adults… preferably ones who can talk to other people.

My middle child has, unsurprisingly, different needs. The biggest concern I have with sending her out to school every day isn’t her ability to fit in; she is, to my consternation, one of the popular kids… which means that she is encouraged at the tender age of 6 to have clothes that cost more than mine. Sometimes I feel that she “should have” been born to a wealthy family more attuned to the expectations of the society we happen upon. However, she wasn’t. So, for this one, my main goal is for her to learn to question the materialistic assumptions in which we are awash, because that way madness lies. Of course, if I play this wrong, she will simply decide that she is deprived and run off as soon as she is able to get all the (metaphorical) ice cream she can eat. To counter that possibility, our learning activities involve making sure that she has fun doing things that I value, like cooking, growing, picking vegetables, playing with physical objects and real human beings, and generally getting her hands dirty. This also plays to her strengths, because in addition to being a nascent hedonist, she is keenly physically adept, and concerned with other people’s emotional health. (Except, sadly, her younger brother, who is nothing less than the pest that wrecked her life along with her Lego castle.) It also means that this fall she is switching from music lessons to Tae Kwon Do, both to allow her the physical outlet, and to give her something to talk about at school. If her strengths involve being popular and fitting in, I’m not about to actively undermine her.

Which leaves us with the little guy, who (we just found out) gets to start going to preschool tomorrow. He is very very excited. He loves playing with other kids. He also loves books, colouring, chasing the chickens, playing in the river, going for a stomp, and dragging the cats around. Did I mention chasing things? He lives life full steam ahead, charging along and stomping things as he goes. He just broke a Fisher Price digger that had survived six previous kids and 30 years of use. (I was one of the previous kids.) He is really very unlike his older siblings. His education to this point has been essentially of the unschooled (or learning by doing) variety. He likes to bake, pull carrots from the garden, and he just started eating vegetables this summer when he discovered that he could grow them, pick them, wash them, and eat them. He can find wild strawberries in season AND he knows not to eat the red ones on the vines. There’s some practical knowledge for a three-year-old. I know he is testing his limits, because every day he asks whether he is big enough to go outside by himself yet. (No. Not yet.) He’s going to need something else from us. We don’t know exactly what it is going to be. But it will keep us on our toes.

Despite the big yellow bus that whisks my older two away and brings them back mysteriously enriched, our lives as parents are entangled with education. We have been very clear with the school that the family is not the junior partner in this enterprise. I will support homework, but I will not let it take over our lives. I will support the teachers to the best of my ability, but I will not sacrifice my kids to standardized testing. The school provides the standard stuff that we might not have thought of, the fancy stuff that makes life more fun, and some structure that is, frankly, not my strong suit… but we get to help the kids put it all together into a little practice I like to think of as “Becoming a Decent Human Being”. Which is, IMNSHO, sort of the point of it all.

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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be updated September 14 with all the carnival links.)

• A is for Apple {But right now it’s more fun to pick apples!} — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment has a four-year-old who wisely knows she must forgo the worksheets for now and do things with her mother if she’s going to learn.
• Baby Talks — Amy at Anktangle talks, talks, talks all day long to her preverbal baby, about simple things and complexities. (@anktangle)
• Baby University: Little Man, My Teacher — The ArtsyMama shares how her relaxed and patient “teaching” at home resulted in a confident little one when she returned to work.
• Creating a Sensory Garden — A sensory garden has given Marita at Stuff With Thing and her girls practice in math, science, budgeting, fine motor skills, and more. (@leechbabe)
• Despite the Big Yellow Bus — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante has surprised many friends by sending her kids off to mainstream schooling — but their learning doesn’t stop there. (@seonaid_lee)
• Down on the Farm — Megan at Purple Dancing Dhalias describes the multitude of skills her children learn by homeschooling on a farm.
• Early Childhood Education — First Do No Harm — Laura at Laura’s Blog provides an incredible list of tips to facilitate learning at home.
• Education Starts At Home — Luschka at Diary of a First Child was happy to realize that learning at home isn’t limited to older children. (@lvano)
• Every Day Is A School Day — Summer at Finding Summer lists the ways her family learns in this poem of a post. (@summerminor)
• hands on — the grumbles at grumbles and grunts read her little one Sherlock Holmes in utero. She’ll continue to make learning fun now that he’s on this side of the womb. (@thegrumbles)
• Have a Happy Heart — Erica at ChildOrganics has days of poop on the couch and oatmeal down the pants when sending her children to school seems like the perfect solution — until she regains her perspective. (@childorganics)
• Home Sweet Home Schooling — Check out CurlyMonkey’s Blog for a photo montage of how her kids are learning anatomy, architecture, and more — all at home. (@curlymonkey_)
• Homeschooling — My Needs? — Do you homeschool for the kids, or do you do it for you? Read some thoughts from Home Grown Families. (@momtosprouts)
• Homeschooling: A Way of Life — Kimberly at Homeschooling in Nova Scotia has children who meet learning with enthusiasm and are becoming self-sufficient at a young age. (@UsborneBooksCB)
• How We Homeschooled — Deb at Living Montessori Now details in retrospect how her two lifelong learners spent their homeschooling years. (@DebChitwood)
• Learning at Home With a Preschooler and Toddler — Need some inspiration? Michelle at The Parent Vortex shares her tips and resources for lifelong learning. (@TheParentVortex)
• Learning at Home: Are We All Homeschoolers? — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings incorporates homeschool ideas even though she plans to send her kids to school. (@sunfrog)
• Learning From Life — Mamapoekie at Authentic Parenting doesn’t even have to think about how her daughter learns. She just does it. (@mamapoekie)
• Learning Through Play — What better way to learn at home than through play? Dionna at Code Name: Mama lists the many ways children learn through play, whether they know it or not. (@CodeNameMama)
• Learning With Savoury Pikelets — Deb at Science@Home breaks down how cooking facilitates learning. (@ScienceMum)
• Lessons Learned by Bowling (Yes, Bowling) — What life lessons can you learn from bowling? Ask Jessica from This is Worthwhile. (@tisworthwhile)
• Life is learning, learning is life. — Kristin, guest posting at Janet Fraser — Where birth and feminism intersect, defends the truth that children are hardwired to learn. (@JoyousLearning)
• life learning… — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children found that structured schooling is about teaching, whereas unschooling is about learning, and her family resonated with the latter.
• Live to Learn Together — RealMommy at True Confessions of a Real Mommy knows that children learn in all different styles, so only one-on-one attention can do the trick.
• Natural Parenting and the Working Mom — Jenny from Chronicles of a Nursing Mom shares how natural parenting in the Philippines — and learning at home — includes “yayas” (nannies). (@crazydigger)
• Not Back to School: How We Learn at Home — Denise at This Holistic Life has learned to describe what unschooling is, rather than what it isn’t.
• Our Learning Curve — Andrea of Ella-Bean & Co. has a special bookshelf set up where her daughter can explore the world on her own terms.
• School at Our House — Where is learning happening at Kellie at Our Mindful Life’s house? It is pouring all over the floor. It is digging down deep in the earth. It is everywhere!
• Schooling Three Little Piggies — Despite the mess and the chaos, Melissa at White Noise lets her children into the kitchen.
• SuperMom versus The Comic Books of Doom! — Mommy Soup at Cream of Mommy Soup realized that if “getting the kids to read” was the goal, it didn’t matter what the kids read. (@mommysoup)
• The joy of learning at home — Heather at Life, Gluten Free has a daughter who sees magic in the stars and understands the honeybees. (@lifeglutenfree)
• those who can’t teach — Do you need a superiority complex to homeschool? Stefanie at Very, Very Fine wonders.
• Too lazy to unschool? — If unschoolers aren’t lazy, Lauren at Hobo Mama wonders if she’s too lazy to live her dream of free-form education. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Unschooling the School of Me — Rachael at The Variegated Life considers what she’s teaching her son about work as a work-at-home mother — and the extreme work ethic she doesn’t want him to emulate. (@RachaelNevins)
• What We Do All Day — Alison at BluebirdMama discovered that it’s easier than she thought it would be to quantify how her child learns all day. (@childbearing)
• Who taught that kid ‘exoskeleton’? — Nervous about how you will facilitate learning at home? Don’t be – they will absorb things on their own! Joni Rae at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma shares her story. (@kitchenwitch)