Homeschooling - It's About TIME

Obviously I'm no expert, with my less than a month of part-time homeschooling under my belt, but I've been thinking about time. One of the reasons I am choosing to homeschool is because I think that public schools take way longer than is necessary for the amount that a child learns on any given day. Especially for young children, I think an hour or two of "formal" learning is more than enough (maybe too much). My kids do the rest of their learning through play, cooking, books, and yes, the occasional TV show (I love Curious George, BTW). As my kids get older I want them to have some dedicated time each day to pursue whatever topic interests them most. I'm not an unschooler, but I love the flexibility to have some kid-directed learning. Public school kids can do it too, but it seems much more difficult when you're at school for 7 hours and then have to do homework. If my kid is into robotics, dinosaurs, music, whatever, I want him to have time to pursue that interest.

So, I keep my kids home to save them from hours sitting at a desk. I also think there's a good chance that we'll end up with stronger familial bonds, because we'll be spending so much time together, learning together, discussing together, etc. Although, there's a chance the opposite could happen if I totally lose my mind. ;)

I plan to school year-round, as summer break is an antiquated, ridiculous idea. Our format might change over the summer, and we'll certainly take some breaks here and there for vacations and holidays, but there's no way we're going to take a break on learning for a quarter of each year.

All that being said though, it is HARD to squeeze out a dedicated hour to work on school stuff, when you've got a family's-worth of obligations, classes, and chores. You'd think, oh sure, an hour, that's easy peasy, but it is not as easy as it sounds. For now I've been doing it while my 1 and 3 year old are napping in the afternoon. This setup works really well for my 5 year old, but I don't love that I don't have any time with my 3 year old to play around on starfall or read books. Plus, I'm an introvert, and I REALLY appreciate my afternoon nap time break to read, work on something, sleep, or do whatever else I want. Me time is being sacrificed, which I hopefully won't end up regretting.

Anyway, so I have really been thinking that homeschooling is about TIME. Time spent with our kids, time saved from having our kids in a desk, time spent learning and growing together, and somehow finding the time to do it all joyfully. This is going to be an adventure.