Good Habits
I have only been homeschooling one year and I have to say the most common question I get is this.
“How are YOU doing?” then
“How is it going?” …and then this statement ..
“I could never do that!”
The truth is, that it is really wonderful to be able to spend this time with your children and I totally love it. My children are truly enjoying themselves and learning a lot. That does not mean I don’t have moments in the day when I’m tempted to make the PS (Public school) threat, but that is usually when the siblings have declared war on each other.
Anyway today I was researching Charlotte Mason, a homeschooling expert who deeloped a traditional/classical home education method and I read about Catherine Levinson who wrote numerous books on the method. She almost gave up homeschooling after a year because her children were driving her nuts. She started using the Charlotte Mason method and her children developed better working habits and things improved. This piqued my interest.
My work habits could use some improvement. I am highly distractable and rarely clean up immediately after myself. (Imagine a hurricane going through!) I am always 90% ready to give a lesson. Life intervenes. I plan the week but love being spontaneous and follow the child so we don’t always cover what’s on the menu.
A case in point: These things we did today were not on our plan!
- the solar powered car we made
- domino runs (kinetic/potential energy)
- Jasper Johns paintings
- Suduko
- squaring lesson with Speed
- Speed’s cursive letter “a” lesson
- Chuckles watched Harry Potter #4 at lunch time
That said, in a work situation I am completely organized as you have to be. At home you can get away with being more relaxed.
After discussion with the children about what habits are in our life already and how things run better when we program ourselves a little we decided that we are going to work on forming a new good habit/break a bad habit every week.
Next week, we are implementing the “start work on time” habit. We have been starting 15/20/25 minutes late every day. They have been lingering at breakfast! Oh no! We have been going to bed later and later. Chuckles decided that she *positively needs* 11 hours of sleep so must be in bed by 8pm. Speed has to follow along. This way they will be able to get up when their “new” alarm clocks wake them up at 7am.
I’ll keep you up to date!
May 15th, 2009 at 12:41 am
The things you do in one day that are “not on your plan” in addition to the many things that are result in a level of activity which is more interesting, more meaningful and more educational than what they would get in two weeks in a regular school. Our nine year old can figure out by hand what the square root of a large number is, logically compute and prove the relational areas of differetn geometric shapes and adores reading. Our 5 year old knows his time tables through 8 and he now reads very well. They can also make motorized vehicles, create websites, spin wonderful potteries, visualize the path Jesus took, dance the waltz and the cha-cha, build pulley systems, name a wide variety of trees, plants and birds, learn the piano and…..oh yes! have an incredible childhood at the same time…. Call me crazy but it doesn’t get any better…. Things are never the same, they are learning to think outside the box, that anything is possible. And they are having a lot of fun in the journey….can I come too???