Kid: “Mommy… I’m bored!”
Mom: “Good!”
I think this is how I’ll respond to my kids from now on when they complain to me that they’re bored.
No, it probably won’t go over very well with them. But boredom – free, unscheduled, unfettered time – is a GIFT in our culture today. Too much free time can become an issue, of course. But, for many of us, time to think and dream and putter around is often lacking.
Our science experiments have usually been one of the highlights of our homeschool weeks. But recently, on one already disagreeable day, our physics lesson was the last straw.
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I could never homeschool because…
These are all concerns I had when our family first considered homeschooling and I hear non-homeschooling parents say things like this all the time.
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We all have 24 hours in a day.
You can work hard to earn more money, you can study to gain more knowledge, and you can always buy more stuff. But time is one commodity we can’t get more of, no matter how hard we try.
You can’t earn it. You can’t buy it. You can only spend it more carefully.
Spending your time wisely and intentionally is the closest any of us can get to gaining more time. One of the best ways – in fact, the best way – that my family has found to take back time in our lives has been by homeschooling.
What is this secret weapon, you ask?
Here’s a hint…
All moms and dads have this parenting tool in their arsenal. But homeschooling offers the advantage of significantly more time and freedom to use it!
So, what is this thing that makes homeschooling so effective, even when it’s used by average Jane’s and Joe’s teaching their kids in their kitchen?
Drum roll, please…
”Do you ask a fish how it swims? Or a bird how it flies? No sirree, you don’t! They do it because they were born to do it!”
– Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Just like Willy Wonka was born to invent new candy bars, kids were born to learn!
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about why homeschooling works easily for kids of all ages. They’re even learning on sick days. And, on our recent trip to the lake, I was reminded (yet again) how kids are always learning – even on vacation!
It’s August…. The END of August….
If you’re being thrown into homeschooling unexpectedly, this might be the moment you start to panic.
Or, it might be when the panic you’ve felt rising for months turns into full-blown freaking out.
As a friend of mine says to lighten the mood when her kids are stressed out, “don’t worry… sausages!”
Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.
You never imagined yourself doing school at home. Or maybe you did, but not yet… and definitely not because schools closed suddenly during a pandemic! You don’t have the luxury of researching and planning over the summer months – this is happening NOW!
But for now – right now – you want to make the most of this. For the next three weeks or three months or however long it lasts, you want to take the lemons and make lemonade.
In this series we’ve taken a look at reasons homeschooling works for preschoolers and for early elementary students.
But when kids get older and their academic work becomes more “serious” can homeschooling really work for them?
Definitely YES!
In this series, I’m hoping to give you a glimpse into why homeschooling is so effective for kids of all ages.
In the previous post, I showed just how much preschoolers are learning all the time. Homeschooling is incredibly effective for young kids since there’s time to answer more of their bazillion daily questions and let life and learning flow together naturally.
As kids get into their early elementary years, their brains are still like sponges. They’re constantly soaking in information and now they’re old enough to make more sense of it.
