Getting Fun-ctional
- Therese Morris
- Feb 5, 2018
- 4 min read
I drafted this post from March 23, 2017 aaaaand it's just now on February 4, 2018 I'm finally having the inspiration really bang this one out. Why just now? Well, I've been busy trying to get my life functional lol.
Seriously, even the best made plans get thrown by one thing or another, which isn't to say don't plan, heaven's forbid my words be misread as such. In fact, just imagine how much more of a mess life would be if we never planned in the first place.
Now, as it relate to homeschooling or just parenting in general my advice is to have a fluid system of structure.
That essentially means deciding what's most important to be done/taught/learnt then scheduling time and space for them to be executed within a general time frame. Nothing too heavy, like I'd just make up my mind that some time around 2 pm we'll have an outdoor activity, what we'll do? I don't usually know. Will it start on time? Most likely not. Will it be too short or will it roll over into the next slot? Don't know and can't be bothered to care, like I don't even stress to add an end time for anything on the schedule lol.
Trying to pin down everything to a very specific time when handling kids will either drive you insane or drive you insane with very unhappy kids, I don't know about you but those are not the options I want in my life, maybe you've found a better way and kudos to you if you have but for me and my house an organically tailored flow works best.
Since I don't teach by formal subject areas like traditional schools I have the luxury of simple scheduling activities and during that period the lessons will formulate themselves. Yes, I have ideas in advance like I'd like to use "Art & Craft Time" to show them how to mix primary, secondary and tertiary colours but hey! if I notice they're excitedly identifying shapes on their own, guess what? I gladly scrap my colour plans and tech them about two dimensional shapes versus three dimensional shapes or start a game about spotting the different shapes around the house.
You see, it really doesn't matter the order in which kids choose to learn, you just want them to learn everything they need to learn within their developmental scope and having them self-motivated means educational victory is pretty much secure.
Oh! It's important to note that you'll constantly have to be updating, redrafting, overhauling, scrapping everything and starting afresh your schedule from time to time because they grow! Their needs change constantly and if you're tending to kids at different cognitive levels like I am then there's the dynamics of addressing various needs simultaneously... that's cool, it's not a crisis or anything, just accept that you can't ever get too comfort with a schedule that you miss the cue when to change with your kids.
With that said, since I've started my work-from-home online job late last year a lot of my homeschooling feng shui has been off kilted... Oh gosh! I fought it tooth and nail at first and admittedly still struggle to find my new footing but knowing that's life is a never-ending process of change that forces us to adjust eases a lot of guilt and stress. Easier said than done I know but it's either this or waste energy trying to control the uncontrollable so I push myself to surrender to the universe trusting it's divine wisdom even in the midst of chaos, I try, some days better than others.
While I've got your attention let me point you to a specific tactic I used for regulating how much shows my kids watch each day... I cut out various shapes on coloured papers and wrote on them the names of my"mommy approved" programmes and topics (see slideshow above). Next I grabbed one of the kid's yellow cube blocks and used a permanent marker to add dots around it like a big playing die. Then I coordinated each number of the die with a set of programmes which I glued to the back of a door. Each day when they asked to watch a show I'd be like cool let's throw the die and see what we'll watch today(they love throwing the die lol).
So if they die lands on #3 then they can watch Sid the Science Kid, Bear in the Big Blue House and Fruits & Vegetables, they have the freedom to select the specific episode they want within those perimeters. Eventually the system evolved as I later gave the kids two special coloured gems as their "free choice token" that way each time they asked to watch something that wasn't within the die selection for the day they had to hand over a gem and when their gems were used up it was very easy to explain that that was that for the day. They'd sometimes decide to play with their gems all day and forfeit extra shows, and that's fine, it's all about them making choices with what life throws at them.
Moreover I find it's important for kids to have fun while being participants in their own disciplining system because they must learn that they have some amount of power to influence what happens to them as well as understand the consequences and responsibilities associated with their actions. Having them make their own decisions prepares them for life. I mean frankly, the traditional school system rigidity isn't the real world and many graduate academically accomplished yet socially and psychological ill-equipped for life.
I would never say homeschooling is the ONLY solution because everything has it's pros and cons, ultimately we all just want to lay down the law with the best interest of our kids in mind without crushing their wonderfully independent spirits that they'll later need to survive the world, neither do we want to lose our own bearings with this mammoth of a task called parenting.
