Four Moms Put It All Together

Well, maybe the other moms put it all together.  This mom?  Her kids read her blog and they know better.  You know how I 'sew?'- with masking tape, staples, spackle, a lot of prayer, tears, and pricked fingers. That's a metaphor for just about everything else I do.;-)


The first year we home-schooled I just had two children, and the younger of the two seemed to be asking for constant attention- the minute I tried to check a math paper she would be there asking in her high pitched squeaky voice, "What do I do next, Mama, what do I do now?  And now?  And then what?"   For her, I put together different learning centers around the house- there was a stack of puzzles in one corner of a room, and a walkman with headphones and books on tape in a closet, and playdough and tools for it by the kitchen table, and some felt cut outs and a felt board in another room, dress up clothes in another place, coloring books and crayons in yet another, and then a box of blocks, and a box of musical instruments.  I took a picture of her playing in or with each 'center' and put the pictures in a small file box.  If I was busy and she wanted something to do, she was to pull out a picture and go do that thing for at least fifteen minutes.

That worked well for us, but we never needed it again after that first year.
Another year I made up a list of 'extras' such as:
Tangrams
The Geosafari
Pattern Blocks
puzzles
Mad Libs
origami

And if one child finished something she was working on and I couldn't stop what I was doing with a sibling and check her work or direct her immediately, they were supposed to do the things on the list.  I divided up the list of items by day, so that there was some variety.  This worked well for us for a couple of years.

Another year I divided up our days so that sometimes one child was playing with or reading to the toddlers while I gave some individualized instruction to a sibling, and sometimes another was.   That worked well for a couple of years.

Many, many years we have incorporated family read alouds into our days, giving some children pictures to color, laundry to fold, or soft crepe rubber beads to string while listening.  Not all my children can do something else while listening to a story, though, so some folded laundry while others sat and listened quietly.

Putting it all together looks different each year because the kids (and you) are in different places each year.  One year I was able to say with a straight face:

Mostly we read to, sing with, and work alongside our toddlers (in between the hugs and kisses)

Whereas another year I would have wanted to slap the face of the smug mother who wrote the above fairy tale nonsense.

Putting it all together?  What that has looked like for us has varied from year to year, complicated by cross-country moves every three years (and once eight months apart) and just life.  The house you live in makes a huge difference in how your schedule works, how your days flow, and what sorts of things work for you and what things do not.

I spent a lot of years hunting for the perfect schedule, the perfect way to homeschool, the perfect day, the perfect me.  It's a will-o-the-whisp.   It can waste a lot of time when good enough would have been fabulous.

I used to be on the Fly Lady's list. It did not really work for me, but that's a different story. At the end of every e-mail she had this saying, "Housework done imperfectly still blesses your family."

Most of us are not perfect, and some of us are more imperfect than others (or we feel that way. I know I do).

It occurred to me a couple of years ago during one of those "I'm a failure" moments that mothering or homeschooling done imperfectly also still blesses our children. It's not that we don't keep trying for perfection, because mothering is ever so much more important than housework, of course. But we don't need to go out of our way to beat ourselves up over our failures. We will anyway, most of us, so there's no need to go out of our way to do it. I do, too. 

We just do the best we can, or some approximation thereof, and we do a little better month after month.  Try different things, and never expect that there will be a time when you have arrived.

Kimberly at Raising Olives Visit Connie  at Smockity Frocks
Visit Kim at Life in a Shoe,

Pin It

Pin It