“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
School is in the second week. I’d say full swing but our first week started off with sick days. Mellie started a head cold a couple of weeks ago and passed it on to her teacher so we were dragging last week. However, all is well now and we are chugging along with school.
Every state has different “requirements” for homeschooling. I’d love to get into the freedoms we SHOULD enjoy in educating our children but I’ll keep this non-political. New York has several different requirements. One is that they want us to log 900 hours of education in the year. If you have a 36 week schedule then this works out to 5 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Homeschoolers know that if you don’t waste time and go from subject to subject, you can be done well before the 5 hours. So what education do you use to keep up with industry standards?
I have some ideas and I’ll talk about two here.
CRAFTS
After school yesterday was accomplished and her violin practiced, Mellie got down to her own crafting. I am not even sure what she is making but I think it might be a dragon of some sort. She got a tube from our paper towels and some aluminum foil. Along came the clay and this project took up the better part of her day. She has it drying now so I assume it isn’t finished yet. I like to watch her create and rarely do I give her instructions. I just let her go and use her own imagination.
EXPLORING
Another activity would be exploring. Her older sister, Emilie traveled down from Canada this weekend to see us. We had a great time together! One activity that she and Mellie did was to explore the waterfall behind our house. I haven’t been yet but I need to go judging from all the pictures they took. It isn’t an easy trek of going behind our house and walking to it.
Our house is at the top of a ravine. They had to drive down the mountain road and park at a tennis court. Then they walked into the forest a bit and came upon the waterfall. They were also mindful of bears! This tree must have intrigued them because it is a picture they took. I can just hear them exclaiming over it and talking about how it was formed.
Education isn’t always with textbooks, paper and pencils. In our home, education is all the time. Whether I’m reading a book to her or she is cooking lunch (she made a great salmon on Saturday) she is learning. When she designs and builds “lego” type things on the laptop or crafts a new pet, she is learning.
Education is not a one size fits all and while I wish she loved history and literature as much as I do, I’m glad she is my little artist.
Let’s remember to challenge our children to think outside the box of education that industry standards want to put them in. We can let them learn some things in a structured setting and others as they explore the world around them and form their own hypothesis.