You can find part one of this topic here.
Question submitted to the homeschool chat:
“How do you handle completing lessons that you have planned on days you have to actually live your life, go to appointments, run errands, etc?”
My reply:
We do some formal “sit down school” though we utilize unschooling as well. The actual seat work time is generally two hours or less.
We try to prioritize that happening in a consistent window of time each day. But if we need to bump something to the next day or take school with us, we do! Carschooling is underrated. It’s a great time for audiobooks and discussions. We have brought school materials with us to the park as well. We break up errand time with a play/picnic/school.
A little prep time and planning goes a long way. But we have to stay flexible too. It’s also good to remember that “life is learning”. There is education happening even (or especially) when you are away from the books and tackling life.
It is common to worry about vital skills being missed. But really, part of that fear is rooted in our assumption that they would get those skills at school. And they are actually frequently missed there. There is a book called, “How Children Fail” that talks about how much is missed in that setting because children mostly learn how to avoid the risk of being wrong. There is a lot that never gets truly absorbed or applied because there is such a fear of public embarrassment or a bad score. So it becomes about short term memory or finding a work around. We can easily eliminate that in homeschooling.
Another submitted question:
“How do you start school again after time off?”
My reply:
We don’t take an entire season off. But we do take time completely off for travel, holidays, illness/injury/birth or if we simply need a break! When we pick school back up again we do so by starting a couple of subjects and slowly adding in more as our rhythm is established. It is common for our first month back after a break to be about half of our course load/schedule.
Many parents stated they did the exact same thing! In fact, it was the most common system expressed by homeschooling families in the chat. Interestingly, the concept of a “soft opening” to school, though absent from nearly all US schools, is common practice in Finland.
They spend the first few weeks just getting to know one another and adjusting to their new schedules. They don’t formally start any lessons! They believe students retain very little of what they are taught when they are being barraged with all of the changes of a new school year. It takes nearly a month for them to truly get accustomed to a new rhythm and feel comfortable with a new teacher and classmates.
If you are interested in learning more about this and the many other things that the Finnish school system (renowned for being unique in its approach) does; I would recommend the book “Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms”. It is fascinating to see the intentional differences to the US system and the results they see. One thing that immediately struck me was that many of the concepts line up with how homeschooling families instinctively approach learning! This would be a worthwhile read for anyone- classroom teachers, parents with kids in school, homeschooling parents, and anyone skeptical of anything that looks different than a US public school classroom!
Emmy Goulet 