Choosing a Homeschool Philosophy

When we lived in Missouri about half of my friend group was made up of Homeschool parents. I greatly enjoyed watching these friends parent and teach their children. I learned so much about gentle parenting, bringing learning into daily life and homeschool in general.

So when I first decided to homeschool I was familiar with a few different styles because those are ones my friends use. I knew about Unschooling, Waldorf, and Inquiry based learning. I had sent my children to Montessori, Forest and Reggio Emilia preschools so I was familiar with those philosophies in a school setting and knew they could be converted to a home school environment. Based on this prior knowledge I was planning on using a Montessori based learning style.

Then I joined some groups and started hearing all these words I had never heard before.

Charlotte Mason

Classical

Unit Studies

Traditional

Thomas Jefferson.

I'm sure I am forgetting a few. Each time I came across a new philosophy I would start to research and I usually found aspects of the philosophy that resonated with me. My confusion and anxiety started to spike. Making this decision seemed so huge. This is what was going to guide me and help me make future decisions. It would have rules and outlines and when I became lost I could come back to my philosophy. I decided this was the most important decision I needed to make.

Luckily I found a quiz! I love taking quizes. What Hogwarts house are you? What dog breed is your soul mate? What is your love language? If there is a quiz I want to take it. Even those silly quizzes with lots of ads (Buzzfeed I'm looking at you). I found this quiz from Eclectic Homeschooler. She has a more recent quiz with project based and reggio based philosophies added, you can find it here. This was great! Someone else was going to make this decision for me.

Unfortunately, my scores for all of the philosophies were about the same. I took the second test and its results were about the same. That is when I realized that there isn't a scoring system. I don't get in trouble if I have a room set up as a reggio emilia/montessori inspired play space and then do a Unit or Project style lesson. Then focus on learning about Cheetahs because my son wants to learn about them followed by a week of hiking and outdoor exploring. We can pick the parts of the philosophies that work for us and leave off the parts that don't work for us. As long as my children are happy, healthy, learning and thriving we are succeeding. This will be trial and error and what works for one child may not work for another.

So I am doing my own thing and this realization was so freeing. Do you have a homeschool style or philosophy that you follow?

De-Schooling

Running into the gulf on our beach vacation

We started quarantine on March 13th and decisions about the next school year had to be made by April 1. We had lots of serious conversations. Pro/con lists were made. We discussed each child separately and what we felt was best for them emotionally and with their education. After hours of discussion and research we came to the decision I would be homeschooling Kid 2. I jumped straight in and committed fully to this. I joined all the local homeschool groups on facebook. I started reading blog after blog about curriculum. I watched youtube videos about planners and staying organized. I scoured teachers pay teachers for materials. I created amazon wish lists. Basically if it had to do with homeschooling I joined, watched, read and saved. My type A personality was going to research myself into succeeding at this.

At the same time I stared planning. I created an entire summer reading program for us to do. I picked 6 of our favorite books and I planned 2 weeks of activities based on each book. I had pinterest boards and word documents of activities and excel sheets of materials needed. I had crafts and games and snacks planned based on these books. We were going to read the book 2-3 times a day focusing on a common sight words. Then we would do the activities that were age sorted so each child was involved. We would then focus on the sight word doing salt writing, play-dough stamping, body shapes, chalk writing, etc. Finishing the day with another read of the book. The whole time I was planning this program, researching curriculum and trying to find local social groups I was also assisting my oldest with her distance learning which involved 8 zoom meetings a week and 12-16 lessons/activities.

Do you feel tired yet? I'm exhausted just typing it out.

Then we got to May and I realized that we all needed a break. Mostly I needed a break. I had started to retreat from my family. I was spending hours reading instead of sleeping. My patience was gone and I was snapping at my children more. I am an extreme introvert. Staying home is my happy place. Unfortunately with quarantine everyone is home with you. I am used to having my children on me/needing me 24hrs a day most days. Kid3 is still nursing and does not sleep through the night but I had gotten to my breaking point. My anxiety was through the roof and my brain decided the best way to deal with everything was to just do nothing. I was counting down the days to the end of the school year. It was then I realized we didn't need an amazing summer reading program. What we needed was as close to a normal summer as we could get.

They created a water park by putting the hose on the slide

I then decided we needed to fully embrace a period of de-schooling. De-schooling is a transition period where the child and the adult remove the perceptions of what school is supposed to look like and find a new school normal for the family. Our de-schooling is a little different from the typical because Kid1 will be attending school starting in August. I created 2 goals for our summer.

        -Have fun!

        -Work on our emotional/mental health

We have not been perfect, there has been a lot more screen time this year than previous summers. That is my way of detaching when I would normally have playdates and camp days to give myself a break. I have leaned into this and realized that my children will be ok if they get "too much" screen time. Also what is too much?

For our Have Fun goal we have been going to the pool, decorating cookies, eating ice cream. running through the sprinkler, making forts, riding bikes and having dance parties. We also went on a socially distanced family vacation to the beach. It was a wonderful reset for the whole family.

Swimming in the pool

The second goal is a little more structured and geared towards Kid1. Her anxiety has been steadily ramping up. The normal coping mechanisms we have used in the past have not been as helpful lately. So we refocused and started some new things. We have the Peloton app and we created an account for her. She has been doing the meditations daily, sometimes several times a day. She also started doing the yoga classes.

Kid1 doing yoga among the toys

I also purchased the Camp Slumberkins set. Slumberkins is a company that creates items to help early emotional learning. They have stories that help little ones learn social emotional skills. You can also purchase stuffed animals that star in these stories. We have collected a few slumberkins over the last year and my kids love them and the stories. Kid1 will grab the book that relates to an emotion she is feeling if she needs some assistance. In June they released their camp slumberkins program for pre-order. It consisted of 1 large bigfoot stuffed animal and 4 small animal friends. Bigfoot is all about self esteem and the program has him meeting a new friend each week to learn a new lesson about self esteem. Each lesson/friend has 12 activities to go with the lesson. Ours arrived yesterday so we will be starting our 4 weeks on Monday. Unfortunately they are sold out of the program but you can follow on social media for activities to use. I will post through our camp journey on what we do, how it works for us and ways to do this without the actual materials since they are no longer available.

Picture from website of Camp Slumberkins

Did you deschool your kids? What did you do during your deschooling period?