Homeschooling – The Home Environment
by Mimi Rothschild
Homeschooling; the very word creates an amalgam of ideas; blending together two very separate places. When parents who decide to homeschool set out to do so, they have made a hundred different decisions, considered a hundred various factors; but may not have considered the impact running a school out of their home will have on their home environment. Kids who attend traditional schools often have a distinct separation of school and home. In one place, they are expected to sit at attention, move from class to class and teacher to teacher, deal with large crowds of peers, and follow specific rules that may vary from those they follow at home. In the other place, they can relax, play, be with their family; be themselves. Homeschool children don’t have that separation, and neither do their parents; a balance has to be achieved and maintained.
Whether you are already a homeschool family or have not yet made the leap, planning ahead will bring a great many rewards. Take the time to consider the implications of having the children at home all day, every day, on the housework, paying the bills, yard work, exercise time, recreation time and good old fashioned “you time.” Look for ways to combine lessons into these other times, such as math skills and following directions as your child helps you prepare the evening meal, or planning and executing a plan through raking leaves or mowing the lawn. Even bill paying time provides a ton of opportunities to teach lessons in finance, balancing a checkbook, and generally how money works.
One other area in which homeschooling makes a sizeable impact is the physical home itself. There are going to be textbooks, reading books, papers, writing utensils, art supplies…the list goes on. There needs to be a place to keep all of these materials, not to mention a place to actually do school work. Having a dedicated “class room” may not be possible depending on your living space, but consider dedicating a bookshelf and file cabinet, especially if they are portable, to the cause. Keeping materials organized will go a long way to keeping the house in order.
Close behind having space for materials and a “classroom” comes the ability to put it all away. It might be convenient to hang state maps in the hallway and posters of frog anatomy and the periodic table of elements in your child’s bedroom, but don’t forget your living space is a home first. The ability to separate “school mode” from “home mode” can be an important tool to use to manage homeschooling, and if you can flip that poster of the moon’s craters around to show your child’s favorite super hero, you can make the transition in few minutes a day.
Sometimes the best way to help the home environment is to get out of it. Plenty of field trips (for fun, for education, and for both) are a good way to keep things changing and stimulating for your homeschool kids, if even a trip to the grocer for that evening’s “dinner lesson.” However you decide to do it, it is important to plan ahead and be creative in creating a homeschool environment that is still a home.