On Liturgy in the Home

It was Christmas morning and we were not happy to be around the tree.  I was an early teen and the details of the dissension are fuzzy, but the pall was palpable.  Whether it was sibling squabbles, work and school stress or something else, I only remember that my family could not bear to look at each other, much less celebrate Christ's birth together.  It seemed as if the tension would never end, but then my mom yelled that if we wanted to have Christmas, first we were all going to look each other individually in the face, tell the person that we loved them and give them a hug.  By the end we were all crying.  We each started with the easy person, the one that hadn't been giving us problems.  Some of the tears were a release of tension and some of them were because it was so hard to look at a person who had wounded you and forgive them.  In order to honestly tell someone's eyes that you love them, you have to forgive them.  To this day, it was one of the most difficult acts of will and obedience I've done, but mom was right and we went on to have Christmas with clean hearts.  That morning, we learned the hard way that Jesus came for our reconciliation with each other as well as with God.

Candice's homeschool day in the life (with a 1, 4 & 7-year-old)

When I decided to consider homeschooling in the middle of last summer, I researched like a crazy person for three weeks before I chose a plan of action.  I am a box-checker who despises construction paper, but loves to read.  I seemed to have the greatest affinity for the principles of Charlotte Mason, so I chose to use the literature-based Sonlight curriculum with some of my own additions thrown in.

I chose the first grade package for my daughter Hazel.  Unexpectedly, every time we settled on the couch to read about history or study the Bible, her brother Jubal was on the other side of me.  He would ask the most pertinent questions and I soon realized that I was homeschooling him too. 

The following was my day on Friday, January 23rd with some notations as what a more "normal" day would entail.

6:45 a.m.  The baby in my closet (yes, you read that correctly) woke up and was ready eat.  In an ideal world I would get up at the same time every morning and have productive time to myself.  In my real world with two children who still get up frequently at night, I get up when the baby gets up.  I struggle with serious crankiness if I don't get a good block of sleep, so I get up anywhere between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. depending on how the previous night went and when Granville wakes up.

I nurse the baby, make my bed, wash my face, put on the same clothes I wore the day before and wipe out my bathroom sink and toilet.  I do not enjoy cleaning the bathrooms and would previously let them go so long that my husband would finally clean them.  Since August, I've been proactively wiping down my sink and "swishing" my toilet when I get up.  Now I never have to deal with bathroom horror because it doesn't have time to get that bad.  (Thanks for the idea FlyLady.)  Jubal hears Granville burbling in my room and gets up to see him sometime while I'm doing all of this.  I move to the laundry room where I start one load of laundry.  Both my husband and I try to wear our outer clothes as long as possible (unless they get dirty, of course!).  It really does lower the laundry requirements and we get away with only doing five loads of laundry each week.  I generally do one load per week day.  I wipe down our main bathroom and head to the kitchen.

7:30 a.m. Since we started homeschooling, I wanted to have better breakfasts than cereal every day because I don't have to put my daughter on an early bus anymore.  I have about ten breakfast meals that I cycle through.  Some are easy and some are more involved, so I can choose based on what we have going on each day.  Thankfully, we had breakfast for dinner on Thursday night so I still have pancakes in the refrigerator.  I clean out the dish drainer, make my tea, get out meat to defrost for our dinner, set out vitamins and our pancakes and bananas.  The boys and I eat, but Hazel still isn't up.

On Homeschooling

We are in our seventh week of homeschooling.  I have not broadcast this information beyond those I see on a regular basis.  I wanted to get our feet under us before I had to deal with defending our decision.

I have many friends and some family members who have taught their children at home.  I've seen the appeal, but at the heart of my own disinclination to homeschool was my own selfishness.  I didn't want to have to give up the time or use the mental energy that I knew it would require of me, the introvert.

Through a chain of circumstances in July, God changed my heart toward homeschooling.  Starting with a sermon, a book and two conversations, my aversion grew into a willingness to entertain the idea and finally into actual excitement.  My teen perception of homeschooling was that it was done out of fear - fear of danger and exposure to the world.  Fear wasn't the motivation I wanted to drive my decision.  And as we each determine the education of our children, no matter what we choose, we need to understand our motivations, intentions and desires.  

As I read, thought and talked this summer, I realized that there were better reasons to homeschool.  For one, maybe my children could actually get a better education if they were taught by someone who knows them well and who can give them lots of individual attention!  So here are my positive reasons for homeschooling:

*I can teach them how to think and not just what to think.
*By following their passions, we can inspire a love of reading, learning and curiosity feeding. 
*We can use school to ignite their heart for the Lord.
*We don't have to waste their time covering material that they already know, waiting for discipline issues with other students to be resolved or by riding the bus for almost two hours a day.
*We get to read real books together.  I am not a player or a crafty mom, but I love to read and this is one great way for us to spend time together.
*We can encourage their strengths and invest time in their interests.
*We'll have time to teach them about adult life: cooking, doing laundry, balancing checkbooks, and caring for their younger siblings.
*Finally, we can strengthen family relationships through all of that time playing and problem-solving together. 

I am seeing the most benefits in my peace, their ability to play together and reading levels.  It is not easy, though contrary to popular concern, socialization is not a big issue.  The idea of public school is so ingrained into us that we believe that children learn to behave like adults by modeling on a large class of their peers.  Last I knew, apprentice electricians still learn under journeyman electricians to wire a house.  So, apprentice adults should learn how to be an adult by learning from adults.

One person said to me that my children shouldn't be homeschooled because they need to know how to function in the real world and that the trials of junior high and high school will teach them through those hard knocks.  Again, the real world is generally not a group of peers.  My husband's coworkers range from twenty years older than him to  ten years younger than him.  Wouldn't he have been better served learning and interacting with a wide age range of students in his formative years - such as a homeschool group and mentor parents or adults?

Anyway, the hard is not the social.  The hard part for me is making sure that that social does not overtake the learning!  I've had to really organize my time and days in order make time for learning and preschoolers and baby snuggling and time for myself to read and write.  Yes, I've sacrificed, but mainly time on Facebook!  Seven weeks in and it is worth it.

I know that hard times will come and that is why I've written out my list to remind myself why our family has chosen this lifestyle.  I'm sure I'll need to read it again.