Each year that we homeschool, I pray that our homeschool would be a little bit of school and a whole lot of home.

When we first started homeschooling 10 years ago, I was sooo green.  I had never met a homeschooling family until the year before we decided to homeschool.  All I knew was public school.  So when I started teaching my second grader and my preschooler, I just brought what I knew to the table.  We had the flag hung up, the globe on the shelf, the maps on the wall, and of course the workbooks on the table.  Now there is nothing wrong with these things, it’s just that everything about our homeschool was scripted.  My preconceived notions were telling me I had to do x, y, and z, or else my children were not learning.

Over the years, I have learned to become more relaxed in my homeschooling approach, and as a result, the learning in our home has become so much richer–more authentic, more spontaneous, more dynamic.

The less our day looks like school, the more learning has filled our home.

Each year, I work on letting go of the “yellow bus” mentality and force myself to climb out of the box.

5 Ways We Are Climbing Out of the Box

1. Learning together – This year we are going to focus more on learning together as a family. This is sometimes difficult in homes that have children with wide-ranging ages, but with a little creativity it can be such a blessing. For instance, my oldest daughter is going to be learning anatomy and physiology, my son – biology, and my younger kids will be using Apologia’s Exploring Creation. Together we will be watching Answers in Genesis’ Body of Evidence series.

I also plan to have the older kids available to help when the younger kids do their lessons, possibly even teaching some of the lessons. Teaching others is a great way to cement information in your own mind.

I also wanted to add a note here about my own learning. Sometimes finding time for my own learning is difficult. For many years I have been learning more about herbalism, which includes anatomy and physiology. Why not take this opportunity to do my learning with the kids?

2. Block scheduling – As my children get older, I find that it sometimes works out better to set aside larger chunks of time for each project or subject. When you can really focus on one thing, and place your time and energy into one area, you are often able to be more excellent in your work.

We are going to try this approach with our history, spending concentrated time reading and doing hand-on projects.

3.  Hand-on learning – We are a very crafty family (in a good way)!  I have always loved arts and crafts and I try to tie them into our learning as much as possible.  Although the younger kids do some frivolous cut and paste projects, my goal is to have them working on “real” skills as young as possible.  For the girls, this means learning to sew, to knit and crochet, or to do scrapbooking.  For the boys, hands-on learning might be mechanics (taking about a lawn mower), woodworking, or computer projects.  I try to teach all the kids to cook.

I think we sometimes discount these types of activities as not being true learning.  I believe they teach more than just the skill. They teach how to finish a project, even one that is hard.  Projects teach children how to analyze and use the book learning in real life situations.  Creating knitting patterns puts all that math to good use!

4.  Blogging and business – Recently, my older children have jumped on the blogging train and are working on building up businesses of their own.  In the process, they have learned so many skills that they can apply to other areas of their lives.  As we work on our blogs together, we often talk about different marketing strategies, or the best use of their time and money.  These are things that are hard to grasp from a book, but are better suited to mentorship and apprenticeship.  At the moment, I am their mentor and apprentor, but at some point I hope to find others that would take them under their wing and help them build their ideas, as well as their businesses.

5.  Individualized learning – This is a biggie for me.  I really try to take a look at each child and see who God created them to be.  What does He have in store for their lives, and how should their learning goals reflect this?

There have been times I have gone completely against conventional wisdom because I knew it was best for that particular child.  Some examples include not teaching spelling to a child who was particularly gifted in spelling.  To continue teaching it would have bored her and wasted time that she could use to focus on other areas of learning.

This year, I decided that it would be better for my oldest daughter to take business math instead of calculus.  She is not going to be majoring in any subject that would require higher level math skills.  She does plan on developing her own business where she will need to know business math.

For my son, I had him learn how to type at a young age.  His handwriting is not the greatest, but I could tell that it was not improving by doing handwriting sheets or copywork.  Learning to type has paid off tremendously, as he would much rather work on the computer than write out his work by hand.

There you have it, 5 ways we are climbing out of the box this year! How about you, how are you climbing out of the box?

If Homeschool Walls Could Talk…

This post is part of a link up with some other awesome homeschooling mamas. Make sure you take a few moments to visit them and check out the things they are sharing from behind their homeschooling walls.

Lisa @ The Army Chap’s Wife

Megan @ Half Pint House

Maureen @ Spell Out Loud

Reesa @ Suburban Tree Hugger

Laura @ Day by Day In Our World

Tiffany @ Sweet Phenomena

Jasmine @ Ponder The Path

Lee @ Homeschool Canada

Jimmie @ Jimmie’s Collage

Honey @ Sunflower Schoolhouse

What would your homeschool walls say if they could speak?
Link up a new post or a previous one and come join the party.

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