Homeschooling-- It's Really a Lot Like... Housework?
From Susan
Richman
Like WHAT?? You maybe thought I’d say, “homeschooling--it’s really a
lot like loving.” Or maybe “a lot like growing.” Or at least “it’s really a lot
like living.” But housework???
I know right off that you may think that homeschooling has nothing at
all in common with housework-- or at least they may often seem to be mutually
exclusive realms. I know homeschooling and housework don’t always take place in
the same house. I’ve often heard many great homeschool moms admit that they
felt they either could homeschool
well or keep up their housework well-- doing both at the same time, on the same
day (or the same month?), seemed like an impossibility. And finally if you know
me at all, or have been to my house, you probably know that housework is not my
forte (to put is pretty mildly). So what am I talking about here??
Well, I’ve come to realize that a lot of the problems many of us have
with homeschooling are really very similar to problems we may have with our
housework-- and the way we handle both and view both can help us get over some
of these common hurdles. See if any of these analogies ring true for you....
1. Homeschooling is just like housework
because.... just buying the right curriculum won’t necessarily mean you’ll get
the promised results, just like buying the right cleaning tools won’t
necessarily make your house shine. There’s something called, “taking it out
of the package and using it” that comes into play. How many of you have (like
me) bought some nifty cleaning gadget-- say, recently I finally coughed up for
Don Aslett’s extension-arm window squeegee kit, so that now my very high second
floor windows could sparkle. I now own the kit, I have it stored in a very
accessible spot, and I’ve even read up briefly on how to use it. Only problem?
I haven’t yet used it. Should I complain that this product is crummy, because
my windows are still grimy, just because I’ve never used it?
Now, the homeschooling tie-in: how many of you have bought some
marvelous new curriculum product at a seminar and workshop. You bring it home,
sure that NOW your problems are over, that now your kids will not only learn but
be enthusiastic about learning. Only problem? You never got it out of the box.
It’s sitting there on your shelf, maybe still in the shrink wrap. That’s not
the product’s fault.
2. Homeschooling takes time, just like
housework. One thing I’ve learned is
that it can be hard to spend time on, say, one major remodeling project around
the home-- such as repainting my upstairs bathroom after a new ceiling had just
been installed and the roof leaks fixed-- while simultaneously keeping up with
the laundry (the washer and dryer are right in that bathroom). Once it was all
completed, then I could get to those
piles of clothes-- and neaten up for the house guests due to arrive that next
afternoon also.
Homeschool tie-in? You launch into a major project with your kids for
the upcoming history or science fair, and this involves maybe papier mache,
making posters, creating models, binding a book, making signs and labels,
finishing up a lengthy report-- all fun, all energizing, all full of great
learning, and things that will make memories for your kids (and great photos
for the portfolio). But can you still get in your regular math time with the
kids? Or make sure they practice piano for 45 minutes? Or see that they finish
their chemistry lesson to send in for their high school correspondence course?
Probably not. You may just have to wait on those more normal daily
homeschooling tasks until the flurry is over with the project fair.
And just like it’s worthwhile
to take the time out to paint that bathroom,
it will also be worth it to put off your regular studies a bit to do
this special project. Still, I wouldn’t want to be always in the midst of home
fix-up transformations-- and I wouldn’t want to continually be keyed up working
on major huge, creative, homeschooling projects. We all need our breathing
spaces to get back to normal at times.
3. Homeschooling needs to be continually
redone, over and over and over again.... just like housework. Kids just
don’t always “get” it the first time around. I think of all the times I’ve had
a really nice math time with Hannah, who's ten. We go over multiplying
fractions, and we do it in such a way that she really understands and gets it--
we use hands-on activities, diagrams, and really give meaning to the whole
concept. Then, Christmas vacation hits. Math, especially multiplying fractions,
gets put on the back burner for a while. When we come back to fractions in
mid-January (after that bathroom paint job...), she’s stumped, does something
really nonsensical and looks totally perplexed. She’s forgotten our previous
lesson. Just once or twice was not enough-- lessons need to be redone, added
to, reinforced, and regularly continued and given new meaning.
In the same way, one time I
really got my hardwood floors clean for an upcoming visit from my mother and
sister (they live in Georgia, so don’t get up often). I actually got down on my
hands and knees, scrubbed with a rag over every inch, used a heavy duty vacuum
to get up all the dirt in between the floorboards, and they really looked good.
My mother even noticed.
But a month later, let alone several years later, was this good work
still in evidence?? Not quite. It had to be redone. It had to be continued.
Doing a great cleanup today will not do a cleanup in the future, just like
doing a great lesson today will not mean that I also don’t have to have a great
learning time with Hannah in the future too. Developing regular habits in both
arenas of our lives are really helpful, and something I still struggle with.
I’m guessing some of you may also.
4. Ever notice how dejunking always helps make
both housework and homeschooling easier? I know I do have the sort of
temperament that rather enjoys certain types of clutter-- but not all types.
When the disorderly piles start getting too out of hand, in either the
homeschool project room or the rest of the house, I start getting unsettled.
I've learned gradually how much better I feel-- and therefore how much better
everyone else feels-- when I've had a good reaming out of some area of the house.
I’ve learned that before I can let
myself visit my sister and her terrific secondhand bookstore, I need to make
myself go through my shelves and gather up at least a couple of boxes to donate
to the cause first. Sometimes I'm astonished at the crumpled books that nobody
ever really liked that are still shoved into our crowded shelves-- out they go!
Now I can hit my sister's store with a clear conscience.
5. You can learn more about housework by
reading up on it, just like you can learn more about homeschooling by reading
up on it. Sometimes we think we need to invent the wheel all over again
from scratch-- when there might be some good models out there we might want to
use. I can learn about how to wash my windows (I’m sure I’ll get to it this
spring, guys... or maybe this summer, after evaluation season) from Don
Aslett’s books. I’m grateful for the
little tip I read once on putting a pad of paper on the wall of the kitchen so
you can easily write down items for your shopping list right as they occur to
you-- like when you find that, no, you can't make onion soup tonight for supper
because you are out of onions. This book helped me over this little
housekeeping bump.
Same with homeschooling-- take
initiative and read up on what others have done. None of us automatically knows
great ways of introducing fractions or decimals or of helping kids learn the mysteries of reading, let alone how to
help a kid with trigonometry or how to get a child into college. Find out
what’s worked for others, see what ideas might fit for your family. Be
resourceful-- the resources to help you are all out there.
6. Basic organizational skills are needed to
do both basic housekeeping and basic homeschooling well. I’m talking simple
things here, folks. For instance, I’ve found I will be more likely to actually
wash the dishes after a meal, if
right before dinner I fill the sink
with hot soapy water, letting all the breakfast and lunch dishes get a
soak while we eat. That way the first
part of the job is done, and I only have to follow through (and sometimes I
even get inspired and wash up the morning dishes while supper is cooking--
realizing that I usually have to do some hanging around in the kitchen to check
on last minute supper fixings anyway, and might as well use my time well).
Likewise, if I remember the
night before to set out the audio tapes to bring in the car the next morning
when we go to piano lessons, there’s a much better chance we’ll actually get to
listen to them-- I won’t find myself saying, once more, “Oh, gee, kids-- I
forgot to bring those history tapes we were going to listen to... sorry!”
Recently heading to piano lessons early one Friday morning we actually got to
listen to, first, Hannah’s Suzuki piano tape (a first in months), then a tape
of classic poems (Molly is taking Ruth Staver’s poetry correspondence course,
and recognized several of them), and finally a US History lecture from the
Teaching Company-- all because I’d laid them out the night before on the dining
room table. The previous week I didn’t do so, and we had no tapes to make the
hour drive go more productively. Basic planning-- it can really help.
7. Enlisting your kids’ help is crucial to
making housework less of a burden or drain or stress-- and isn’t it the same
with homeschooling? A pleasant but firm attitude helps in both arenas.
Games for cleaning up with little kids, and games for learning with little
kids. Involvement of the kids, giving them some (limited!) decision making
options when you need their help: “Do you want to clean up your bedroom or burn
the paper garbage and take out the compost?” (Note: there is no option to “not
help.”) My kids know I’m famous for giving them the same type of options with
homeschooling tasks: “Hannah, you can either practice piano now for a half hour
or work on your writing club piece.” (No option to “just sit around and draw”
right then.) As kids get older this all really starts fitting into place, and
kids really can start taking lots more initiative on their own in both areas of
life.
8. Our personalities show through in both our
housekeeping styles and our approaches to homeschooling-- and usually it’s the
same style. I decorate my home with children’s artwork and homemade kid
posters of owl pellet dissections. I love having my ceilings and walls papered
with maps. I love having interesting little bits of this and that around--
little collections of bird nests, or small animal skulls we’ve found in the
woods, or odd little wooden toys put on little shelves I found at yard sales. I
like the patterns and colors of lots of books on lots of shelves-- in every
room. Although I always feel a cool calmness whenever I’m at someone’s home
where everything is spare and elegant and clear and clean, I’ve had to just realize
that this isn’t me. Although I’ve dejunked a lot, I’m still a collector at
heart.
Likewise my homeschooling is
often a little bit of this, a little bit of that, pulling a book spontaneously
off the shelf to begin reading it aloud and finding it’s just what we wanted, collecting books at secondhand bookstores,
browsing through our huge collection of back issues of National Geographic to
find just the article to bring alive a Geo Bee question Hannah has come across.
Although over the years I learned that there are definitely times for
really following a course of study just as it was designed
(for instance, we do French in Action strictly by the book, every exercise in
every lesson), I also really like adding on extras (like French camp, or French
songs, or French kids’ websites on the Internet, French comic books, or the
National French Exam). I like improvising.
I’m reminded of Naomi Strunk, a
wonderful homeschool evaluator and mom, years ago sharing at a meeting that she
finally just had to admit that she could never strictly follow a curriculum.
She then made the housework analogy: “It’s just like when I cook... I may start
out thinking I’m going to make a chocolate cake, and well, you know, I just may
end up with....lasagna." I could
identify.
But you may be very different, in both your housekeeping needs and in
your homeschooling outlook-- be who you are, while always being ready to learn
some tips from others who may be very different. My kids actually like it
sometimes (the rare times) when I serve them a new meal where I actually followed a recipe.
9. Special events really help. If you are
at all like me, company coming really makes you clean up your act-- I mean,
house. That’s when we all jump in and really work hard together to get
everything done, and done quickly-- floors get scrubbed, piles get removed or
at least neatened, the kids desks get cleared off, and maybe even everyone’s
bed gets made. And we feel great then about how it all looks-- refreshed (well,
that's how I feel anyway-- I won't vouch for my kids or husband!).
Special homeschool events (the writing club coming over, the French
night coming up, the Speech Night on Saturday, Homeschool Excellence Day in the
Capitol) spur on many of our best homeschooling efforts in the same way.
Amazing how fast you can work when necessary!! That essay gets written and
proofread, the French songs are learned
along with a new French skit, everyone pulls together a speech topic and
practices so they'll be ready, posters get designed.
Just like guests arriving at
2:00pm is a real life deadline for clean up efforts, so these homeschool events
are real life deadlines for our learning efforts. We all scramble to meet
them-- and feel a boost because we have. Just be careful about having too many special homeschooling events
pile up on you, or you'll feel like you do when company keeps coming non-stop
for a month!
10. It always seems like everyone else really has their housework-- or
their homeschooling-- together. You must be the only one in the whole of
Pennsylvania who is struggling today. We get unrealistic expectations for the
day to day realities of life at home, either for our homes or our
homeschooling. We all have our good
times, and we all have our days when
things seem, to give it the best possible spin, frazzled and out of joint.
11. When your house is a mess, with things
strewn all about, it’s very easy to fall into the total discouragement trap. You’ve
hit this if you start moaning, “My house is always a mess, I’m never organized,
I always blow it, I’m setting a terrible example...” And a necessary ingredient
in this scenario is that you do NOT lift a finger to actually do something to
pick anything up or straighten out the mess. Just moan-- and forget all the
good days when your home life was at least a bit more on keel.
I used to regularly berate
myself because my clothes hamper in the diningroom (yes, you read that
right-- it's mostly for cast off
clothes left downstairs, or cloth napkins, or cleaning rags) was always packed
full, and I never seemed to take everything upstairs to the laundry room. I now
have learned simply and very regularly, before the damp cleaning rags get the
wool sweaters moldy, to take the hamper upstairs and empty it. Takes about a
minute or less-- far less time than I use to spend mentally whacking myself
about it.
Similarly, when we have a bad
day with homeschooling, or when we realize it’s been two weeks since our third
grader did any math work, let alone spelling, we all tend to start inwardly
moaning too: “I’m completely incompetent at homeschooling, I’m ruining my kids’
lives, I can’t do this anymore, look how neglectful I’ve been.” And again, to
complete the full syndrome, we are very careful NOT to do anything to salvage
the day-- like find a good read aloud book to share with our kids, or give
everyone drawing paper and set some good music on, or get out an educational
video to watch all together, or even start them on a spelling lesson. No, in
times like this, many of us tend to just moan and inwardly complain. It is hard
to learn that sometimes just ACTING to change a situation can be less stressful
than moaning.
One of the real benefits of
being required to pull together year-end portfolios is that they let us see,
concretely, that indeed we actually did accomplish quite a bit over the course
of the whole year. It wasn't all bad
days after all.
12. And finally, housekeeping is a lot like
homeschooling because, if we really work at it, lots can be accomplished in
those little two minute dead spots in the day. I'm upstairs and the kids
are all busy reading or doing other "legal" homeschooling
activities-- take two minutes to toss in a load of laundry. Two minutes before
dinner is ready? Hey, kids, fill in your daily logs! Stirring the supper? Call
Hannah in to help and let her talk to me for a couple of minutes about how she
is realizing that the book Heidi is really a good bit like The Good Master. Quite a little literary
discussion in just two minutes, besides being friendly.
Now, you can't repaint the bathroom in two-minute spots, or have your
high schooler finish that 2500-word paper only in a series of two-minute
binges-- many things do take extended and uninterrupted stretches of time. But
we often do miss the little opportunities to do a quick neatening, a brief
review of those history timeline dates,
one-more-time through on the new piano piece. I've been really noticing
that people who get lots accomplished often seem to have a sort of ready list
in their heads of little jobs they might do when these little extra moments
present themselves. And remember too, just takes a couple of minutes to slow
down and enjoy your kids for a bit-- a friendly joke, smile, a moment to relax
and enjoy, and see how their day is going.
So, you see, homeschooling really is quite a bit like housework. Jacob
says I should have called this piece Everything
I Ever Really Needed to Know About Homeschooling, I learned from Sweeping my
Floors. Maybe it's true-- but then you should also know that Jacob is the
one who now does most of the floor
sweeping around here! l