The thoughts below are what I'd call "ramblings"

Each day that I wake up these days I'm not sure what the next hours will bring. I am learning that homeschooling is a living and breathing thing, and there is no point in trying to control it, because doing so will lead to nothing but frustration on the part of both myself and the kids. I am also realizing that learning opportunities for my children can crop up at anytime and if I do not stay on my toes those chances can easily, and regretfully, be missed.

In a previous post I mentioned a goal that we have in homeschooling, which is to give our children plenty of time each day to discover their own interests and paths in their learning journey. How this has begun to manifest in our home is that I have a general plan written out for each day, which, depending on the child and the day, includes lessons in math, language arts, music, Latin, science, geography, reading, writing, and history. However, the plan is not always followed and when it is we usually only do lessons for half the day, allowing the kids to create adventures and learning opportunities on their own; free of my input or direction.

I know that some will read this and think that I need to force my children to sit down and do their lessons every day as planned, because, as is a commonly held belief in our culture, children will not be able to live in society on their own unless they are taught to do what is directed by people in authority. That children need to be told what to learn, how to learn, and when to learn it. 

Frankly, I think this belief is a bunch of hooey. 

Think about these facts. Leading up to the 19th century most children did not make it through elementary school and children were not consistently staying in school through the 5th grade until the early part of the 20th century. Yet, despite the lack of formal education amazing things were happening. The list of inventions and innovations that came about during the early years of our country, most by people with few years of organized education, are innumerable. The likes of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie thrived in their businesses in the 19th and 20th centuries, yet were doing so as people who dropped out of school at very early ages, instead choosing to go to work. (Ironically, Rockefeller and Carnegie were two major forces behind public schooling developing into what it is today. The involvement of these two prominent businessmen, along with others who had  not-so-great motives, in the development of the public education system in America is both eye-opening and cringe worthy. If you have not done so before, read about it sometime.)

My point in saying these things is not to try to argue that education is not important, because I certainly believe that it is. Instead, I write about these historical facts to show that formal, structured education is not necessary to achieve greatness. Learning can and does happen without the binds of grades, formal textbooks, and without the walls of a classroom. Consider the amount of things children learn in their first five years of life, before they are school aged. They learn to sit up on their own, walk, throw a ball, talk, and feed themselves. These are some pretty amazing feats for people born unable to do so much as feed themselves. What is more amazing is that children figure out how to do these things without much, if any, intervention from outside sources. Sure, parents and other care givers might give gentle nudges to learn a skill here and there, but so long as the child is being raised in a loving environment, does not have any cognitive delays, and has all of his or her basic human needs met, these skills will develop naturally. 

Of course, there are skills that may be learned best with the help of other people. However, there is nothing that supports the idea that these skills must be taught in a formal educational setting. My husband and I can teach math to our children, and we can do it in a way that works best for our individual children, not a prescribed way of teaching that may not work for all kids in a classroom. We do not need grades because I am with them nearly every second of the day and I know if they are learning, and where they may be struggling. There is nothing that grades can tell me that simple observation and conversation cannot. And instead of them receiving a bad grade we can instead continue working on a subject until they understand it. Best of all, in our homeschool setting, if my children are working cooperatively to build a massive structure out of Legos, blocks, and the couch cushions, I can choose to forgo a history lesson for the morning so they can experiment with and learn from their primitive form of architecture. 

To be clear, it is not a free-for-all in our home. Our children have rules regarding TV watching and game playing, and they are expected to behave in a loving, respectful way. It is non-negotiable that all people living in our home must participate in the care of our home and our things, even the four year old. If I feel that a geography lesson needs to take priority over another hour of coloring, then that is the way it is. And there are consequences for not following the rules and for not doing what is asked of them by myself or daddy. But, the kids are allowed to discuss the rules with us and negotiate certain things, just so long as it is done respectfully. They are able to have an appropriate level of control over things that effect and involve them, because we want them to learn to make decisions for themselves. Each of our children is learning responsibility, independence, and self-worth, which are the cornerstones to any child's development.

We want our children's creativity to shine. We want them to grow up in an environment that fosters their innovative, curious minds, and where their ideas, no matter how crazy, will be celebrated. We believe that our home, along with the world around us, is the best place for these things to happen. And we believe that a weekday afternoon tromping through the snow is just as important to a child's education as an hour spent learning math facts. 

Every parent has educational goals for their children. Sometimes those goals can be achieved with traditional schooling and sometimes they cannot. Sometimes the traditional way of schooling is a parent's only choice for their children and sometimes it is the only choice a parent would consider. There is no right or wrong here. I'm just glad that we are able to make a different choice, one that best meets the needs of our family. I am sure that the learning goals we have for our children could be accomplished if our children were still in traditional school, but just like a language immersion program, we believe that fully immersing our children in this way of living will make the realization of our goals more likely.