I think that one of the biggest myths around homeschooling is that homeschool moms spend forty hours per week around a table or engaged in other “educational” activities with our children. I can’t speak for every homeschool family, but in our home this absolutely is not the case!
So what does a homeschool day REALLY entail? Every family is different, but in our home the school day begins at 6:45 with morning prayer, memory work, and a walk. We are home by 7:30 and spend the next few hours on dedicated school time around the table. Our “formal” school day ends at breakfast time, which we eat around 10:00.
That isn’t to say that we don’t do more school throughout the day. Charleston spends several additional hours working on independent schoolwork, and I often need to spend some time helping him with some of those assignments later in the day. We sometimes do family lessons over lunch, and we dedicate thirty minutes each afternoon to DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time. I also do my best to capitalize on other learning opportunities throughout the day, including reading one-on-one with each of the twins. But that’s about it for our official school.
One thing that IS true for us (and likely most homeschool families) is that I am with my kids all day, every day. With the exception of the three hours that the big kids spend at their Homeschool Sports program on Thursdays (an hour of which I spend commuting), I have all four children with me for the entirety of every weekday—whether we are together at home, church, homeschool co-op, the Y (where they DO go to child watch, which gives me a break!), or various other extracurricular (non-drop-off) activities. We spend three meals a day gathered around the table as a family, and we are all together each night for bedtime prayers and devotionals. I have the kids by my side while I tackle household chores and run errands. And they are home for all the time that comes in between!
There is a part of me (the Mom-Guilt part) that would love to say that all of our extra time was spent actively engaged as a whole-family unit. The reality, though, is that this introverted mama needs a little time to herself. I also don’t believe it would be good for any of us for me to act as Full-Time Entertainer for my children. This is something that I’ve always believed but have really needed to accept since Nico joined our family; our tiny human occupies a lot of my time and leaves less of me to be with the big kids during every waking moment.
What this means is that my children spend huge portions of every day entertaining themselves—either independently, or as a group. My children are not allowed to tell me that they are bored (uttering “I’m bored” in my presence immediately earns them an unwelcome chore or assignment) and they are not allowed screen time on the weekdays (and only supervised movies and video games on the weekend), so they are all great at finding ways to occupy themselves. Once their daily chores (and independent schoolwork for Charleston) are complete, my kids love to look at books, play with open-ended toys (Legos, Magna-tiles, Barbies, blocks), do puzzles, play games, listen to Adventures in Odyssey, build forts, and create masterpieces with stickers and paint and other items in their craft kits. When the weather is nice they enjoy being in the backyard, playing on the playground or jumping on the trampoline or digging in the ground.
A lot of the kids’ time is spent just “being kids”—wrestling, chasing each other, playing hide-and-seek or house, telling jokes, and all those other things we kind of forget how to do when we become adults. The twins spend a solid two hours in their room together each afternoon for Quiet Play Time while Charleston does schoolwork and Nico naps, and half the time I have no idea what they are doing. (Even when I check in on the camera in the twins’ room, I cannot grasp the what or how of their twin-coded play!) But they are always laughing and happy and have NEVER ONCE complained about this part of the day.
Because of all this unstructured free time, my children are masters at entertaining themselves—something I have found to be true about nearly every other homeschooled child I know. Our kids don’t need to have lots of extra activities or hand-holding to keep them occupied. They know how to play independently and with kids of other ages. They also know how to go with the flow of the family, and they are aware of the various chores that go into keeping our home running because they see and are part of it all. Our home and family obligations are interconnected, with all of us serving as active contributors and participants.
There are many things that, in an ideal world, would be different about how our family spends our days. I wish that I had the resources and capacity for more field trips, more hands-on activities, more family play time. In God’s kindness, He has allowed us to reap the fruits of not doing things this way: the experiences I am not giving my kids have paved the way for the cultivation of their independence, creativity, resourcefulness, and contentment. That is not to say that families who have fuller schedules and more structure are doing anything wrong; their children will reap plenty of fruit in other areas! Lately, though, I have felt the Lord’s invitation to focus on the blessings of our family’s home life. We are defying the “myth” that my world revolves around schooling my kids, and my children are still flourishing.
God, thank you for the gift of family and for the many ways of living out the blessing of raising and schooling children. You know that I question myself and the way that our household is run. Thank you for allowing me to see the benefits of our particular home life. Please help me to let go of unnecessary expectations around how our family SHOULD be spending time, while also remaining open to any changes you would have us make in our family life. Thank you for equipping me to parent and educate my children to the best of my abilities, and thank you for your protection and grace that covers over my many shortcomings.
