Stumbling Blocks and Brick Walls

The following was writen by contributing writer Tabitha.

It’s been an interesting month as we get started on another school year with our children and homeschooling. I’ve seen a lot of different reactions as we get back into a learning routine. I’ve been thinking a lot about my children’s abilities and talents and how we might change our schooling to best utilize those to everyone’s advantage.

I plan, and think, and reorganize, and then try to implement my ideas on a brand new year. In a perfect world, our day starts with my children getting up on time, eating breakfast, getting dressed, and getting their morning chores done all before 9 am when we would start with a morning devotional and jump right into our learning activities.

Everyone would love their work and help each other get books and pencils out (without fighting) and keep their space clean. They would listen to me read aloud without complaint and even the little ones would be fascinated by whatever everyone else was doing. They would practice the piano without comment and exclaim how excited they were for the next lesson. (their rooms would even be clean some of the time!) We would finish our schoolwork by afternoon so we could have some fun with science experiments or cooking lessons, or making a stop motion movie all together.

No one would have chores and schoolwork left at the end of the day waiting to be done. They would go to bed after reading from some great classic literature, dreaming of geometry and Spanish verbs.

This is NOT a perfect world. We are starting slow, as I try to find materials I knew we had, reorganize messy bookshelves and homeschool cabinet spaces. We have complaints and no one wants to get up before 8 am. We started Spelling yesterday, with placement tests for all my children over the age of 8. It turns out that the 8 year old tested higher than the 11 year old. This caused great consternation and many tears on the part of my 11 year old daughter.

We looked over math for the year and when I went over my daughter’s books we’d like her to use. Again the tears flowed as she said she was ready for it but couldn’t do division. (We had worked on division at the end of last year so she could start this new course…) Before we both got upset, I tried to reassure her that we would work on it again and she’d be fine. Just a bump in the road, hopefully, easily overcome.

However, she has now started the school year with two major disappointments and isn’t sure she wants to do anything right now. However, she is an example to me as she keeps trying to overcome her stumbling blocks.

I had done a lot of pondering over the summer and thought that maybe we needed to scrap my oldest’s plans of trying to do AP Biology and try something different, maybe a more achievable goal.

I asked him yesterday about it as we had kind of had words about it previously. I didn’t want to force him, and while I did AP courses as a high school student, I also had a full lab experience, a great high school, and many other students to work with. He has books, me, an online course, and some online labs we keep playing with. However, he completely surprised me with a very firm declaration that he would finish in time to take the AP test, that he understood the coursework, and we’d get some practice tests so he’d be fully ready.

He has a schedule written out so he can complete all the material in plenty of time including taking the entire month of November off for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). What I thought was a brick wall has been surmounted by my young son, who is turning into an example for me of “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

History has always been a weakness for me. No, we always have history, we just haven’t had any kind of well planned curriculum. I keep thinking this is another stumbling block for our family, the fact that I haven’t done this. Then we have a day where we are talking about something that I don’t remember ‘teaching’. My kids surprise me with remembering what we HAVE done as well as more, from books, movies, and other experiences.

What have I learned from this?

When we are trying to do our best, it all works out. Call it fatalist, call it faith, call it funny, but this type of education leaves room for the unexpected, help for the stumbling blocks, and a way around or over the brick walls of educational conundrums. I am just in awe of my children as they have taught me how to keep going in the face of adversity and challenges.

I am proud of my homeschooled kids.

Tabitha (wife to Tom, homeschooling mom to 8 kids ages 14 to 1, learning something new all the time)