Why is it that homeschooling is synonymous with cleaning? I often feel my family and I are living in one of Frank Baum’s Oz stories: mundane beauty and surreal adventures. My day is scheduled around a combination of educating my kids punctuated by sporadic cleaning activities.
Every day at 11:30 am, while I am cooking lunch, I have a date with a particular drinking glass, a chipped white bowl, a squirt bottle of homemade dishsoap, and a crocheted dishrag. Every day, each month, all year, at the same time there I am.
It is a time when the monotony of daily cleaning tasks allows my mind to wander. I dream up sewing patterns for my kiddos, imagine how wonderful it would be to paint the fence outside the window over my kitchen sink, and generally exercise my creativity. Sometimes I try to listen to audiobooks in an attempt to stay a few steps ahead of my kids’ progress in literature. The audiobook concept is one I resort to when I frankly don’t like a book which must be read. It makes use of wasted time as I have not yet figured out how to mount a book stand above the kitchen sink, but putting on headphones seems to draw my chatty children to me like toddlers to ice cream.
After I have used up our meager supply of hot water with the dishes, I start the laundry and then finish off preparing lunch.
Why is it that sandwiching daily household tasks within the homeschool day lead me to more discipline when it comes to learning activities that have always been so hard to schedule? I think everyone must be faced with a particular educational nemesis. A subject whose understanding defies all best efforts. For us, it is grammar.
For a number of years, finding daily time to do grammar was a chore. Depending on the mood of my kids it was a hit-and-miss activity. I ended up scheduling grammar for first thing in the morning, right after breakfast, and now it works beautifully. The kids are learning, they enjoy the time, they no longer compete with each other, and I find that the more relaxed they are about grammar and the longer we establish the habit, the better I can teach it. I find myself drifting from the curriculum, adding supplemental material and tailoring to the momentary needs of each child. And I finally understand the subject myself.
So how is it that our yellow brick road of homeschooling has led us to a place filled with the monotony of daily chores interspersed with excitement and discovery of education? Did my kids decide to enjoy previously difficult subjects and enable me to relax and teach them better? Or is it really vice versa?
One Response
Glad you found a place in the schedule for grammar 🙂 I can relate to the chores interspersed with learning, and using mundane task time for creative thought, but I don’t think I have ever been very likely to do certain chores always at the same point in our routine– I applaud you for that consistency!