simple learning

I've discovered that homeschooling is not complicated. Its essential ingredients are simple. Time, healthy relationships, community, and wisely chosen freedoms. When we homeschooled previously these things were not so readily available to us. I was driven to follow a particular recipe, not able to improvise. I was too concerned with how our learning looked to others, with wanting my girls to measure up. Now I'm finding that the recipe for learning comes instinctively to me, and what works each day is different. We make it up as we go along.

Homeschooling is the trip to the art gallery we took the other week. It's learning the violin, and experimenting on the piano. It's the impromptu flax weaving session my Auntie Celia gave the girls and their cousins when she came to visit. It's the mess in Isobella's bedroom that always involves several books lying open, and whole worlds created on floor. It's the full set of 1980's children's encyclopedia I bought from an op shop the other year. It's the pictures we painted while we were reading "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton.

Homeschooling is the beautiful and user-friendly handwriting programme we use. It's us all doing the dishes together, when we can. It's riding bikes. It's the swimming lesson, the gymnastics class. It's the maths curriculum that works with Isobella's brain, not against it.

Homeschooling is the blog we started for Greer last week, and the blog that Isobella has been doing sporadically for over a year. It's the fun touch typing lessons on the BBC website. It's starfall for phonics. It's Paddy and I working from home as much as we can, and Isobella coming in to the office the other day and asking "when can I start working in the business, Dad?"

Homeschooling is me not having to rush around like a mad thing in the mornings trying to get us all out the door on time. It's the freedom I have to get on with my day, after the hour or so of focused table-work that is our morning rhythm. Then whatever the girls do in their natural self-directed manner, with me close by for support, whether it's playing or reading or researching or creating, is all good. It all counts.

Homeschooling is the freedom we have after trying school twice, that we know now home is where our learning happens best, and that we are in for the long haul. I have long range forecasts, rather than driven short or medium term goals. That's freedom. Homeschooling means more time for me to write in the mornings, if I've gotten up early, and it means more headspace for me to write at that desk in my mind as the day goes on, if I haven't. It means setting a pace for our days that suits us all. It means peace.

Homeschooling is the library. It's the beach. It's the zoo and the museum, when we get there. It's going all together to the preschool music and movement class I help run and watching the girls play with the babies. It's seeing Isobella smile, noticing how much more confident she is, how settled and happy in her own skin she is. That's homeschooling.

It never felt like this when we did it before. There were too many agendas. We never really got confident. It was like riding a bike with trainer wheels, too scared to take them off, but always a bit wobbly.

This time there is no agenda.

slowing to notice

This is what I've seen lately, on the days I've slowed down enough to notice. I posted an article on facebook a friend had shared a couple of weeks ago called  "Slow Down to Save Time" , mostly because I liked the title. Slow down to save time. It resonated with me. Some how, intuitively, I knew it was true.

There's not much logic to this habit I've developed of washing the dishes by hand. It definitely takes more time than loading up the dishwasher and only hand washing what won't go in.  It's been nearly a month now, and the repercussions are obvious. The house is messier. Paddy doesn't get it. He uses the dishwasher at the weekends when I try to bow out of the kitchen. He thinks I should give up so I can get on with everything else, and he'd like me to hang out with him. I'd like him to hang out with me, in the kitchen. I like a man with a tea towel. It's not that he won't help when I need it, it's just that he can't see the benefits.

The girls are really getting the hang of washing and drying the dishes. They do it most days, at least once or twice. It's a fantastic way to get us hanging out altogether in the kitchen, and it's a nice uncomplicated job for them to do, in chunks if necessary. Sometimes they just need a bit of focus, they just need to be reminded that we are all in this together, and the dishes do that perfectly. We have fun in the kitchen. When they are in there with me doing the dishes they often get to help me cooking or baking as well. We talk. I'm not saying it's all Little House on the Prairie and there's never any complaining, not at all. But once they get over themselves and get on with the job we enjoy being together, and I really appreciate them.

But I'm actually doing the dishes by hand for myself. I find this space when I'm washing the dishes that I don't find any other way. My hands get on with the cleaning, and my mind is free. I think, I pray, I sing, I write... all in my head. I process the events of the day, or go over what's ahead of us. I can't rush, there's no point, I'd only break something. I get into a slow rhythm. I notice things.

In the evenings when I'm tired I find washing the dishes by hand easier than loading up the dishwasher. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it's something to do with that dyspraxia story that's brewing. Washing a bowl in one sink, and then slipping it into the rinsing water in the other requires hardly any conscious thought. I find myself at peace. My breath slows. I enjoy it. And when the job  is finished (even if sometimes it's not finished till the next day) I'm satisfied. The dishes are often cleaner than they were out of the dishwasher, and sitting on the dish rack over night they are drier. And a bench of dishes is easier to put away than a whole load in the dishwasher. I used to get the girls to unload the dishwasher in the mornings but that was a big task, and I had to keep them focused the whole time. Now I do a bit, and they do a bit, and before we know it it's done.

The fact that the house is messier hasn't bothered me, and that's a surprise. I've realised how many hours, literally, I would spend tidying up each week. Perhaps I've dropped my standards, but I think actually it's more that I've found a truer, more genuine standard, one that reflects what's important to me. And it's been very clear to me that I was obviously doing too much of this tidying up business on my own. It was time for a bit more labour division.

I had a talk to the girls last week about the bomb site their rooms had become. I got a big storage container and "paid" them in stamps on their stamp charts to put as many of the messy, clutter-creating toys in it. I encouraged them to put in the plastic ones especially. We filled an 80 litre box easily. I told them we'd get it out at the end of Lent and then decide what we'll keep and what we'll give away. At that point it will be high stakes. I will present them with a bowl of gold coins and pay them for each toy that stays in there.

I've cleared out their rooms before, but I've never done it this thoroughly. Isobella especially seems to produce "stuff" on a daily basis. Notes and letters and plans and creations and random treasures from all over the place. They gather on her desk, in her drawers, on the shelves in her cupboard, they spread everywhere. And once they are there, she doesn't know what to do with  them. She can't order or classify them, and asking her to decide what she wants to keep and what she wants to throw out pushes her over the edge. That's another story too, about the hidden dyslexia that we've discovered she battles with.  I've taken out the shelves from her cupboard, and removed a whole piece of furniture from her room. And there's been a fair bit of rubbish smuggling going on, I can tell you that. But the girls are happy with the result. Their rooms are so much easier to tidy. And they are more peaceful, easier to play in.

I don't know if I'll keep up washing dishes by hand after Lent. I hope so, because it feels good to me. But it does mean it's harder for me to get to bed, and if I don't get to bed early, I can't get up early and write. I really want to get the first draft of that novel finished this year. I have to write.

But I'm wondering whether, as time goes by, I'll be able to find a rhythm for myself that will include washing the dishes. There's something that makes sense about what I've been doing, as crazy as it sounds. My world has shrunk, in many ways. It has shrunk to this big old camp kitchen of mine. I cook, I bake bread, I feed the girls, I wash the dishes, all in this one big space with windows overlooking the garden, and an opening into the dining room where I can look out to the bush and the water. Time slows when I'm in the kitchen. Whole mornings go by when I haven't ventured any further than this one space. There's something very good and simple about that. And when I slow and time slows, my mind expands. Stories brew, sit bubbling away on the stove in my mind. Their ingredients laid out on the bench, being gathered and prepared, bit by bit.