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.

five

I nearly missed a moment tonight. The girls were late to bed and Paddy was out. I was hustling them along and had already turned the lights out when Greer asked me to read her a book. I was so close to saying no. She'd been reading in bed, we'd read earlier in the day, and she was tired. But then I saw the book she wanted me to read and I relented. It was the book I gave her for her first Christmas. A sweet little book called "Mama Loves You". Each page has a different animal mama with her baby, and each page finishes with the words "mama loves you." The last page shows a woman holding her baby, and reads "you are my moon, my star, my sun, mama loves you, little one." It could be over-sweet and schmaltzy, but some how it manages not to be.

Greer smiled the whole time I was reading. And when I turned to the very last page she wriggled with excitement, said "my favourite page!" and snuggled right up. It's been a while since I read it to her and I was surprised at her response. It wasn't so long ago that it seemed like we were always at loggerheads. If there was anyone that was going to get me to raise my voice, it was her.

Ever since she was an exasperating toddler there have been times when I have wondered how she could possibly be my daughter.  Where I'm keen to please, she is stubborn and defiant. She was born feisty, and I'm still learning how to tell people what I want. If she's not happy about something I know all about it. She is loud, cheeky, and some days it feels like she goes from one whining complaint to another. It used to be common for her to ignore me, in fact, I got to the point where I would expect her to ignore me.

Something happened over the holidays. I'm not even sure what it was. I guess the home-with-Mum days turned into weeks and somehow a new peace reigned. One night she crawled into bed with me, and instead of walking her back to her own bed like I usually do, I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight. The next day we were down at the beach and she came and sat on my knee and didn't want to get off. I buried my face into her hair and the thought of sending her back to school at the end of the holidays made real tears run down my face.

Greer was a big factor in the decision to send the girls to school last year. Greer hasn't got the learning quirks that Isobella has. Her brain runs in straight lines. She's been writing her name since before she was four, doing maths since she was about that age, and she's the kind of kid who when you talk with her you get the uncanny feeling you are talking to an adult in a child's body. Usually by about this time each year we are saying "oh but doesn't she seem like she's already five... or four... or three." In fact we've always ended up treating her like she's at least half a year older than she is.

Except for now. During the holidays I found myself thinking for the first time, "but she's only five." She's only five. I found myself wondering what she would gain by going back to school. I found myself pondering all the things she had to learn that could really only be learned at home. How to ride a bike. How to share and co-operate. How to be a loving big sister. How to use polite words instead of stomping and sulking. And for the first time I realised that I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that those things were more important for a five year old than learning to read, to write or to sit quietly on the mat. And so Greer became a big part of our decision to return to homeschooling.

The battles I faced daily last year have almost gone. I can see now that she actually wants to please me, most of the time. And I see softness not hardness in her face. She doesn't pull away from me when I reach out to her. She wants to be with me.

I can't think of anything sadder than the very real possibility that our relationship could have stayed as it was for the rest of our lives. Sure it would have been warm enough, just, but it wouldn't have been affectionate, and it certainly would have been stormy. She would have grown up seeing me as her enemy, always wanting something from her that she didn't want to or couldn't give. She would have grown up thinking I was never satisfied with her, that she never quite met my expectations. I would have been so used to the battles that I would have been continually on guard, always bracing myself for the fight.

And I would have missed that moment down at the beach when she sat on my knee and the tears ran down my cheeks as I thought about how much I loved her, and loved being with her.

After I'd finished the story we talked about the last page, about how it's a real Mama with her real baby and the Mama is talking to her baby. "And that's me, isn't it" she said, "I'm your baby." I smiled and said yes and she leant into me, and then she added "And you love me, don't you."  It was a statement, and yet there was a question in it, in the way her voice lilted at the end. It was enough of a question that it caught me at the back of my throat, like I'd swallowed a moth or a bug.

"You love me, don't you?"

And I knew in a rush, as I hugged her and reassured her, that she hadn't always got the message.

pause pt 2: driftwood, feathers and treasures

"driftwood, feathers and treasures"


This is what Isobella made with the treasures she brought home from the beach on Monday.


In her words:
This is my art. I made it.
From left to right: bark, driftwood, pheasant feather, bone leaf, seagull feather, mangrove seed with roots, tui feather, driftwood, bark, and same for up and down - driftwood and bark.
I found them at the beach yesterday and it was fun. Me and my sister Greer played in the sand at the beach and then we walked home. At the beach we saw some birds flying and Mummy took pictures of them. The end.


This is the fruit of our pause, this is what freedom and fossicking bring.


She's a contradiction, that girl of mine. Brilliance and difficulty wrapped up in one. Her assessment put her in the 98th percentile for verbal comprehension, and the 21st percentile for processing speed. I'm not telling you this because I think she's unique, on the contrary. I'm telling you this because there are thousands of kids out there like her. Inside their minds is all spark and connection, but put a pencil in their hand and suddenly the fire goes out.  At school Isobella looked normal. Her teacher kept reassuring me so. But deep down I knew that something didn't add up. And so we got the assessment done. It put words to the instinct I'd had all along, the instinct I'd feared to act on, not confident enough in my own appraisal of my daughter. I'll never hold my tongue again.

pause

I took the girls down to the beach yesterday in the late afternoon. The tide was out and the air was full of sea birds circling, searching for food. I sat watching them for ages. There was a strong breeze coming off the water and the birds were coasting down and back up again, around and down and back up again. The big girls were playing separately, but I heard them both singing about being a bird. I want to fly in the sky like a bird, way up high like a bird. 


We stayed down there for nearly an hour. Everybody just kind of sighed and settled down. As if our brains all let go and started coasting. We fossicked about, we day dreamed.

It was a gift to us though, because we wouldn't have got it if we hadn't changed our eating pattern a week ago to eating our main meal in the middle of the day. We've been eating dinner at lunch time since the beginning of Lent. It was Paddy's idea, and it seems to have stuck. We're so lucky to all be at home at lunchtime most days. So yesterday at five o'clock I was down at the beach, instead of rushing around trying to get dinner ready. It's another tweak to our rhythm, and it works.

When we got back from the beach the girls played outside while I did the dishes and got their tea ready. The big two rode their bikes up and down the driveway while Abi ran beside them yelling "ready set set go!" I stood on the deck watching them for a while and saw Greer come racing down the driveway at top speed, grinning from ear to ear. It was that kind of face that means this is the best thing in the world I could be doing right now and I am happy happy happy.

I see that face often, more often than when she was at school. Sure she was proud of herself at school. There were times where she would go up a reading level nearly every week. She smiled about that. But it wasn't the same smile as the one I saw yesterday as she raced down the hill with no training wheels, the wind whistling past her face and her bare arms.

I'm doing a secret experiment with Greer. I'm not encouraging her to speed ahead with writing and reading, I'm letting her set the pace. She does one thing from the school cupboard in the morning while the candle is lit, her choice, and after that she is free, more or less. We read together every morning, there's violin practice, and plenty of helping to be done, but I'm not forcing her to sit down for more time than it takes to finish one thing in the morning.

I've been watching her, waiting to see if she will get bored, and I'm amazed that she hasn't. She enjoys the work she does first thing, and often carries on at the table doing colouring in or something else quiet after she's finished. She's good at violin, and she's learning to wash the dishes, taking turns with Isobella to either wash, or dry and put away. And then she slips into playing seamlessly. Her babies need plenty of looking after. They get changed and dressed and fed and walked in the toy stroller. They get packed in a back pack to come to the beach, along with a bottle and a few books to read if they get bored. And then when the babies are sleeping, or playing happily, she's outside in a flash, on that bike. It's bikes and babies that make Greer smile.

We're not getting the end of day madness we used to get when she was at school. She's not ridiculously tired every night at dinner time. I haven't seen any of the defiant outbursts that seemed to happen just because.  Because I've been trying to be good all day and I'm home now and I just won't. She's setting her own pace.

This is the beauty that finding our own rhythm is. This is how we get all the pause we need. The moments of letting go and coasting, of fossicking and daydreaming. This is the kind of time we are rich in.

finding our rhythm

It starts the night before, when I measure two cups of porridge into the pot and cover it with four cups of water and a splash of vinegar. I set the table then too, just the placemats and spoons usually, and then the candle in the middle of the table. The floor around the table may be covered with toys, there might be books all over the couches just out of frame, and there's often a load of washing drying in front of the window, but the table is clear. The book is the piece de resistance. It sits invitingly at my place setting. The girls know what it means now. In the morning I cook and then pour the porridge. Both kinds of milk go in jugs on the table, as does the brown sugar. I serve the sugar, they serve the milk. I light the candle, we pray, and then we eat, and while we eat, I read.

This isn't anything like how we used to do homeschooling. I longed to find a rhythm for our days but it eluded me. I was too busy trying to "fix" my biggest girl, convinced I could get her "ready" for school, whenever that was going to happen. But I realised while she was at school last year that there is no easy fix. Her brain is brilliant and wayward, usually at the same time. This was confirmed by the assessment we had done just recently. So we have returned to homeschooling again completely free. There is no fixing needed.  What is needed is what we have in abundance; time and freedom.

I read this incredible post about rhythm and order in January, just at the time we decided to give up school for good. It baffled me and wooed me at the same time. Candles at breakfast? We never eat in darkness, not even in the middle of winter. Setting the table so it looks beautiful? We had eaten breakfast in the kitchen pretty much the whole time the girls were at school last year, them at the little kids table and chairs, me standing up, yelling at them to hurry up between mouthfuls. But the author's thesis was simple, and it rang true; "...stop trying to order the child, and bring order and beauty to the environment."

I don't know how to express to you that I've never seen myself as one of those mothers. One of those mothers who make beautiful things and have beautiful things and have children who make beautiful things. (That's another story in itself.) I looked at that table set with candles in the post linked to above and half scoffed. Me? Create something beautiful? That was the kind of thing those mothers did. But then I found myself putting my favourite candle in the centre of the table one night before I went to bed. The table was clear, and I realised it would be so simple to lay out the place mats now, that I'd be silly not too. We'd already started reading together at breakfast time, but putting the book at my place setting, well, that came in an inspired rush and before I knew it I had made something beautiful. A place for us to gather at the start of the day, a place that would draw us, woo us in. And it does.

I wrote yesterday about Lent, the journey I have set off on. Even since I wrote those words a picture is becoming clear. The fruit of this journey I am on will be seen in the rhythm we find, and the freedom that waits. Lent for me this year is my un-learning. Un-learning the habits gathered like dust under eleven complicated years of marriage. Lent will be my re-building. Which will become the re-building of us all.

homeschooling again, third time lucky

There's a story that needs to be told, because some people won't understand it. They will fear for our children. They will wonder why we have changed our minds yet again. They will scratch their heads and shrug their shoulders in bemusement at the oddity of it. That a mother would choose to be the caretaker, companion, nurturer and teacher of her own children. Every day. That can’t be natural, surely?

But I say that it is natural. It comes naturally to me, anyway. Letters, numbers, sums, words and stories, pictures and plays come just as easily to me as kisses and sticking plasters, hugs and sandwiches. And in the short stretch of time we call a day, these things are all important. None of them can be relegated to back stage. Not the sandwich, not the story.

I feed my children. I slice the cheese and butter the bread, I cut and core the apples. We sit together, we eat together, and while we eat, I read. The words enter the body by a different route to the bread, but they enter all the same. They are savoured, they are digested, they become a fuel of their own.

Will I make sandwiches but not stories? Will I choose the best fruit from the bowl, the bananas not too brown, the tart plums rescued from under the tree, the apples crisp and cold, and not choose the words that open up like doors to the sky, or the numbers that explain the earth under our feet, or the formulae that sit like a magnifiying glass over the world? Would I not prepare my children a full meal?

You may question my abilities in the kitchen. You may look at these hands of mine and say they are too young, or too old, or too tired. You may prefer a menu designed by a qualified nutritionist. You may like to know exactly what your children are consuming, down to the tenth of a gram. To do this you may find it preferable to buy your meals pre-prepared. The exactness of this gives you confidence. You can read on the packet precisely what they will be eating. You are assured, by the slogan on the front, that the meal has been designed according to nationally accepted guidelines. And you see every mother in the supermarket with a trolley full of these pre-packaged wonders. They must be good.

But what if one day your child notices a funny taste while she’s eating? “Was that strawberry, Mum?” she asks quizzically. “It didn’t taste like strawberry.” And what if the next day after eating she starts to look a bit odd, perhaps slightly ill. “I don’t feel well, Mum” she says. “My tummy isn’t right.” What would you say?

Would you say, well you probably ate too quickly and gave yourself indigestion. Or would you say, next time you can try another flavour love, you liked chocolate last time, remember? Or would you say, there’s nothing wrong with it you ought to be grateful for what you’re given. Or you might even say, everybody else eats it, Susie from next door eats it, and there’s nothing wrong with her.

If your child repeatedly became unwell after eating, what would you do then? Would you go back to the supermarket and scour the shelves for a different flavour, something vegetarian or gluten free?  Would you take your child to the doctor, to find out if there was something wrong with her? Would you talk to your friends every night on the phone, and would they agree, the product is unmatched. Where else can you find something that is created according to such rigorous guidelines? Just keep trying, your friends say. The child will get used to it.

But what if one day you suddenly decide that you don’t want your child to get used to it. What if one day you are reading the back of the packet while the meal is in the microwave and you notice ingredients you hadn’t seen before. Numbers that were unexplained, by-products that don’t seem to belong. What if something takes over you in an instant and you open the microwave, grab the packet and throw it into the bin? What if you open your pantry and there like a dream sits a loaf of bread and a plate of butter. In the fridge you find cheese, just sitting there. And on the bench a bowl full of fruit. You hadn’t noticed it before.

And what if you find your hands taking on a life of their own? Slicing the bread, spreading the butter, cutting cheese, even though you had not done these things for so long, or not ever. What if you suddenly found yourself making a sandwich, a simple sandwich. It goes on a plate, the plate goes on the table, and before you know it your child is eating. “Can I have another one?” she says.

I could get used to this, you think to yourself.

To say that everybody is different is a truism. And yet we constantly gloss over it. We think of people collectively. Women, mothers, children, students, fathers, teachers. And we think of these groups as homogenous, more or less. It’s easier. It lets us say children need… children should…. children must… mothers are…. mothers must….  We have never forgotten the very first lesson we learnt at school, that the group has the power.

I love teaching my children. It’s an adventure. I learn as much as they do, about myself, about them, and about the world. I also happen to enjoy their company, even on the bad days. You might want to tell me to get out a bit more, to get a life. But I have a good life. I know what makes me tick, I know what I want to be doing when I’m sixty, and I know what I want to be doing tomorrow. We are a team, my girls and I. We live our lives side by side, watching each other closely, learning how to live. They watch me as I struggle and hope, and I watch them as they throw themselves at the world without apology. They will be who they are, as I am who I am. It’s a knitted together, symbiotic kind of thing. Like cells and seeds and all small and hatching things. We grow together.