What Do You Do All Day?

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The question usually comes from the parent of a public school child. I know what school looks like. It is nice and structured and scheduled, nice bells regularly chiming every fifty minutes, boxes of exciting and brightly-colored materials on the shelves, handmade crafts swinging in the breeze from paper clips attached to the light fixtures over head, monthly new bulletin boards, permission slips and dress codes, and SRAs to keep you busy when you finish your work before everyone else.

No wonder non-homeschool parents can't wrap their heads around what we could possibly be doing all day! No, I don't go use the mimeograph machine. I haven't used cardboard carrels around the kids as they work  No paste smells. No raising hands to answer questions. No alphabet stapled above the chalkboard. No behavior grading in the corner of the chalkboard. No rubric to consider. Homeschoolers have no state standards and no test to teach to. 

So what does that leave?  
Well, everything.

We read and write and listen to music and talk to people and travel and explore and ask questions and keep our brains and our bodies active. If you were a bug on the wall of one hundred different homeschooling families you would discover one hundred different ways to homeschool, one hundred different answers to the question What did you do today?

This question, what do you do all day, simple as it sounds, is actually a very loaded question. It suggests that the stereotypes are true. That kids are bored. That husbands don't help. That teens are naturally to be distanced from. That Mom is carrying the burden. It implies that children would have no idea what to do with their time if someone didn't organize it. It gives very little value to doing nothing. It also suggests that the day looming ahead of you with absolutely nothing planned is a thing to fear.

I've had my doubts, my tears, my fears about homeschooling. At any one time our homeschooling includes about as much freedom as each of us can handle that day. And it always come back to remembering that forcing information and lessons on a child does very little to actually educate that child. I personally spent over eighteen years as a student in school myself and there is SO MUCH that I don't remember, that I never really understood, or that I simply didn't need in life. I think of the many stories that each of us have about how awful our school years were. I think of the drudgery and tedium. I remember the reasons why we chose this lifestyle.

I think of myself being an excellent essay writer and test taker, but having absolutely no lasting knowledge from many years of schooling. I think about the misery of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I think about how grateful I am that there is absolutely no need to force-fit my children into a system that is not welcoming to uniqueness, kindness, open hearts, introversion, or creativity. I think of how the freedom to make choices each day opens up doors that we are often surprised to discover. I think of how boredom always puts the onus of activity on the bored. Without plans and schedules, we manage to create wealth, depth, and breadth many days.

So what DO we do?  We homeschool.

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