So what's homeschooling really like?

Mom's-eye-view

It is a busy life and a happy one. This weekend, I filled out a survey from Georgetown Law about my work experiences since law school. It was something I hadn't thought about in awhile, and I realized that it has been 10 years since I last worked outside our home. Wow. That's much longer than I thought I would be out of the work force when I first came home to school Tommy and Patrick and baby Katie. And yet it appears that in recent years, I haven't dwelt on it long enough even to notice how long we have been homeschooling. Something must be going right. It is certainly true that we are happy with the homeschooling lifestyle. In the beginning, I thought, "one day at a time, one year at a time." Now, I can't imagine it any other way. (Okay, well, some days, I can very easily imagine it a lot of other ways. But truly, God has blessed our family life abundantly through this homeschooling adventure.)

Some details for the record:

We are schooling at the dining room table this year. The guinea pig cage took over our school table. It isn't ideal because we can't leave anything out during lunch or dinner. But then again, we are forced to clean it all up at lunch and dinner time. ;)

I still miss the school room we had in Yakima. We worked on the dining room table, but ate most meals at the kitchen table and had the whole living room/dining room area for bookshelves, preschool corner, and even a couch and rocking chair for reading time. Then again, the opportunity to experience Japan first-hand mostly makes up for the inconvenience of a smaller home. And we are blessed with a house that is larger than many here. So no complaints, really. Just a little wistful longing for a designated school space.

As for schooling with a toddler around:

(password: book)

Homeschool Challenge from John & Judith Riordon on Vimeo.

Meghan has taken to climbing onto my book basket to reach my lap as we do our schoolwork in the mornings. She's very curious about all the things we work with and try to keep out of her reach on the table.

We have been addressing the challenge of schooling with a 17-month-old over the past month and have found a few things that work.

1. She is content to sit in her high chair and color for15-20 minutes each morning. We collected a pile of Matthew's fat crayons that he was no longer using and put them in a special plastic container with her name on it. Meghan's Crayons.

2. During school hours, we move her toy basket out to the dining room so that an allowable distraction is always close at hand.

3. Matthew is assigned to play blocks with her during Joseph's math lesson, and I think Joseph is going to be taking her outside in the yard during Katie's math lesson. We'll rotate through the day that way, with the older children taking turns having "Meghan breaks".

4. Note to self: need to move some of Matthew's activities to higher shelves and put some Meghan activities on the bottom shelves now. After Patrick's transcript is current!

Having been through this with both Joseph and Matthew already, I can be (mostly) peaceful about this temporary phase. Each month, she will get better at independent play. Before we know it, she will reach the point that Matthew now has: she will decide which activity she wants to work on, retrieve it from the shelf or cabinet, bring it to the table, do the work, and then put it back. In the meantime, God is teaching all of us patience and the true meaning of love.