What is Intentional Homeschooling?
I’ve been thinking a lot about living intentionally in the past year and when I was thinking of a name for this blog as soon as I thought of Intentional Homeschooling I knew it was perfect.
WHAT IS INTENTIONAL HOMESCHOOLING?
First of all, let’s start with what it doesn’t mean.
WHAT IT DOES NOT MEAN
To me this doesn’t mean that we are on a strict schedule and are sitting in desks at 8:30 each morning with our pencils sharpened, poised and ready to go.
It doesn’t mean our schooling will look like that in the classroom.
It doesn’t mean we do drills or flashcards or even tests.
It doesn’t mean what a lot of us (myself included) grew up knowing school to be.
WHAT IT DOES MEAN
Intentional homeschooling means questioning why we do everything, like a persistent 3-year-old, always asking “why?”.
For us it also means weaving learning into our daily lives and not reserving it for the sit down “school time”.
It also means doing what works for our family, and our particular kids, and letting go of what doesn’t.
HOW IT LOOKS
There are a number of different ways this will look in our lives, here are a few:
- not doing every page in the math workbook (*gasp!*), if they know it well and don’t need practice, why do it?
- realizing, no, we don’t need to do tests or quizzes, I only have two students and it’s easy to see where they are at
- realizing that even includes spelling tests
- quitting a book I are reading aloud when none of us are enjoying it
- asking them to sound out and read signs as we are driving
- getting them to solve math problems as we figure out how many people we are hosting for supper and figuring out how many plates we need
- pointing out countries in the world on one of our maps when friends or family are travelling or we hear news about a country
- observing bugs and birds in our backyard and nearby parks
- planting seeds and watching them grow
- practicing printing by writing actual letters and cards
- taking field trips to locations we are actually interested in
- researching places and their history before we visit them
That’s truly just the tip of the iceberg, intentional homeschooling is so much more but I hope I’ve been able to give a bit of an idea of where my heart is at.
What does intentional homeschooling mean to you?
How does it look for your family?
I’m linking up with Chaotic Bliss today!
