What Does a Home School LOOK Like?

Many people who don't personally know a homeschooling family wonder what homeschoolers DO all day. I've heard all of these questions over the years:

Do you get the books from the school?

Do you have the kids sit at a desk all day?

How many hours do you "do school"?

Do you need special equipment?

I only speak for my family but I suspect a lot of other families that homeschool, mirror our experience in a lot of ways. I have had the "classroom" re-arranged many times. One year, I bought a desk for each of the four oldest children (garage sales and hand-me-downs painted white for uniformity) and that solved the problem of the wiggly table they used to share. Every time someone would erase something, the others would start hollering, so we found that individual working space was a good thing! Since then, "school" is wherever the books land or wherever the child can find a quiet spot.  

The day starts when breakfast has been eaten and children are dressed. We usually have workbooks and time for individual attention, and then it's time for lunch and outside time (recess!). Occasionally, there's still some work to do during naptime for the little ones, then it's on to whatever adventure we have planned for the day. It's a highly unstructured plan with a little bit of structure to make sure we get the basics of education.

I usually start the year with a SUPER planner and a schedule for every day, but by Christmas, the plan has been altered so much, it barely resembles a "schedule" at all. We do our standardized testing in the spring and after that, I try to figure out what more we need to do for the year and then the workbooks get put away for another season. I've just put away the books for the year and, like every other year, I discover books we've never used and books I'd like to introduce for the summer shelf. I have an entire shelf of activity books so there's never a reason to say "I'm boooooored!". I don't have too much "special equipment" that's any different from any other household with children. I do have a laminator that is almost invaluable. I've also heard that a book binder for making books or for fixing workbooks to lay flat is a great thing to have. 

 A homeschooling family can get a curriculum from hundreds of different sources...or not at all. We can choose do do an entire program or just select the books we think might be helpful for our child. We can choose to not use workbooks at all and do a more hands-on type of program for a learning disabled child (we do not seem to have that challenge so far, but many people do) or we could do an all online program such as K-12.

My children do a LOT of drawing. Almost every day, they produce about 6 new sheets of interesting art for me. I buy the cheapest printer paper because we go through so much of it. I don't really use "scratch paper" because they like that clean, white sheet to start with and they almost NEVER use the opposite side of the paper. I write "Art Book" on the outside of the binder and they pick their best art from the pile (that I'm constantly purging when they are not looking) and then I have a place for it all. I've trained them to write their age and name on everything they draw so that we'll all remember how old they were when they did their project.

Our day of learning NEVER STOPS so it's hard for me to say how many hours we homeschool per day. All of the people in our extended family have many areas of expertise and experience in life so we try to expose our kids to that knowledge base too. We find ourselves surrounded by a wonderful group of neighbors, family and friends who are amazingly talented and smart. Every time we go to a place of business and the owner or employees seem friendly, I ask them a LOT of questions in front of the children so that the kids learn to communicate and how to find out information about things they may not know.

 Some of my children's best learning moments have come when I haven't tried to "teach" them at all.

I wrote a little about this a few years ago on my art blog (Blogging is a great way to chronicle your experiences with your children. It can be free and doesn't take up any space on your dining room table like crafting or scrapbooking does.)I believe that one of the most important things we can teach our children is HOW to learn. Do you have any questions for me about homeschooling? I will always do my best to answer to the best of my knowledge and experience but I will also hit up some of my other homeschooling families for answers!