Letters to a New Homeschooler

Dear T—,

I’m so glad to hear that you want to start homeschooling! I have found it to be such an enriching and life-giving way of living and it always brings me joy to see others take the opportunity to experience such goodness for themselves.

You asked me where to start, and I’m excited to share what I’ve learned with you. I’ll do my best not to overwhelm you; we’ll take it slow so you can ease into it. I don’t know yet how many letters I’ll need to write in order to say all that I want to say, but we’ll walk the road together and see where it takes us.

Most of the time when people hear about homeschooling they tend to envision their own school experience simply transferred from a classroom to a home setting. They might have visions of children sitting quietly at the kitchen table (or even desks), completing workbooks and doing science projects. And this may indeed be the case for some families, but the home setting is so very different from the school setting that most families eventually find themselves frustrated if they insist too strongly on trying to embody such a vision.

Learning is not solely defined by the amount of time one spends sitting in a chair doing worksheets. It can be so much more if we don’t insist on trying to

box it up inside rigid parameters. School can look like jumping on the trampoline while shouting the answers to math questions. It can look like popcorn and hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire while mom reads aloud. It can look like pacing around the room while committing a poem to memory. It can look like sitting upside-down on the couch during a history lesson or attending Divine Liturgy on a mid-week feast day and coming home for a post-liturgical nap quiet time, or spending the rest of the day at the park.

There are so many ways that education does not need to look like the school experience we grew up with; any and every activity that families do on the regular can encompass school and vice versa.

So my first piece of advice is not to worry about creating “school at home”. Instead, take the time now to look for the learning that is already happening in your home on a daily basis. Embrace it as part of your educational journey and take a deep breath as you let go some of the anxiety you were probably carrying unawares, not quite sure how you were going to make it work to have E— sit in a chair and pay attention all day.

Of course being intentional and having a plan is also important, and so I’ll talk about that next time I write, but for now just be on the lookout for the learning that is already happening.

Love,

Lisa