Slow down, you’re moving too fast…
…gotta make the morning last now! (Simon and Garfunkel)
To feel groovy, you have to let yourself move slowly, savor, find a rhythm and stick to it, meander.
Home education is a trip on side streets.
It’s the wasted time of sleeping in and running late and “Where is my other shoe?”
It’s the long straggly gaggle of children, strollers, and backpacks making their way across a crowded, dangerous parking lot to a museum. Inside, an hour spent looking at three paintings is plenty. It leads to side-tracked conversations about “unrelated” subjects and what is retained is hidden from view for years (maybe a decade). Then the whole kit and caboodle reverse course to saunter, dawdle back to the car where the buckling, clicking, and tucking in take longer because everyone is tired and hungry.
Home education is charging forward with new materials and slogging slowly through old, comfortable ones.
When lightning strikes (She’s reading! He finished his story! She mastered the 7’s! He learned all the capitals!), celebration takes time and words, and uses up treats in the toy box or refrigerator. Happiness has room to be felt and known. Personal pride is admired. Nothing more is accomplished in the basking glow of success.
Homeschool is the next chapter begging to be read because the last one was so good, and who can stop when everyone (including mom or dad) wants to know what happens next?
Math is ditched when Nova shows the migration habits of your favorite birds. All manner of family members hunker down under blankets to let the visual feast of scenes unspool at their deliberate unhurried pace.
Making muffins for teatime lasts an eternity of measuring the ingredients, struggling to stir the messy mix, and unevenly filling the cups, only to bake them and wait, wait, wait for the wonderfully yummy end results.
No one wants to stop reading poetry…ever. So some days you don’t stop, and it’s wonderfully okay.
When the sun comes out after its long absence, kicking a soccer ball in the backyard is on task and feels right. No one misses the phonics workbook that day yet everyone knows it’s not gone forever. Just for today—this one glorious long day of nothing but sunshine.
Take time today…
…to be, float, notice, hang, enjoy, savor.
Homeschooling is a ridiculous waste of time—it refuses to be boxed into systems, schedules, and requirements.
It is the long, lazy, loving look at learning through the eyes of children.
It takes time—time you don’t have, time you aren’t used to spending in all your adult hurry. Give in. Let go.
Feel groovy.
This is one of the most favorite things I have ever read. This is exactly how I have homeschooled my eight blessings!
[…] and see what they do on their own. So, I really enjoyed a post over at Bravewriter this week about slowing down and just enjoying things. My favorite part was […]
Got to read this on a different day than it was posted, on just the right day to encourage me about slowing down. THANK YOU
Very glad Christine!