Adding Adventure, Community, & Collaboration to Your Homeschool with Dachelle McVey
Dachelle McVey owns and operates Hide the Chocolate, a blog about homeschooling adventures, parenting, and–occasionally–hiding the chocolate! She currently homeschools her daughters, ages 10 and 12, and homeschooled her son, who is in his first year of college.
Homeschooling had never been on Dachelle’s radar, but then she started noticing her oldest becoming complacent. He lost the desire to seek knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and it made her sad to see a curious boy who had always loved learning and reading become bored with school.
Then something clicked in her, and she realized that she could just channel all that teaching and motivating to her children (with the added benefit of having a flexible schedule).
Next Level Poetry Teatime
Dachelle has taken Poetry Teatime and expanded it to include their local homeschool group. They meet once a month (on a Tuesday, of course) at the library, and this year their theme is “Around the World Poetry Teatime,” concentrating on a different country each month.
There are decorations and snacks to go with the theme, and it’s a lot of fun for everyone in the community!
But the best part of these events is that kids who would normally never stand up in front of a group actually will stand up and read their poem to the group. It is one of the most amazing experiences that Poetry Teatime has to offer.
The group also does a writing exercise every month, and although no one is forced to participate, Dachelle says not one kid has ever opted out of writing a poem.
We have noticed that, when you make a class experience group oriented, everyone’s desire to participate increases–and that’s an important thing we should be thinking about when creating assignments!
So we urge you to consider inviting another family to join you for your own Poetry Teatimes, or for any other activities, to create a more collaborative learning environment for everyone.
Hide the Chocolate
Dachelle likes to joke with her family that “chocolate is a whole lot cheaper than therapy,” so when things get stressful, she’s been known to lock herself in a room and eat some chocolate.
She started Hide the Chocolate because she wanted other homeschoolers out there to know that they are not alone–sometimes there are days when we just want to hide and eat our chocolate.
As she continued writing the blog and sharing her creative ideas for family learning, she realized that there were a lot of parents out there struggling to add some adventure into their homeschools.
So Dachelle started creating Online Book Clubs, or literary adventures for kids, and encouraging other families to spice up their lessons with Party School.
Dachelle has a ton of great tips for adding adventure into your home in this blog post about the Brave Writer Lifestyle, including instructions for setting up your own book club or Party School event. You can also join one of Dachelle’s online book clubs here and take an extra 25% off by using the code BRAVEWRITER.
“Any way we can add a little fun and excitement to the day to get kids to be inspired by learning – that’s what my goal is.”
Would you please post a review on Apple Podcasts for us?
Help a homeschooler like you find more joy in the journey. Thanks!
