Adjusting the Plans.

That's probably what I should have named this blog, "adjusting" or "new normal" because that kind of thing never goes away, we are always adjusting to a new normal in this life, but we're almost done with homeschooling.  I've kind of moved into a mentoring position with that, I guess.  Younger moms frequently ask my opinion these days.  If I had my way, we'd adopt the world and homeschool them all, but that seems unlikely.  So we continue homeschooling our last one which for us, over the last 11 years has come to mean making him do math and writing and letting him decide on the rest.  What kind of advice have I found myself giving lately?  Here are a couple of excerpts.

"No means no, don't be afraid to be the mom."

"Don't forget to have fun with it."  (homeschooling.)

I know some unschooling advocates let kids pick whatever they want to do, do it whenever they want and have unlimited screen time, but I am just not comfortable with that for my family so I advocate hitting the basics and letting the rest be child directed and fun, but keeping the screens off until a predetermined time in the evening.  One way that I have kind of directed the child directed part over the years is to go to the children's nonfiction section of the library and bring home a bunch of books on various subjects, but do not force the kids to read them, just put them on the table and if they want to look at them, they will.  They ALWAYS look at them, even now.  :-)  I call this practice strewing and it works wonderfully well.  After a couple of hours, or sometimes a couple of days, if they are busy, the kids come to show me things that they have read in these wonderful books, "Hey mom, look at this."  one of the best parts about homeschooling.  :-)

Anyway, more about the adjusting ... it looks like I may not have surgery after all and I need to adjust to spring cleaning, yard sales and getting started on gardening.  It's not too bad, really.  :-)

Have a great day!