Covid-19 and Homeschooling…

It has been 2 weeks since our State shutdown schools due to the Corona Virus. 

Facebook is flooded with posts on everyone’s new normal.  People seem to be spending time with family more… spending more time outdoors… and now, they are forced into homeschooling, and they are trying to navigate through those waters.  Many parents are stressed with their new roles of  working parent and teacher…

Many parents are embracing this time with their children and throwing out the books altogether…

I can’t help but wonder, when this “crisis” passes, what family, school, work, and home-life will look like.  What will be changed?  What will revert back to near “old normal”?  And what will remain similar to our current “new normal”?

We are a homeschooling family, so what has changed for us?

We did not have to skip a beat with our studies.  Homeschooling is our normal, we could pick up where we left off the day before, and hit the ground running.

But, we didn’t quite do that.

We chose to throw formal lessons out of the window, for the most part, and to spend more time focusing on the things we love and the building of oneself.   We aren’t quite “unschooling” like many homeschool families choose to do.  Rather, we reverted back to our homeschooling roots… striving to “nurture our children’s ability to listen, reflect, articulate, delight, serve, and to find beauty in the mundane – because we believe these are tools for a thoughtful life and a rich future.”

We are still doing  the Three R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic), but our history lessons are currently coming from current events, novel studies, and topics involving geography.  Our science lessons are coming in the form of gardening and caring for animals.  The kids are cooking meals for the entire family.  The kids are learning how to build structures using power tools. They are doing nature scavenger hunts. They are participating in an online theater class.  They are doing arts and crafts. They are reading in their free time.  They are doing chores.  They are participating in only Sunday school. They are living.  They are growing as individuals, and their relationships are further being bonded.

Some may disagree with this approach, and that’s ok.  This is “our new normal”.