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What is lifeschooling? To us, it means living a full and free life while cultivating a love for learning.
As I was busily posting pictures on Instagram this summer of our learning adventures (making crafts, going on outings to parks, beaches, museums, hiking or biking, etc., reading books, building forts, etc.), I ran across a comment that got me thinking …
Someone mentioned that people who don’t homeschool their kids might get annoyed with homeschool families who post pictures of their kids doing normal things during the summer and hashtag it #homeschooling.
I had two instant thoughts, and turned the rest of my considerations into this blog post:
- Hmm … fair point. It is just life stuff that anybody can do with their kids.
- On the other hand, there’s no need to be bothered. You could call yourself a homeschooler too :).
So … is this homeschooling, or is it life?
When we go to the park and play in the fall leaves, take leaves home to do crayon rubbings or make Autumn displays …
When we find acorns and talk about how tall trees grow from small seeds, and then find other kinds of seeds (like the poky kind that stick to your clothes when you’re walking through the woods, or dandelion puffs, or sunflower seeds that are just begging birds to eat them so they can be spread far and wide around the world) and talk about all the different ways that seeds travel, then later check out books at the library on the subject …
When our kids role play / re-enact scenes with everything from lego people to their own toes and beg us to write down their stories they make up because they’re immersed in a creative and literacy-rich environment …
When they trace their hands on paper, then get inspired to get butcher paper and trace their whole body, then are willing to have a conversation about basic anatomy that may or may not lead into a full unit study and more paper diagrams and lapbooks and library books …
When you get to be there for that magical moment when your 5 year old realizes that 2 groups of 5 is the same as 5 groups of 2 (because you’ve been working on different hands-on activities to instantly recognize combinations of 5 and 10) and you take advantage of the opportunity to talk about multiplication and fact families and division … and he’s genuinely excited to understand and learn something new and have a “grown-up conversation” with you about big words and smart stuff …
When we play in the park or backyard and playtime turns naturally into math lab or science experiments …
Is all of this homeschooling, or is it just life?
I’d like to say “YES!”
To me, this is all what life should be. And this is what life could be …
- without school schedules stealing our time away from our kids,
- without tests and standards dictating what they have to learn and when and how deeply/shallowly,
- without peer pressure to act like learning isn’t cool and parents are dumb,
- without bullying that leaves kids feeling forever inferior and ashamed of themselves,
- without grades that make kids feel dumb when they don’t understand a random concept by a certain pre-determined day of their lives – or smart just because they do understand it without having put much effort into the learning process …
This is what life could be, if we were given the time and energy to just live life with our kids. Those are both set at high premiums when the rest of the world crowds us out of our own skin, but …
… what if we could strip away the artificial restraints and give life a chance to grow, feed our children’s natural desire to learn, and foster a strong, lifelong sense of confidence in their own strengths and ability to understand, interact with, and appreciate their world?
… what if this could happen within the natural community of people who whole-heartedly love these children and are intricately invested in their success?
… what if this could happen anywhere and everywhere, both inside a loving, resource-rich home and in the entire open-walled world at large, with a wonderful and normal mix of people of all ages and cultures?
This is life. And this is homeschooling.
But to be honest, this is only our experience with homeschooling because we’ve chosen to not send our kids to school. I don’t know if I would have the energy and time to spend with my own children in these ways if I had to work around a traditional school schedule. I don’t know if I would have such a sweet connection with them if I wasn’t there, in the moment, for their all their spontaneous questions and conversations and aha moments. But if you do, and if you can, all the power to you. And you can call it homeschooling too :).
If you’re interested in learning more about how to integrate homeschooling into your daily life, don’t miss this <a href=”https://lifeschoolingconference.com/?wpam_id=38″ title=”real life”>FREE online conference to help you learn to make real life work with homeschooling! Sign up today!</a>
Further Reading
Danielle writes extensively about lifeschooling and hosts a yearly lifeschooling conference. Her site is a wealth of information and inspiration about living a full life, enjoying the unique learning situations that life offers, and building strong relationships in the process. I highly recommend checking out her work and attending her yearly conference (mentioned above)!
I’ve run across some fantastic articles by other homeschooling moms who write about the inspiring side of living a full life where learning happens naturally. Here’s a few quotes and links to their posts:
- “Homeschooling is truly a way of life. It’s not just how we “do school,” it is a life philosophy that encompasses our every day.” — Andrea from AllTheHomeschoolingThings.com. (Read her full post on homeschool as a lifestyle here.)
- “My biggest goal in home educating my children is that they see learning as a natural part of life, not something you do between 8 and 2 with the required workbooks.” — Bethany from BethanyIshee.com. (Read her full post on creating plans that let life do the educating here.)
- “With delight-directed, interest-led homeschooling, we are equipping our children with the skills to develop a lifelong love of learning, which means they will continue to learn whether we’re “forcing” them to or not. Learning is not something you get through, but rather a lifestyle.” — Sara from HeartandSoulHomeschooling.com. (Read her full post on interest-led homeschooling here.)
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