homeschooling as a lifestyle

This is something I've been thinking about lately, as I've been looking up regulations in other states just in case I get my way and we can move to a more homeschool-friendly state in the future.  Ohio isn't too bad with the regulation, but I'd really rather have even more flexibility with the non-reporting states simply so that I don't spend 2-3 weeks stressing and preparing for portfolio review (which I'm in the midst of now, our review is in a little over 3 weeks).  Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between living life and educating your child, especially when you tend to fall more on the unschooling end of the spectrum like we do.  Everyday activities carry many educational opportunities, such as making a meal or preparing our front garden for this year's flowers.  It also means that we start early with learning, introducing our little ones to counting, colors, shapes, and books as soon as possible.

This is a perfect example of early introduction of educational things.  Preston will be 14 months old this week, and right after he woke up from his nap I decided to get out a beautiful picture book to share with him.  This book is "Noah's Ark" and is a 1978 Caldecott Medal winner, and it happens to have NO words beyond the first couple pages.  It fully illustrates the story of the Great Flood, and is one of those books that the kids love,  His sisters have spent MANY hours looking at the pictures and retelling the story to each other, imaginary companions, or favorite toys.  Today I got the joy of introducing Preston to this lovely book.  We only made it through about 3 pages of pictures before he lost interest and slapped me in the face to get the book away, but that 1 minute was perfect for him.  In time he will develop the same love of books and reading that the rest of our family has.  This book will be the one we use daily with him in story time for the rest of this month, and possibly all of next month as well, before we move to simple story books (think beginning readers and board books).

Reading to Preston is a critical step in his speech development, but it does so much more.  A book like this especially, with beautiful detailed illustrations, develops his attention span, increases vocabulary, introduces different animals to him, and can also be used with motor development as he begins to try turning pages and pointing at different animals in the illustrations while I tell the story.  We got this book when Missa was in kindergarten and I purchased Sonlight's core P3/4 in a desperate attempt to get her interested in books (no kid can resist great picture books).

With the oldest kids, as I sat with Preston reading, they were working in the front flower garden to start getting it ready for this year's planting.  Scott had to dig to find our sewage cleanout access last month, and the first thing the girls did was fill in the holes he dug to find it before they started removing debris and cutting down the ornamental grass for this year's growth.  There is a lot left to do still, but we'll get it done this weekend hopefully so that we can start planting soon.  I actually am hoping to expand the garden out front this year to the driveway loop in one area over the next few years, so there will be a lot of work ahead for us this year with digging and preparing the land, on top of placing decorative border bricks and a path to the loop from the front walk beside the garden area.  It is going to be lovely once I finish it, if we can get it really going.

All these things are so full of educational opportunities.  There is the physical activity in digging the new garden, research to select plants that complement each other and will grow well in our garden locations, patterns that may be created with border stones, even math in figuring out how much stone we need and the area of the garden for topsoil and how many of each plant and the spacing.

Like I said, homeschooling isn't just a method for my family.  It is truly a lifestyle, and the lines can often blur between education and living life.  That makes it very difficult at times to create an adequate portfolio for reporting to our district.  Thankfully, I have found a wonderful lady who does assessments for families like mine.  She understands the value in these rich opportunities at living and learning, and doesn't require just workbooks and things like that to show what we've done.  Sure, I have a couple lapbooks and the girls' math workbooks to show that we've done academics, but I also have many pictures and great experiences to share that tell so much more of the bigger picture of our learning lifestyle.