Homeschooling with a Toddler

Just recently I had a bit of a light bulb moment, some might see it as daft of me to not have thought about this before and others might think it really daft that I’ve actually implemented it!!

If it works for us, then it’s okay, and there are times in one’s life when it’s okay to be okay with that!

{This is part of a homeschool reflection series that I wrote in June 2011, at that time my toddler was a month shy of this third birthday}

I need to back up a little. Having a toddler in the house is demanding, but in a please read to me, play cars with me, pick me up and kiss and cuddle me, demanding sort of way. It is a juggling act when you have spelling lessons, time to read one-on-one, phonics instruction and a whole list of other stuff to get to with two school-aged children, without leaving the toddler to simply run wild.

I’d be telling false truths though, if I said that we have never had those days, because we have certainly had our fair share of them.

We tried for quite some time with Montessori-inspired activities, and whilst we all loved them and found them hugely beneficial, these either ended up all over the floor everywhere or unless I sat with him for every second of his activity, he was simply not happy. So, in essence, I was spending a good portion of my time preparing so-called independent activities for the toddler when they were actually making more work for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Montessori philosophy and we do intend on trying that again, now that we are very close to having a 3-year-old in the house. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes.

That left us being back to, ‘what to do with the toddler’ so I could at least spend some time with the other children.

For a while, they all lined up on the kitchen bench. I’d go from child to child to child, and with each spare moment, I would be cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry or baking something...what a circus that was.

We’ve also made good use of tag team schooling, one kid plays with said toddler, whilst I spend time with the other and then they switch. Which often worked out pretty well, until said toddler became upset for whatever reason and wants no one but mummy!!

A couple of months ago, it dawned on me....why, why, why were we not taking advantage of the times when Daddy was home?

That was when we threw Monday – Friday schooling out the door!

We overcame the need to stick to school terms about a year or so ago. Not having set ‘school holidays’ is very freeing and opens up a whole new dimension to our year. We don’t attend a school, and have no intention of attending a school, why on earth do we see the need to schedule our lives around school terms and school holidays?

Now if we have a busy social week it doesn’t matter, we are always learning, never needing to worry about having to ‘catch up’ before school holidays are upon us. We simply continue where we left off. We don’t worry about whether we need revision because we have taken too long a break either.

I guess it was only a matter of time before I came to the realisation that we could also ‘do school’ on the weekends.  So now that is what we do. Not every weekend though, we’re pretty relaxed with it and if we have family things going on then that’s fine we let it go. However, if we are home we take the opportunity.

It works out fabulously for the toddler, he gets loads of totally fun one-on-one daddy time!

For us, this is a season and I know it will be only a short time before we have no need to do this. However, the happiness of the kids and my sanity is way more important than trying to get our schoolwork done if the toddler simply doesn’t want us to.

And so the moral of the story here - if things are tricky right now due to your current life situation, then change it up. You may need to change things up a few times over to find the right mix. There is no need for us to do exactly what everyone is doing in the manner that they are doing it. Choose what works for your family to match the season of life that you currently find yourself in.

I’m curious as to how you have mixed things up in your home! Let me know in the comments below and your ideas may just help some one out.

 

 

 

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