The way we approach our school day

Recently I was asked to talk about how we approached our day, at a Homeschool camp, It was very late, so I skimmed through my notes and picked the most important and relevant parts for that evening. It did make the talk a little jumpy, so I decided to share it here. Some of this has been shared before.

A few months ago, Brid was feeling very tired and after all the usual good food, rest, reducing activity etc., and these were not effective, we decided to take a break from the usual book work. ( she had grown 8cm in a few months, looking back on it).

I searched homeschool share and others for inspiration, for a lapbook/ notebook and saw one on Ballet. Brid loves to dance, so I knew she would love this. Brid entered into the spirit of the project with zest and got out all her old ballet books, picture books and used them as references as well. It was interesting to see her style of learning, how she organised her work, and worked her way around her project.

So my mind started working overtime,why not trial this approach with all her topics we cover? All we would keep from our current timetable would be religion/devotion, saint reader, cursive writing practice and maths. This meant after morning tea @ 11ish, she was free to embellish her topic.
So what topics would we do like this?
Science, History, Geography, Music, Art, Latin, Virtues, everything.

So what’s so good about it?
Brid gets momentum, there is no stop/ starts. I see it as a preparation for high school work. (in Australia high school starts from 13). She is free from scheduling as such. I know she can stick to task as her concentration has increased. We are seeing much more work completed and being put on display more often. So Brid is very much encouraged by this.

So what about subjects she isn’t keen on? Well that is why we created a newspaper. It can be quite a fun thing to write a newspaper and all those areas that you ‘have to do’, can become much more alive.

So will we continue? Yes we will in one form or another. I can see a place for it. I know Brid has matured in her studies, and on reflection, we had moved away from a bookwork, schoolie approach a while ago.

So in the future we will tweek it as I need to. Next term, we are looking at American Indians- we haven’t studied much American history, and although this will only be a snapshot, we can spend lots of time unpacking and discovering so much more. Its been fun researching and purchasing/ borrowing great literature and references, knowing it will be a source of fun. Thats a whole post ofits own.

So from the mouth of the Brid “ I don’t feel so rushed”. “ When I start something I want to be proud of it, by doing it thoroughly.”