I am a writer. No really, I am! I just don’t write so much, you see… Somewhere between filling all the other roles of my life, I seem to always put my greatest love and passion (that is writing) to the back and at the end of the day, when the clock in my bedroom indicate that the magical hour of midnight is at hand, I simply am too tired.

I procrastinate. I know that procrastination is the death of the creative process and I fight it sometimes, but I need more ammo. Perhaps belonging to a group of like-minded creative folk could help?

Thanks!
Minette

When I get sad and despondent, it always seems  to boil down to those two commodities, I just don’t have enough time to do it all, or I don’t have the money to get it done.

How do others do it? How does the home schooling mother of seven manage the household, educate all of her seven kids and do some crafting and other fun activities with them?  And then have time left over to fulfil some of her own pleasures. And blog about it all?

Routine and structure. But surely that is not the only answer? There must be parents out there that, like me, lean a little bit more toward the unschooling principles rather than simply replicating a school environment, and by extension school rigidity in lesson plans and time allocations, at home? Besides, we do follow a rough routine…

Curriculum? Yes, I guess not having to scour the internet for resources, or reading books upon books on the subject at hand, and simply referring to set goals and exercises in a curriculum book would save a load of time and effort. It just does not feel like the way I want to go – again – why don’t I then just dump them off on a school? The whole idea for me is to make up the curriculum as we go along – according to the interest and the study level of the kids as they go along. Finding diverse ideas from all walks of life and angles of thought, also makes the subject matter so much more interesting. I’d think I’d miss out on too much of a good thing to blindly follow a curriculum book.

Setting boundaries and saying “No.” more often? Possibly the problem with time especially is that I seem to be spending all my time with the kids and use my wind-down time to research and plan. And all their play time I use cleaning up and doing household tasks. There must be a better balance to be achieved. Not sure how though….

Money. Money. Money. In a rich man’s world. Oh I get so frustrated when I find these wonderful hands-on projects and I must count pennies to get the basic materials for them. Yes I know we can make things, or similar things, living frugally, but sometimes, just sometimes I WANT to be able to buy the expensive decorative items, or the R4000 microscope…

So, to make more time I need to wake up earlier. No, seriously – how do you squeeze more time out? How do you squeeze more money out? How do they seem to do it. And so happily and so easily.

Please….. tell me the secret.

You see, I was brought up with the certain knowledge that going to school and working really, really hard and getting good grades was the only way to go. That to get accepted into a tertiary institutions in order to study some more to ultimately get some kind of well respected job and status and money, was to hit the jackpot in life.

So imagine my surprise when I found out about homeschooling. Now, going a step further, or a step in a bit of a different direction – just imagine my surprise and sheer and utter delight when I found out about UNSCHOOLING!

Commonly unschooling is defined as child-led and interest-led learning. I kind of like this definition a bit better -

“Unschooling is individual-led learning that occurs on an as-needed or as-desired basis. What? That isn’t unschooling! Isn’t that just life? Exactly.”

Here is an excerpt from an article on unschooling and kindergarten, I found it resonated perfectly with my thoughts on the matter and happily post a link to the full article.

“The truth is I do not believe that a curriculum is necessary for Kindergarten, but that usually is not the answer parents are looking for or expect. They are certain that Kindergarten is that magical time when suddenly what was “life” must become “education” and therefore needs to include workbooks, textbooks, and organized lessons.”

….

“A primary goal of kindergarten is to make good little soldiers/workers out of children. Their most important lessons include learning that they must ask permission before doing anything (including bathroom privileges). They are trained to follow the schedule at all costs. They learn to eat, play, learn, and even nap according to schedule with no consideration given to the individual child’s needs or requirements. They learn to follow directions, stand in line quietly, and get along with other children and the teacher without resorting to violence. And probably the most important lesson is to break the emotional bonds with home and family. This is one result of the institution of public school that I believe few parents realize until they remove their child from that system. Only then does one fully appreciate the extent to which authority and control of one’s children were given away.”

http://www.leapingfromthebox.com/art/kmg/kindergarten.html

I am eternally grateful to find words like those to just remind me why I made the choice to homeschool/unschool. When asked, I always seem to KNOW why we made that choice, but there are days that I don’t FEEL it. Posts like this makes me excited and eager and gets my feelings in tune with my knowledge again so that I can carry on doing what I’m doing with my babies and be happy that it is SO the right thing to do.

To make – simply wash out the container well and screw on the lid. Using a sharp pointed instrument (I used a star-point screwdriver), poke a few holes into the plastic lid and viola!, you’ve got a home made (very inexpensive) watering can!

I am SO going to get out the paints tomorrow and see how I can make it look a bit ‘cuter’! Will post pics!

-Creativity in Early Childhood Classroom, NEA Early Childhood Education Series, by Deborah W. Tegano, James D. Moran III, Janet K. Sawyers.