Road-schooling my reluctant learner…
My Insecurities as a Home-schooling Parent
I want to be completely honest with you - I got so stressed about home-schooling, in the beginning.
I guess I had my own insecurities in my abilities as home educator, and constantly felt overwhelmed at the responsibility of it all.
Early on in our trip, we had some challenging times trying to get Maddie to do anything remotely school work related and it stressed me out so much. I felt like I was failing her and had made the wrong decision to pull her out of school and to home educate while travelling Australia.
Madelyn loves to read to her brothers. She is incredibly patient with Micah. I love that she can practice her reading, while bonding with her little brother.
It wasn’t until I let it all go, that we all settled down. I just decided not to stress about it and let her learning happen in her own way and in her own time. I have learnt that she likes to have autonomy over her own learning (more than Hannah who is happier to go with the flow and follow our lead), and I needed to let that happen organically and let her be the boss of it.
I took the pressure off myself - to make sure “this happens”, or “that gets done” and just worked WITH her, and we almost immediately stopped butting heads.
I reminded myself (almost daily) that my relationship with her is more important than any completed book work, activity or academic achievements.
When we are butting heads about doing ‘school work’ it really impacts our relationship in a negative way and it makes anything remotely learning orientated ‘a thing’ and creating leaning blockades that cannot be forcefuly removed.
Some days she is ultra motivated to learn and do her IXL activities and other times she down right refuses. So we work within her limits.
Madelyn with the jaws of a shark. This was a special event held in Cloncurry for Science Week. It was a lot of fun and the kids learnt so much.
5 Items from my Strategy Toolbox
I have come up with my own ‘suggestive tools’ and strategies to help encourage her to do her learning activities…I will for example,
1) Clear Environment
I clear the kitchen table, and just have her pencil and workbook/journal on the table and when I do this, (and don’t even say anything), she will naturally just pick up the pencil and write.
2) Get Creative
I will get her to make an ‘educational video’ for her younger brothers (in fact anything that involves her teaching someone, is a great motivational tool for her) where she will teach them to read, by filming herself on the iPad reading a book.
3) Be Inquisitive
I will ask her thoughts and opinions on something that we see and do… for example, we will see a sign that says ‘no entry’ or ‘no swimming’ and we will talk about why this might be the case and what might happen if we don’t comply with the instructions on the sign.
4) Self Lead Reading
She doesn’t like reading ‘readers’ at the moment, she insists on reading novels. So I read some pages with her, then she reads independently,
when we read together, she reads aloud to me (what she knows) and I fill in the gaps, and read the more tricky words/sentences. This has worked well for us, and we always enjoy the quality time together, immersed in a good book.
Madelyn has weekly zoom speech sessions, with her speech therapist in Adelaide. We have seen some great progress. She really loves to tell her therapist all about what she has been up to, on our trip..
Despite our hiccups, I am actually really happy with Madelyn’s progress, she has her learning strengths and challenges (like we all do) but she is an incredibly resilient and determined little girl.
Nothing brings me more delight than the excitement she has when she has learnt something new.
This brings me to the final and most important item,
5) Celebrate
Maddie loves to celebrate and tell the world about her achievements, It is pure delight. The innocent expression of joy that occurs through the discovery of new knowledge is infectious when you allow room for it to move inside of you.
Brad and I do our best to make room for the celebration that comes with discovery with all our children as they learn and grow. These are the moments that make everything worthwhile and why we are choosing to live this life with our 4 little humans.
So if you are finding a few roadblocks with your own road-schooling / home-schooling journey, I hope that by sharing these I can encourage you to persist, it gets better when we learn how to let go of the pressure we place on ourselves.
When we do, our little learners start to shine.
