I would have to say that we were well along in my oldest daughter's 2nd grade year of homeschooling when I FINALLY realized that I - and my family - are NOT tied to the government schools' time-tables, their schedules, their systems of doing and "learning."  My goodness!  These were the things I KNEW didn't work and the reason why I was homeschooling - now I had caught myself making myself and my children slaves to "their way." 

Our homeschool was doing well, but after that revelation school became something actaully enjoyable, something we all looked forward to.  Now, I'm not going to say that every day is like that the whole way through, as far as enthusiasm - even good things can get 'old' after a while - but even our hardest days were so much better than any day I ever spent in government school or any day my children may have spent in a gov't school if they had gone. 

When the weather cooporated, we liked to do things out of the ordinary...one of our favorite things to do was to take our assignments to a local nature center and do our lessons in the glassed-in bird watching room...up in the trees with all the birds!  Or to do school outside on a blanket under the shelter of a maple tree.  Spending the day at my cousin's Thorouhbred farm learning about horse care, breeding, breaking...even the difference in their horse shoes!  I grew up around horses and I didn't even know that Thorouhbreds had special shoes! 

Instead of being stuck in stuffy textbooks (not that there isn't a time and place for textbooks - math, grammar, etc.) we could read about a person, place, thing, animal, time period, etc. and spend as much time on the subject as we wanted - or didn't want! :-)  Having all girls, I had to find ways to make war and other "non-girly" subjects attractive to them.  NEVER did I have a gov't school teacher who COULD do that!  They were always tied to "the book" and a schedule.  We could go to a cabin and live like pioneers for a weekend if we wanted to.  We could spend days w/older family members and learn what it was like to grow up in the Depression; what it was like - right from the source - to grow up on a farm w/out electricity, to have to hunt for your food, skin and slaughter your food, milk cows by hand, get water from the well when it was so cold outside that the water froze between the well and the kitchen door!  Yes, we can all READ about those things, but as homeschoolers OUR "field trips" can take days instead of an hour or two - counting travel time - and WE can get out of the academic rut and actually EXPERIENCE learning! 

GOODNESS!  Makes me wish our school year hadn't ended already!  Shucks, I only have one more year to go before my last one graduates!  :-) 

Blessings from Ohio, Kim Wolf<><

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Posted by momto4beauties

We too enjoy sitting outside to do lessons. We have only one shade tree in our yard...ALL the way in the back just before the border of our neighbor's yard. While it was still warm at the beginning of the year, we'd pack up our things and head to the back of our yard. We'd have a small Bible study and then I'd read our book and they'd draw. Then we'd have discussion time. After that, we were able to do a little nature study while outside. It came in handy with the 'yellow jacket' study, since we had a nest of them in that very tree! It has been nice outside lately, but too windy to take our books and papers outside without them blowing all over. But we still like going out there for other things.

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