There has been a lot floating around social media about how to provide structure and ongoing education to our kids at home, that we can and should be the first line of defense is continuing to prepare our children for the world ahead of them. And there has been a lot posted about how we SHOULD NOT under ANY circumstances, ever, teach our own children. Battle lines are clearly drawn and the mom shaming has begun. So which side do you fall on?
To be perfectly honest with you I fall somewhere in the "I think that I should" but "I'm pretty sure I don't know what a gerund is". So our days usually start off something like this.
Clean counters, work in a neat pile, mama and kids ready to learn! (Full disclosure, my clean counters are brought to you by the ability to crop photos.) We start strong, we are learning and grooving and somewhere out there tiny workers are chiseling me a Mother of The Year Award for me in marble. But then, someone asks a question, or points out a mistake and our idyllic scene is disrupted and all our cracks begin to show.
The question to homeschool or not is the wrong question, we need to ask ourselves if we want to be teaching or if we want to be teachers? We might not be a teacher, but as parents, we are always teaching whether we realize it or not. When we ask for our children's help in cooking dinner we are teaching skills involving math, science, home economics, cooking. When we talk about taxes and stimulus packages we are teaching politics, government, public policy, math. When we read (or when we put the TV on mute with subtitles) we are teaching reading comprehension, grammar and the importance of flexibility.
In this crazy world, maybe the question is not, do we teach at home but rather how to maximize teachable moments at home?
Comments