homeschool mission statement family activity

I've heard it a million times since we started this journey back in 2007: You need a mission statement for your homeschool.

Yeah, whatever. said I. We know what we're doing and we know why we're doing it. We're fine.

And most the time we are fine. But things change and life changes and school changes and doubt creeps in and there's a thousand reasons you might start questioning your decision to teach your kids at home. OR you might start speeding full blast down a homeschooling path that totally goes against why you decided to homeschool in the first place. (These things may or may not have happened here.)

So yeah. You need a mission statement for your homeschool. 

Making our mission statement became a family activity. Each day I put out a slip of paper with a question on it. The purpose of the questions was to get my kids thinking in different ways about what they wanted from their homeschooling journey.

...I can learn what I want? It is shorter? I can work at my own pace?

...more field trips? Study a certain subject? Be in four sports a year? Try a new co-op?

...it is outside? in the morning? relaxed and unscheduled? year long? with friends?

Everyone was encouraged to answer all the questions as many times as they wanted and fill up our bucket with ideas that would then be taken and plugged into our mission statement. By the end of the week we had quite a few papers filled out!

We sat down together and went through the bucket reading everyone's answers and writing them on our big dry erase board. Common themes ran through some answers, but a few surprises came out as well. It was a learning experience for everyone involved. From this giant list on our board we came up with the Clucky Dickens Farm Homeschool Mission Statement. (The boys had a blast putting it in to "fancy language".)

Our rough draft

If you can't read it in the picture: Clucky Dickens Farm Homeschool exists to provide an educational experience that is both fun and family oriented. While we realize we must master basic skills (which include but are not limited to "the three Rs") we seek to spend a considerable amount of time on topics that excite us as individuals. We value learning at our own pace and in our own way, as well as a flexible calendar which allows for harvest, hunting, and other activities.

We also wrote down our goals on a separate sheet of paper because most of them were "time-specific" and we decided they didn't belong in our long term mission statement.

The boys were proud of the project and told me we need to make it into a nice poster and put it up on the wall so we can refer to it on those "hard days we forget why we are doing what we are doing".

Well said, kids. Well said.

failproof way to teach your kids to use a washcloth instead of a dishtowel

I'm all about real life learning. Visual lessons. Bringing it home so people can see the relevance of something to their own lives.

If your house is anything like ours, you might have family members who forget that dishtowels have a different purpose than washcloths. (To account for any regional vocabulary differences, I will state that a washcloth is wet and is intended for wiping up spills, a dishtowel stays dry and is meant for drying dishes or clean hands.)

Certain young family members here were still confused with my verbal reminders so I decided to give them a visual lesson entitled Why I Prefer You Use A Washcloth To Wipe Up A Spill.

Oh dear me! Someone has spilled taco sauce on the counter!

I'll just grab this handy dishtowel here to wipe this spill up...

Ew. Yuck, that's kind of gross....but oh well. No bother!

Wait! Hold on! Let me dry off that spoon that just got washed...

Here you go, sweetheart. Did you say you wanted a dish of ice cream?

 There you have it. Short, sweet, and to the point.

You're welcome. :)

how to remember math facts the hmmmschooler way

Dear Children,

If you tell me you can't remember your math facts...

...I will make them a part of your life. ;)

Love,
Mom

how to get a hmmmschooler to carry hay

It is hard work to live on a farm. You need muscles. And stamina. And patience.

That's where the Farmboy Olympics come in. You can learn real life farm skills but have a little fun.

Hay bales weigh about fifty pounds each. If you ask a hmmmschooler to carry one from the shed for you on any normal day, you get a whiny aw, mom! But if you make it part of Farmboy Olympics, you've got yourself a deal!

"Load the cart! We're timing you!"

"Pull! Come on, faster!"

"Time!"

You can tell a hmmmschooler to stack haybales and get a exaggerated sigh, or you can make it a competition in the Farmboy Olympics, and they're all over it!

"Ready? Go!"

"Look at those muscles!"

"Stack 'em up!"

Even when the pile didn't work out, it was still fun!

We also worked on fence hoppin' while carrying animal food.

"Look at that speed!"

And, since we haul a lot of water to our many animals, we did a timed water haul:

1. Fill bucket from the spigot in our heated room in the barn.

2. Run with that bucket to another bucket that's outside the barn door.

3. Pour your water into that bucket until the water reaches a line we drew inside it.

Don't you wish you could have taken part in the Farmboy Olympics?

Ok. So there was a lot of work being done. I don't think we tricked anyone. But you can't deny (and neither will the farmboy hmmmschoolers) that it was fun, too! :)

Buffets, arcades...and wet naps

Hmmmschooler Iggy recently turned 10 years old and for his birthday decided he wanted a big seafood feast. We figured the most economical way to make this happen was a trip to the casino buffet about an hour from our house.

I must tell you we really don't eat out much, so this trip to the all-you-can-eat casino buffet was beyond exciting for the young 'uns.

"You mean I can eat as many crab legs as I want? Bring it on!"

The best part was when the boys discovered the dessert bar. If I could have snapped a picture of them standing in front of the huge display of pies, cakes, and puddings with their jaws dragging on the ground, it would have been great.

"Mom," said Hmmmschooler Iggy. "Are these desserts all plastic or are they actually to eat?"

I hid my smile, choked back a laugh, and confirmed the desserts were real.

They ate their fill of sugary sweet goodies.

When our bellies were pleasantly full, the server brought us a little tray with mints and wet naps. The boys had no clue what the wet naps were, and were beyond impressed that they had their own lemon scented wet wipes to clean their faces and hands.

It's the little things, really.

Next was the arcade.

The adults watched as my sweet hmmmschoolers shot the heads off whoever was shooting back at them on the giant screened video game.

"It was epic", they concluded.

Somewhere along the evening, one of the adults joked that it was almost like The Sheltered Homeschoolers' Day Out. I mean, getting excited about all-you-can-eat desserts and wetnaps?

I laughed. Perhaps it's true. Or maybe they're just kids who can still get excited about the little things in life, instead of kids who are unimpressed because they think they've seen it all.

I mean, hey. If lemon-scented wet naps make you smile...I'm all for it. :)

you are NOT a bad parent

I am a mother of tween boys. And I am tired.

I'm tired of telling the boys to aim when they use the bathroom. I'm tired of sitting down on a wet toilet seat. I'm tired of having to explain that farm animals actually do eat on the weekend, too, and yes, still at 7:30 am. I'm tired to of telling them to be quiet when Dad is sleeping. I'm tired of dealing with attitudes when the math books come out. I'm tired of hearing how overworked they think they are.

I'm tired. My guess is if you're a parent, you're tired, too.

I've been struggling with this a lot the last couple months. Wondering if homeschooling is the right option for us. Has something changed within our family? Am I just doing a sucktastic job as a Mom?

I've been struggling. And thinking. And cursing. And wondering. And I realized something.

I have this tape that plays through my mind:  If you are a good parent your kids will listen. All the time. And never ever ever disobey you.

Ever.

Do you hear that tape in your head? Look at what my kid did now...I am a complete failure as a parent.

Well, guess what? That tape will ruin you as a parent. Absolutely ruin you.

It's complete BS.

What we really need to remember is:

a) kids test and push boundaries. It's what they do.
b)It is a parent's job to remind them where those boundaries are.

It's that simple.

(So why do we make it so hard?)

Because we think we're going to get past some point and then everything is going to be peaceful. Once ___ happens, we will be happy. We just have to get past ___ and then everything will be perfect. Johnny is going to stop peeing on the toilet seat and Susie will remember to feed the cat and Danny will stop running through the house screaming while Maggie is on the phone and Miranda will finally figure out how to multiply by double digits.

The kids will listen and understand and we will have succeeded and Everything. Will. Be. Perfect.

But guess what?

That's complete BS, too.

 Parenting is wonderful and amazing. But it's also stressful and exhausting. The challenges involved with raising kids don't ever go away, they just change.We will stress and worry and overanalyze things regardless of whether our kid is 4 or 12 or 17 or even 36.

So when your kids slam the door in your face or won't pick up their toys or draw with Sharpies all over their dresser or tell you they hate you or cry because you've made them finish their math or don't come home by curfew, does that mean you shouldn't respond?

No. You need to respond with a reminder of where those boundaries are. But having kids who test boundaries doesn't mean you're a failure. It doesn't mean you've completely screwed up and should send them back from whence they came.

It just means you're a parent. It means you have children who are alive and breathing and have brains of their own. It means you're a caretaker and lover and supporter of those kids. It means you actually care what happens to them. It means you want them to succeed.

And that means you are tired. Very, very tired. :)

why homeschool moms need to be real

A funny cartoon makes the rounds every so often that depicts a homeschooling mom carting her child to an event and giving him an exhaustive list of things not to say or do.

The reason it's funny is because we've all done it.

What...you haven't? You mean you've never grabbed your child before he walks into a new homeschool gathering and said do not mention that we watch duck dynasty or that we butcher rabbits for meat or that we let you stay up until midnight!

Liar.

I know that at least once in your homeschool career you've stopped at the door, bent down to your sweet child and advised them  the other moms don't need to hear that your favorite song is Gangnam Style and we skipped church last week because we overslept and you don't know your multiplication tables yet and you and your father once played Minecraft for 23 hours straight!

Homeschooling moms can fall into a very sticky trap. We want everyone to think we're a certain type of family, even if we're not. We want everyone to believe we're a certain kind of mom/woman/person and that our kids are certain kinds of kids, even if its not true. We want to project the image that we're all Homeschool Mama Extraordinaire...even when none of us really are

Why do we do that?

What do we gain by pretending our life is something it isn't?

What are we helping by pretending to be people we aren't?

Nothing. Not one flippin' thing. And you know what's worse? When we aren't real, we're missing out on some of the most awesome, honest, helpful relationships we could possibly build in these tough, stressful homeschooling years.

Homeschooling is hard, and these other parents we're pretending around are the very people we should be honest with. These are the people who will cheer us on when we feel like throwing in the towel.

If homeschooling is real life, then we need to be real. That's the only way we will know who's really going to help us when things get really hard.