Homeschool Squirrels

We are "relaxed schoolers." We aren't radical unschoolers because some days we sit down and do formal school when I have the energy, motivation, and attention for it and my anxiety is low. A lot of things have to line up when you are mom struggling with mental health, but that doesn't mean homeschooling is impossible or can't be enjoyable and succesful! Most days we do what comes naturally, and I've come to consider a lot of things "school." Austen (age six) was lining up all the numbers from 1-20 in order for fun... well, I don't think anyone would argue that that's math. Sometimes she asks me to write down a bunch of math facts for her to do, and sometimes I catch her writing her own math facts pages in her little notebooks. The girl loves anything that has to do with numbers! Right now, when we sit down to do formal math, she is struggling with the concept of tens place and subtraction. But if we are going about our daily lives, she

Okay, I've gotta be real here... when we first began poetry tea time to add a spark to our homeschool a year ago, I wasn't a fan. We hadn't delved into poetry before and my kids seemed uninterested. It took so much energy to whip up a treat and pull grandma's tea cups down from the china cabinet, and our tablecloth got stained every time. The kids would get excited about starting and our tea time was always prefaced by them shouting and squealing and arguing with excitement. (They argue about everything.) Then, by the time the cookies were eaten (in .25 seconds flat) and it was my 8-year-old's turn to read his poem, the enthusiasm quickly waned. They were happier about the sweets than the poetry. I would get flustered and impatient, and then the clean up... oh, the clean up. But one day I realized I wasn't doing it for the right reasons. Big surprise? Probably not. News flash: this wasn't about me, this wasn't even really about school... We could