what relaxed-schooling looks like for us

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 understands subconsciously what subtraction is, and she understands numbers larger than ten.

When she was four years old, she did a division problem in her head and figured out how much it would cost per person if I spent $12 on Happy Meals for all three kids. If I sat down and asked her, "What is twelve divided by three?" I guarantee she would be unable to answer. Her knowledge and what she's learned through play and games and just life in general cannot be measured by a state test. I know instinctively, as her mother, what she is learning, where her skills lie, and where she needs help. This is something a teacher of a classroom of 20 kids cannot understand about my daughter. This is why we homeschool... this is freedom!

River (age nine) helped me cut a recipe in half the other day. Okay, can I just be completely honest here? I cannot cook with my kids. Yes, I know I should! I know their futures of healthy eating and cooking for themselves and not relying on take-out when they've reached adulthood is dependent on this! Knowing all this, I still don't like it. It stresses me out, it's messy, and everything takes ten times longer. *phew* Now that we've got that out of the way... Cutting a recipe in half is a great way for a child to "do math" for the day. It may be easy to figure out what half of one cup is, but what about half of 3/4s cup?

River could very well sit down with a piece of paper and write down math facts and figure out equations with a pencil, but it's flat, boring, dispassionate, and unrelatable. But to actually do the math to make a delicious treat for the family to enjoy for poetry tea time? Who wouldn't enjoy that! It takes a concept that not all brains will be able to figure out abstractly (because everyone learns differently, and you can't expect a triangular-shaped child to fit in a round-shaped education hole... you feel me?) and makes it FUN! It makes it something you want to do. And, I'll state the obvious and point out that they are learning the valuable life skill of cooking as well. Going to the store and figuring out tax, or how many packs of Pokemon cards you can buy with $8 falls under the same real-life math problems.

Copying funny words like "poop" and "brains" and "Minecraft" in cursive... well, that's handwriting. And what's wrong with a good, old fashioned poop joke now and then? My kids read to themselves every single day and I read aloud many books. They love checking off the calendar for every day they read and being in competition with themselves. They write poetry and memorize poetry for fun, and we plan on putting on a recitation performance for family members at the end of the year to show all the pieces they've learned to recite beautifully. River still isn't crazy about reading long chapter books and prefers to read books like the entire collection of Marvel characters and how to build Lego creations, which is fine with me, but he listens to audiobooks for hours - literally hours - every day.  The Wizard of Oz, the Wings of Fire series, and Harry Potter have been some of his favorites. Both kids play math board games like 'Smath, and logic games like chess and Master Mind and Code Master are huge hits in our family... everyone loves them, so it's a great opportunity for me to get down on the floor and spend some one-on-one time with my kids, as well! They love this game called Silly Sentences, which teaches grammar like sentence structure and parts of speech... and they don't even know they are learning. We are a big nature-loving family, so naturally we spend a lot of time catching insects and reading about them, observing our growing sunflowers, digging and building with rocks, etc.

Tl;dr: LIFE is our school.

A year ago, I thought I wasn't "doing enough" and would put myself down because we didn't do traditional, sit-down school every day. But after a year of this type of learnin, required state tests show my kids are not just learning, but thriving. And guess what? They love learning. They love "doing school," because they don't even know they are doing it. Learning in all these different ways is a passion for them. And they have me as a guide, to gently take their hand and introduce them to new things when I notice they need help in one area or another.

Win win win win all around.