by Kayla Stewart from The Animation Course 

 

Do you ever ask yourself what is available to me? What options do I have to breathe life into this thing we call school in our home? Is your child doodling while you engage in your read-alouds for English, or for history in your living room on your comfy couch? Is one of your children exclaiming, “I’m bored!”, while you are trying to teach him or her math around your big kitchen table? Is nature, while you are on an adventure creating journals to study science, just not the thing for your middle school or highschool student?

 

There are so many new and creative things out there for you in this amazing world of homeschooling! What lights up your child? Is it crafts, art, digital drawing, the sky, the stars? You have the ability to really study your child; see what makes them tick! I read a book once called, How Your Child is Smart by Dawn Markova. What a great read and the beginning of my journey to meet each of my 8 kids where they were at in their learning and growth, even in our day to day homeschool.

 

Can you imagine a homeschool day where you ‌look at your children individually as you unwrap the best journey for them? What might happen if you look at just your middle daughter, and ponder, What makes her come alive?

 

Of course, our children need to learn math. That was some of the more fun daily moments I had with my now adult children as small people with a hunger to learn. The way one of my children really grabbed the concept of manipulatives, another would need a coloring page. This was thinking outside the box, engaging in becoming a student of my children as they were my students that I had the privilege to teach and nurture in my home on our comfy couch, or around our kitchen table!

 

Just like we can teach math in different ways, we can also allow our children to color while we read for history or English. We can help our small son, who has a problem sitting still during reading, listen for keywords that he tells me to write, where then he can write a story of his own that mimics the story just read to him. What is one quality that you can see in each of your individual children that would allow them to learn with more engagement to foster real learning? What can you learn about yourself and then change how you are teaching them? How does this work in your homeschool day? Can you do it yourself or do you need to look for resources that help you “be innovative?”

 

If you are feeling a bit stuck in your homeschooling journey and your child has interests beyond math, reading, or science, find what works for him or her and what lights them up! It can still happen on your comfy couch, or around your inviting kitchen table, or even in nature. You just have to take some time out and observe what would be best for each of your extra special kiddos who you know the best of anyone in the world!! How can you bring their world alive to learning with what you have at your fingertips inside and outside your home?

 

Bio

I am a mom of 8 adult children, all of which we homeschooled in many different ways, each year looking a little different with adopted children joining our home, to moving across states, to a house fire that brought some unique challenges. My very supportive and involved husband was an animator working in film for most of our homeschooling journey, so he was very busy with work. We had an unexpected privilege to begin working together in 2015 on our own venture, once our children were nearing the end of homeschooling. That birthed The Animation Course, which we built to intersect with other families’ homeschooling journeys.

 

 

 


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