Messy Homeschooling

Homeschooling in our family has felt pretty messy of late. In fact this whole year so far has been a bit chaotic and unusual!

First there was the house selling business, with minimal resources (we removed a lot of furniture and clutter to make it look better) and constant cleaning and tidying.

Then came the lockdown weirdness, involving far more time actually at home with all our usual activities cancelled. Plus we had to share the house and its resources (like the printer) with my husband, who had to teach his high school classes from home for several weeks. Everything was thrown out of routine and I was constantly telling the kids to keep quiet because there was probably a Maths video being made or a zoom session in progress.

This was soon followed by further decluttering, packing and of course moving to our new house. All of which was extremely disruptive to school work!

Now we’re mostly unpacked but still pretty disorganised, trying our best to find our new rhythm and order. The hardest part for me is focusing back in on our usual routine. I find myself constantly distracted by odd jobs that need doing around the place.. things like putting up pictures and pricing out furniture, arranging for the car to have its battery replaced and the piano to be tuned.. Lots of all those little jobs that by themselves don’t take much time or energy, but added together form a huge, seemingly insurmountable to-do list!

It’s easy to beat ourselves up as homeschooling parents at times like these. But in reality the kids are still learning, even if it’s not their usual curriculum! They’ve been doing plenty of reading comprehension and vocab thanks to workbooks from the Excel series like ‘Building your Vocabulary Skills‘, which they really enjoy (have I mentioned how great Excel workbooks are at times like these?!) Admittedly some kids are probably doing more than others, but they are at least all doing something!

I am really looking forward to just enjoying time with the kids without having so many tasks. Hopefully that time will come soon! In any case, I aim to set aside some uninterrupted time in the coming days to check in on their progress. In reality, life is always busy, and I will always be fighting against my task-oriented nature!