It was the fall of my second year of homeschooling and I had given birth to our fourth child in October. I remember holding him, looking at a table full of dishes while the other three children danced about the room as I tried to herd them to nap time. I was happy, but tired. While I longed for eight hours of straight sleep, I also knew that as the baby slept more, the more he would grow into an active toddler; it wasn’t going to get any easier to homeschool next year.
It was at that moment that I resolved that the children and I were going to learn how to do chores together if it was the only thing that we learned that school year. We, of course, did many things besides chores. But it is how The Inaugural Year of “The Chores” began.
There were two in school that year — a first grader and a kindergartener — so our curriculum was simple. We read books, counted numbers, did handwriting, went on nature walks, learned American History, and discovered how the world worked. But throughout all of it the main priority was learning how to do chores.
To say that we learned all we needed to know about chores in Year Two is funny and certainly not true. They were only seven, six and four years old. How much work could they do? Well, more than we think sometimes. They could get the newspaper, feed the cat, clear dishes off of the table, wipe the table, sweep the floor and even wash dishes. We learned how to work and built a foundation of how we did things for years to come.
This trajectory allowed me to run a speech and debate club during their high school years because they helped with so many household chores.
In addition to this, chores were our main method to teach many character lessons: perseverance, doing excellent work, finishing a task even when you don’t feel like it. So many good lessons learned through hard work.
When work was the main curriculum for character lessons in the early years. It allowed us to keep “school” or learning about discovery and delight so that we could emphasize and develop a love of learning.
In a few short weeks we will hold a high school graduation ceremony for our youngest child. It will also be the formal and official end of 20 years of homeschooling for me. I have educated four children from kindergarten to high school diplomas.
It’s a huge transition for me and I’ve been trying to figure out how to say goodbye to this deeply meaningful season that has impacted me vocationally, relationally, socially, intellectually, and spiritually for twenty years. And so I write! I hope it is the first of several posts that i will intertwine with other topics in the Mondays by Midnight under the hashtag of Reflections on Twenty Years of Homeschooling. (Not super fancy but it’s what I’ve got).
#mondaysbymidnight
#reflectionson20years
