Homeschooling, a Family Affair

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This week’s question for the TOS Blog Cruise is “How are your spouse, grandparents, or other family members involved in your homeschooling?”

I suspect our family is not unique in that mom (that’s ME) does the majority of the planning and implementation for the family homeschool.  Although, there is one family in the base homeschool group that has Dad at home with the kids doing their schooling.

Another thing about our homeschool which is most likely common is that Dad does have a role.  For some, it is solely as the Principal.  I know that the mantra for years by the exasperated Mama has been “Wait until your father gets home!”  Even when the boys were attending parochial school, I found those words coming out of my mouth on more than one occasion.  Why?  In short, it is because the boys recognize Mr. O as the ultimate authority in the house. And if we are to follow biblical teaching, the husband is supposed to be the head of the household.  So, there’s no complaint by me on that.

Beyond acting as principal in our homeschool, Mr. O will sometimes actually help the boys as they learn.  Sometimes it is just being a different warm body to sit along side as they work on those challenging math problems.  Or, he is the person acting as audience for a presentation they have done.  Occasionally, he will even take the reigns for subject material which is has more knowledge than I.  When we were awaiting Little J’s arrival, he did the activities for science with them as Mr. O loves birds and that was our topic at the time.

Currently, we do not live close to extended family members.  However, when we have been around my parents, the boys will learn from them as well.  D would curl up on the couch with Nana to read to her from his phonics books or later different ‘textbooks’ he was using.  During our visit to Louisiana last fall, Papa took the boys on a field trip to the Audubon Zoo.  When we lived just up the road from my sister in Maryland, the boys would cook, bake or even (gasp!) clean with her.  They also took turns baking with their Zia Felicia down in the Louisiana.  Home ec skills seemed more fun with their aunts than with Mom. 

The last family ‘member’ that is involved in our homeschool is the older brother.  There are times when an older brother will help teach a younger brother a skill instead of Mom or Dad.  And, there are times when they will play a game to reinforce learning for a brother.  Sometimes you just need more than one person participating in an activity, even if the other person learned that skill a while ago.  The upside to siblings helping teach siblings is that you know THEY really mastered the material.

I guess to sum it up… “Its a Family Affair.”  (Isn’t there a song with that in the lyrics??)