Homeschool learnings: Both And

I was feeling nervous about teaching both children. How to juggle, how to manage, how to not lose my mind. We seem to be getting into a routine that is allowing everyone to have their own space.

Circle Time is together.

Then Bean does either Language Arts or Social Studies from Oak Meadow. We brainstorm the paragraph together, then she copies it in cursive into her Main Lesson Book. Dragon entertains himself (or we practice our letters) until Bean is writing and then we do his reading lesson.

Then Math for Bean while Dragon roams the house, or looks for cattails at the pond, or works on his beeswax bunnies from yesterday’s art class - listening hard.

Then Latin, or Spanish, or Geography, or Art, or Health, or Science. Those lessons we can do together. A Chinese water clock experiment for the Bean becomes an experiment for everyone - and then the plates get reused in the bathtub that night. (I hear as I practice the piano, “Mine sunk faster because it has a bigger hole than yours!”)

My vision is for there to be one on one time with one child while the other one is doing their own project. Then we switch. Back and forth. I am getting glimpses of what life will look like when both smalls are more like middles because they will be able to self-direct entirely.

But we are not quite there yet. The juggling of the balls is getting smoother but sometimes they collide.

“Momma, how to you make an ‘o’ come off of a ‘b’? hits me at the same exact moment as, “Momma! You didn’t hear my question! Do I need to write more ‘mmmmms’?”

Homeschooling is parenting. Parenting is homeschooling. I am teaching skip counting, penmanship, and adverbs. They are teaching me patience, love, and compassion. The both and of life.