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TO THE POINT: HOME EDUCATION IS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE January 20, 2022 |
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Most people considering alternative options to public school hear the word ‘homeschooling’ and immediately think of ‘another school’ to replace the normal public school. The worldwide pandemic has also caused the word ‘homeschooling’ to become a misnomer for just a variety of other ‘schools’ parents look for. However, if you change the word to HOME EDUCATION, then it is about giving your child a WHOLE HEARTED and complete education, including character, physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual development. It’s then when you suddenly realize that... Home education is about so much more than just schooling! Home education is a LIFESTYLE decision. When people grasp that they can actually design their lifestyles together with the children, and that they have the freedom to determine what we as family members choose to keep ourselves busy with (or not), then there is the ‘AHA’ moment. It is right after this that most people usually ask: Can I really do this? Can I really choose to schedule our day as our own? The answer is – YES you can! We have become so used to other people, projects and especially school regulating our lives that we don’t realize how much choice we do, in fact, have. So do you want to change your lifestyle? Let us look at a few pointers: Lifestyle choices are determined by your Vision (Step 1 of the 7-Step process): • What defines your lifestyle? • What kind of lifestyle do you envision for you as a family? • For the individual members? • What do they envision for themselves? • What types of things can you bring in or let go of? • What is the season you are living in now? • What is important to focus on in this season? • What is not? Not everything is as important all the time as we usually tend to think it is. There is a time for everything. The trick is to figure out what are the few important things there should be time for NOW. And then focus on just that. A cluttered life will be a distracted life – clutter is not only physical, as you can have a cluttered schedule, routines or even cluttered thoughts. Clutter can also be thought of as having too much, doing too much or even thinking about too many things (lol).... To effectively home educate, it helps to declutter your life and to figure out what are the few basic things you can focus on for now....such as establishing a simple routine or rhythm for your family, and then one can ‘fill up the routine’ with effective usage of that time once the routine is settled. To borrow from the Clarksons and Marilyn Howshall – the concept of boxes have worked well for us to establish routines...there is the ‘school work’ box, the ‘afternoon sports and activity’ box, “productive free time”, “family together time” etc. So think about your vision – what boxes of time do you envision? Lastly I want to leave you with this thought....think less about how many lifestyle choices are not money dependent, but rather (conscious or unconscious) choices we make on how (and where) we spend our time. Let us spend our time wisely so we may grow in wisdom, as this is the greatest asset to have in your homeschool journey.
The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have. - Vince Lombardi
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