Home Schooling 101

“There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuos parent”
~~Mahatma Gandhi

Toilet paper rolls, empty bottles, chalk, homemade slime, soil, seeds, newspaper ground into a pulp, and the list goes on and on. If one were to peek into my big box of treasures, they wouldn’t find silver or gold. Instead, they would be appalled to find that I collect all kinds of junk. I am a homeschooling parent, you see. From junk, is borne a lesson or two!

One of the reasons I swapped my microscope and tissue specimens at work for toddler babble and baby food specimens was with the intention to eventually home-school my children. I’m not planning on homeschooling them forever but for a few years, perhaps till they turned 4 or 5, or when I feel that I had managed to inculcate in them the virtues that I believed were vital for them to develop into amazing adults later on in life. And what might those virtues be, you may ask?

The ability to engage in and enjoy playtime, of course! In my opinion, the single most underrated ‘lesson’ in schools nowadays is playtime, so for this sole reason, I decided to keep my kids home with me for the next few years to come.

Home-schooling, hmm… so does that mean there is a school room set-up within the confines of our home? Or is there a bell that goes off to alert us that a particular period is over and it’s time for the next session? Well yes, and no. There is no bell, of course, but we use a room of our house which has been set up comfortably enough so the mood is suitable to imbibe knowledge but not doze off! I also choose to employ the methods of un-schooling, which is very much like homeschooling, except that our lessons don’t have much structure to them and tend to overlap, or rather, flow into each other in a fluid yet constructive manner.

To put all the jargon in a nutshell, I basically have a checklist of topics that I would like my kids to learn about, for example climates or seasons or festivals. That becomes the mainstay of the week and we do all types of related activities that revolve around the main theme. If the main topic is climates, then we make “snow-men” and have pretend snowballs out of cotton wool and we have an all-out snow fight in our pretend winter wonderland. If I’m teaching them about summer instead, we pack an actual picnic basket and I have packets of sand which I pour into boxes for us to build sandcastles while we sip lemonade by our pretend beach, made of all my blue sarees, to mimic the rolling waves!

Our daily lessons run the gamut from living skills such as making the bed upon waking up, the importance of personal hygiene, simple cooking sessions like baking and cutting up vegetables and fruits with spoons and forks, messy play time or sensory play and Nature walks. By far, sensory play and Nature walks are the big hits with the kids. I started a scrap book concept for them, where we collect dried leaves, twigs, wilting flowers, pebbles and just about anything that catches their fancy from the walks outside, as long as we respect Nature and not desecrate the beauty of our surroundings.

Messy play or sensory time is a lot of fun. We use dough, homemade slime, sand, flour, cotton and lots of other easily accessible items from the house. My latest project is to make a Sensory Farm, using cereals molded to look like haystacks and we’re about to glue together bits and pieces of old boxes and toilet rolls to make farm animals and paint them. A bit ambitious, considering my kids are not even above 3 years of age, but all’s good in the name of fun!

Once a week, we include play-dates as part of our homeschooling agenda and the order of the day is all about running and playing and getting dirty and sweaty in the great outdoors. Of course if the weather is unrelenting, then the kids and their play-dates are home-bound but having loads of fun which is evident from all the squeals of laughter, whoops and shrieks of joy. Free play is just as important as organised play and hence the play-dates, which also help the kids to develop healthy social skills.

There are times when I do get a little frustrated in the day, especially when I have prepared props for a particular lesson and the kids are in no mood for anything other than running around banging and clanging pots and pans. I always try to remind myself that their childhood will be gone in the blink of an eye and they have every right to enjoy as much of it without me trying to make everything into a life lesson. Then afterwards, I join in the banging and clanging too! After all, what better way to chase the weekday blues away than with a bit of noise from our little live band!