Homeschooling is super weird, and WAY different than what most of us have seen, read about, heard or experienced. So it is really hard for us even to comprehend what it could look like. 

We either think of the crazy hermit homeschooler of the 80's that was passing down all of her social awkwardness and ruining the name for homeschoolers forevermore, or we think of the supermom that has all of her children nicely lined up at the table with their hair perfectly combed, the room spotlessly cleaned and their binders and lesson books out teaching about mitochondria, string theory and God all at the same time while everyone holds hands and asks profound questions. (wow, was that a run-on?) And we probably won't want to be option #1 and we know that we certainly are NOT option #2. So what is left?

I have had several people ask me what my home-school looks like because they just need a picture to help their mind wrap around the idea. So, here are some pictures and notes. :)

I have a schedule up on my door. It looks like this: 

In case you can't read it, it says:

6-8: Morning routine
8-10: Breakfast, devotional, family work
10-12: Kidschool / Explore
12-2: Lunch, pick up, set table
2-4: Free Time, Reading Time (usually my kids watch a show or 2 here. Or 7 if I am sick or just had a baby)
4-6: Play (friends OK here)
6-8: Dinner, Clean Up, Reading, Bedtime

This is what I am shooting for all the time.

But really it should say something more like this:

I'm just kidding, but sometimes it does feel that way. In all honesty, we probably hit that schedule 1 day in 10. Sometimes 1 day in 30!

But I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, what Rachel Demille said about that:

Honestly, if we treat each day as a way to help train up great souls, the lessons will be rich and varied. The academics, truth be told, take way less time than learning to get along, learning to be responsible, learning to be creative, learning to serve joyfully. (This is an AWESOME blog post to check out. http://www.tjed.org/2015/11/inspiration-smoothies-good-day/) 

So, moving past schedule to location. Here is more of what it looks like. When I first envisioned homeschooling I thought of a classroom and how I could make it as much like that as possible because I LOVED my classrooms growing up. I hoped my home-school room could look like this: 

Isn't that beautiful?

But it turns out that a beautiful room like that is the path to the dark side for me. When I tried to make a space like that, I ended up trying to teach by shoving things into my kids' heads and it was just a whole lot of power struggle. We only learned that I am a control freak and my kids hate being controlled. 

and here (if you look below those BIG guns, you will see the kitchen counter that they are "sitting" at):