Monday, May 26, 2008

My Life...It's Homeschooling.

For this weeks Carnivial of Canadian Home Educators the theme was sharing our lives outside of homeschooling. I thought about it and thought about it but my life seems so intertwined with homeschooling that I don't know how to unravel it.

I am part of a community choir. We sing everything from madrigals to the Beatles. That's outside of homeschooling...except when I bring Catherine with me and watch as she skips around the practice hall while we sing. Then it's intertwined again as she gets a taste for baroque or jazz.

I do take a course, Education for Ministry (lay ministry, not the other kind!). I'm on hiatus this year but I've got two years under my belt and two more to go. That's something that's completely my own. Except I pass on some of what I've learned to the kids and the research the course has sparked has turned up lots of resources for homeschooling.

There's my drawing. Even there though, as I practice and learn new skills I''m looking over at a daughter that seems to have the same interest and eye for drawing that I do. I learn a skill and I try to help Catherine learn it.

What else happens outside homeschooling?

My blogging and my forum visits. Even then I blog and talk about homeschooling.

To find out where homeschooling ends and the other stuff begins is hard. Homeschooling isn't like school after all. There's no bell, no bus ride home. It's a lifestyle, not an institution. And it touches everything in my life.

2 comments:

Jacqueline said...

Yeah, it is so true, Dawn that it really is hard to see the division between homeschooling and everything else.

Anonymous said...

That is so true about there being no division between homeschooling and everything else. It seems that everything we do in the day is directly or indirectly related to HS'ing, or can be used as a learning example which is great to be able to teach from daily living and not have to rely on books to teach you it all. This I think is truly a gift to have it so beautifully interwoven into our lives :) And yes in my spare alone time I'm usually thinking about schooling to *grin* Lucky I never tire of it. LOL.
Blessings,
Rosina