Written by contributor Kari Patterson of Sacred Mundane
A big forest behind our house, lots of free time to read, a garden, science fairs, a playhouse, maps on the wall, Legos, an old piano, sketch books, almost no TV, and a library card.
These were the key components of my homeschool education growing up. In fact, when I’m asked what my homeschool days were like I usually respond, “I remember home but I don’t remember any school.”
My mom loves that.
She enthusiastically led us in a joy-filled, relaxed approach to learning. “Doing school” did not dominate our days.
Last year I ran across my mom’s worn and tattered volume by Mary Pride, homeschooling guru from the 1980s, who raised seven kids, wrote books, and taught countless seminars. On one of the many dog-eared pages I discovered part of the inspiration for Mom’s philosophy. When asked, “How do you do it all?” Pride responded,
“The key is … laziness! The best way to teach is to not have to teach at all. Ideally, our children should learn how to learn and begin to teach themselves.”
I believe this is why some moms can have a gaggle of kids, homeschool, volunteer, maintain friendships, and be active in their communities without collapsing. (They might have housekeepers too; I’m suspicious.)
We give our kids the key to learning and then relax a bit. Here are a few ideas to make this work (Thanks, Mary).
The lazy girl’s guide to home education:
1. Give Access
Pride says the key is access:
“Human nature being what it is, you can be sure that if it is hard to find, hard to get out, or hard to put away, children will avoid it. But when parents make the materials of learning accessible, amazing things start to happen!”
Thankfully, we do not need to be the source of all our children’s information. Our kids will learn more when they’re motivated by genuine curiosity and empowered to acquire skills and information on their own.
Therefore, having educational tools easily accessible to children will encourage them to discover and learn on their own.
Photo by Lacey Meyers
For us, this means making our entire home conducive to creativity and learning. Our house isn’t large, but we dedicated a small loft-area (and every other nook and cranny we can find!) to encourage learning and discovery.
Even if you don’t have the dream “homeschool room” you can create fabulous Discovery Zones throughout your home (great ideas in this book!).
We also let the kids decorate and display their interests and creations freely.
Let me tell you, their room does not look like a Pottery Barn catalog, with walls covered in artwork, Cartesian coordinate systems (yes, my 6-year-old son loves math), and treasure maps scotch-taped all over their walls but their love for learning and creativity is alive, and that is beautiful to me.
Photo by Lacey Meyers
2. Create Order
A little work at the beginning will enable you to make a pot of tea, put up your feet, and perhaps … read a book (or this blog!), while your children are happily learning.
The key is order. In our home, these 4 simple rules—memorized along with our Bible verses—enable our children to have free access to toys, crafts and learning materials:
- If something has no home it goes to another home.
- If we don’t use it we give it to someone who will.
- Put everything to bed before we go to bed.
- Put away one thing before moving on to another.
We must not be lazy about teaching order early on so our children can enjoy the freedom of access to learning tools. If we can train our children from a young age to exercise basic discipline in these areas, they can enjoy the limitless freedom of exploring the world around them all their days. The toddler who can put his toys away becomes the teenager who can teach himself trigonometry.
Finally, one last Lazy Girl must-do:
Photo by Lacey Meyers
3. Allow Boredom
I distinctly remember my ever-tender-hearted mother having zero compassion for bored children. She was not responsible for entertaining us, and since electronics and media weren’t options, we were doomed …
to learn.
Yes, necessity is the mother of invention, and when children are allowed to face boredom, do you know what happens? They invent things to do! They create! Discover! Imagine! Learn!
I believe that the hectic overfilled schedule of most kids these days is actually hindering their ability to learn. Boredom is a blessing; it forces kids to think, create, learn.
As I type these words my children are going on 3 hours straight of having a backyard archeological dig, taping together dinosaur bones (sticks) and drawing maps to document their findings. Actually, now I don’t know where they are; hold on …
These 3 simple steps set children up for a lifetime of learning because they’ll still have the tools and the discipline long after they spread their wings and leave homeschool behind. And, we might even make it to graduation day with a few non-gray hairs if we cut ourselves some slack and employ a little strategic lazy-girl philosophy.
I’m certainly no expert, but Mary Pride is. It’s worth a try.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find my children…
Your turn! What “Lazy Girl” tips can you share with us? Thanks for reading.
Originally published on October 30, 2013
Homeschool inspiration: The Lego edition
I agree 100% about having order. I can’t function in a home that is cluttered with stuff. Thanks for the inspiration about access. This is something I am working on for sure! Love this post.
I loved this post. When I saw the title I knew that it was a post for me! Sometimes I feel quite lazy not “doing school” with my girls, but I’ve seen what a long way they have come and don’t feel do guilty anymore. They love learning but hate “doing school” on the regular. They love the occasional unit studies we do that are full of hands on activities, experiments, and field trips, I love them too. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for your post. I loved reading it 🙂
Great post! I frequently drop by this website for inspiration and homeschooling guidance, and, so often, I find exactly what I need. Organization is probably the thing that I struggle with most. There’s always soooo much to do that sometimes the basics like categorizing and organizing get overlooked. Thank you for the reminder!
I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have found your blog, Kari! I have been reading through your posts. Thanks for sharing your testimonies! I subscribed via FB feed. And, I have been encouraging others in my local homeschooling community with this very post! I pray for God’s richest blessings to continue to follow you all the days of your life! 🙂
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Confession: I’m completely new to home schooling. I have set up an extremely structured school day, which is more exhausting for me than anyone, but I have a kiddo that needs a lot of help learning to read. Reading things like this is very helpful. Maybe add I get the hang of this I will relax a lot! ! I’ve already found this 3rd week to be much easier than the 1st two. It’s definitely a learning process for me!
You can do it, April! Hang in there. Give yourself (and your reluctant reader) plenty of time. There are LOTS of resources on this site to help encourage you, and it may be that your reluctant reader just needs plenty of time and space. I know if my kids feel stressed or rushed (or that I’m frustrated or impatient) they do WORSE. Joy and confidence (a smile!) goes a long way! Bless you!
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The “create order” bit is definitely not happening in our house right now. We have too much stuff for our small space, I admit. We’re also too busy running a business, learning (no curriculum, just hand on stuff and lots of books), and being in the kitchen with food prep, I don’t even have time to clean anything other than the kitchen. I try, but I feel like it’s a mess within 5 hours of making it clean (with 6 and 3 year old). I’m really trying to teach them to clean or make a game of it, but it all seems to fall on deaf ears. Sigh.
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Oh girl I know–it’s HARD! Especially at that young age, they’re not really “helping” if we’re honest. BUT, you’re right–to much stuff is usually the culprit. Not that it’s the end-all answer, but I highly recommend Simplicity Parenting (there are some posts here on the site about it also) that can help REDUCE that massive clutter and spend less time cleaning up all the messes. I get it–I battle it too! You can do it girl! 😉
Kari Patterson’s latest post: Thank You {Plenty FREE today!}
Ok so take some time out of your day and watch an episode of Hoarders online. Then get busy. Don’t think about cleaning, just focus on filling as many trash bags as you can and get them outside of your house. Look up Project333 for clothes and purge your books. Get a library card and make time for the library. Make time! Your kids will benefit so much more from having less stuff (too much clutter is stress on a kid, too, that’s why they giggle and run around in big open spaces like empty bedrooms or a gym). Pick on decent sized bin for toys and what doesn’t fit leaves the house. All of a sudden the quality toys and favorites will be picked out for keeps. Don’t feel bad about any missed opportunity with toys and learning, they will learn far more if they try making their own or you can grant them play time with other kids and they will actually enjoy sharing. Your kids will not do as you say if you don’t do as you say. Lead by example! 🙂 Are you demanding a clean room while your room is cluttered with crap too?? Give them a lot less stuff and you all will be so much happier! Get your house clean in 1 day and take photos of every room. Make that the new standard and tape it at their level on the wall. When it is clean up time refer back to the photo until every thing is picked up! And don’t be afraid of a paper shredder! The hardest thing is letting go of sentimentals. Once you learn that sentimentals don’t change relationships, you’ll be able to first put them out of sight, and then put them out of house. Good luck!
Thank you, Kari! This is so encouraging! My husband is always telling me that it’s enough for us to let our kids learn for themselves — which they do! — and teach them chores/household skills. I don’t do much more due to low energy (laziness?) and my gut instinct that this is best for them. Your post is so helpful in validating our approach.
My question — how do kids learn discipline/self-control/perseverance if they do not “have to” do school? My kids are 8 and 5. I think the kids and I all fall short in this area, and relaxed unschooling, while fun and truly educational, doesn’t seem to teach these virtues (in our house, I mean). Can you (Kari or other readers) advise? Thanks.
For us, the discipline of household chores teaches what you’re talking about better than school work could! They learn that our home can’t function without them, that they have a responsibility to get their dish chores done daily whether or not they like it, and that it’s their chance to really help the family in a way that matters. On the other hand, school work is inherently self-centered (loved Peter Gray’s book FREE TO LEARN), so I’d much rather have the discipline be learned through community responsibility, if that makes sense.
I’ll definitely check out FREE TO LEARN (Thank you, Nikki!). It’s actually funny to read this again (I wrote it last spring) because it’s exactly the encouragement I need all over again! I do have a short school routine each day, so we do have structure (structure and seatwork aren’t the same thing), but this mostly involves relating to each other, prayer, Bible memorization, and then also subjects such as math, etc. For me personally I “enforce” the 3 R’s : (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic). I don’t think it’s wrong to give kids certain school work to do each day, I just want that to be a very small portion of their actual day. Family chores, play, and “real life” learning are so much more valuable! That’s just my 2 cents. 🙂
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Oh my gosh! I love this post! It resonates so deeply with me! And has given me food for thought! I think I’ve been swerving the wrong way – need posts like this and Jamie’s book to keep me on the right track for my family – listening to myself and teaching my kids to love learning and not giving into fear. Sorry for the rambling! Just excited! Thank you!
Yay! Hooray! I love it when just the right thing pops up and meets us right where we are. So glad, Erin. Have a blessed day and thanks for sharing–it encourages me!
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Kari! what a great post! thanks for the encouragement to “cool our jets” so to speak and let them have time to be creative and learn more organically. We do about an hour of “scheduled” work a day, but the rest of our day is quite fluid and free. And I will have to check out the Mary Pride book.
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Yes, you CAN be very relaxed and your kids can still start COLLEGE BY THE AGE OF 12!!
We have done it 7 times 🙂
http://www.thebrainybunchbook.com
Woohoo!
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This is so encouraging! Training is so important–and we have lots of work to do in the area of caring for belongings/putting them away, etc.–but how much easier things will be if we take the time now! Thanks for this post!
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One thing I kind of disagree with is putting all the things to bed when we go to bed. There should be exceptions to this rule, for huge lego towns and knex towers, train sets and other things that we allow to stay up in our home for sometimes a week at a time, because they are still being used. It’s frustrating to have to rebuild the whole thing each day. Otherwise, I totally agree. I’ve been a very lazy homeschool parent for 10 years now. 🙂
We do a little “schoolwork” most mornings, they looooooove worksheets. Cutting, pasting, coloring and stuff. They fight a lot, so whey they woke up playing so peacefuly with each other, I simply let them be. Because I feel that’s more important to do than learning fractions.
Hi!
For anyone looking to get organized for the first time. I kind of combined FlyLAdy, MIchelle Duggar advice, and prayer! I recently had my 5th child (5 five and under!). I had to get our house in order, so I took 15 days (about 1/2 hour to hour each day, and not consecutive, just days I could) to go through the house and get rid of EVERYTHING we did not need. Then took about three days to reorganize, then one day to make thing look “pretty”. This post partum has gone by soooo much smoother!
Hi Kari (and Jamie),
Just wanted to let you know we shared a link to this post on our new site At Liberty to Learn today…thanks to both of you for your wonderful blogs!
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I found this post via Utah’s weekend links post over at Art of Simple. I am so glad I let my own curiosity lead me to it 🙂
I’m an almost 23 year old mom of a 3 year old boy who is very energetic and very intelligent. I have an autoimmune disease and on days that I have little choice but to rest I fret about how to keep him occupied. This post reassured me AND provided some amazing ideas. Thank you tons 🙂
I made a typo in my comment. Utah should definitely be “Tsh” haha
I didn’t read all your comments so someone may have already said this: if your kids were digging up dinosaur bones they were doing paleontology not archaeology. Archaeology is the study of people in the past. Many people make the same mistake.