"How It All Turned Out"

As I look back at the journal of our first day homeschooling, about 20 years later, I have a few notes.

The Power of Play

As anyone who is around kids realizes, imaginative play is powerful, and kids learn a lot from such play. (I think all home-schoolers, whether they “unschool” or follow a curriculum, should allow unstructured time for kids to play in any way they want, and should honor as well-spent the hours that their kids spend playing “pretend.”) On this first day of homeschooling, my unschooled kids played at being in school. And they loved it.

For a while.

A very short while.

I homeschooled Mindy and Lindsey (and my third daughter Whitney, who was born when my older girls were 9 and 7) from pre-school up to college, and you could probably count the days that looked like school days on two hands.


Games and Competition

Looking back at that first day's play with Candyland, I smile as I realize how unimportant "winning" and "losing" seemed to be to the girls. These days the family plays a lot of games, especially during family holiday get-togethers, and we now generally play non-competitive games. That is, we tend to turn “normal” competitive games into non-competitive versions of those games. Lindsey and I, in particular, seem to prefer it that way.

Some people are surprised how easy it is to convert just about any board game to a non-competitive game. We often disregard certain rules, don’t keep score, and or ditch the board and playing pieces! The fun of a drawing game is getting a complex idea across with lines and shapes, more than racing another group. The fun of a trivia game is challenging the brain, not moving along a gameboard track.

Of course, competition can be fun, too!

Repetition. Repetition.

Looking back at the first day, I found it interesting that Lindsey kept going back to the same activity among so many choices. Specifically, she kept going back to the magnetic letters.

Arranging the letters alphabetically must have been briefly fascinating to Lindsey—probably until she mastered it.

Babies babble the same sounds over and over again, until they reach mastery. Little kids practice walking; I remember Mindy, age 10 months, running up and down the hall over and over again, exhilarated by her new power and speed. Kids are often motivated to practice self-assigned tasks, repeating as much as necessary until they master a new skill. It's wonderful to sit back and notice and honor this willingness to work, practice, and learn.

What Was I Thinking???

As I read my journal, I find myself second-guessing some of the decisions I made.

Like: What was I thinking, putting my 3 year old in this situation where she clearly thought she “should” keep up with two 5 year olds?

Was I setting her up for years of having extremely high expectations of herself?

(Breathe deep, I tell myself. Lindsey is fine, and you did fine.)