an introduction to our simple homeschool room

Our simple homeschool room is butter yellow with a great big red industrial light smack dab in the middle of the room. There’s a desk on the side for moi and a slide-out drawer for the oft-used printer (love love love having the printer beside me).

Can we say…

• Latin pop quizzes?
• Online printables?
• And the stuff I print during morning studies cause I forgot yesterday?

Our simple homeschool room has a gigantic doored closet with cupboards with science encyclopedias, a microscope, history books, math manipulatives, crafting material, and language resources that I have collected in my eleven-year-old library.

I have many books, despite purging many at every move. There’s an electrical plug at the bottom of this cupboard where a pencil sharpener and CD player are ready to go. 

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This simple homeschool room has butter yellow and isn’t just brightening the walls, because the morning to afternoon sun is beaming through the windows. In the splash of morning sunlight, I feel energized to get going. One of my girl’s friends says that yellow stimulates brainpower, so I’ll take it.

It’s a warm alternative to the rest of the house. And it’s pretty clear on entering our home that I prefer the colour blue. Blue is the fluidity of water. Blue is calm, cool, easy. Blue is borrowed from the impressionist watercolour: Monet. That would be why I’ve named our home Giverny of the Mountains.

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One window faces northeast, providing morning sun and a view of the natural pond only a half dozen feet from the house.

My desk window faces southwest, framing the front verandah where Violet, the Great Pyrenes naps — at the end of the verandah, the walk down to the river, the neighbouring island. There’s a view of our fenced vegetable garden with busy birdfeeders –squirrels, flitting black-capped chickadees, and Northern flicker competing for sunflower seeds, while the hens peck at the base.

The south-facing windows open to the driveway, the towering coniferous Kootenay mountains, and most of the day’s sun.

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Our simple homeschool room has three wood bookshelves that house our favourite storybooks:

• books we’ve read
• books we want to read
• or books we want to pass down to the next sibling
• the abridged and non-abridged versions of anything Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Dickens
• the series of The Littles
• a Little House on the Prairie series
• the Anne of Green Gables series
• a Canadian Girl series
• the Bridge to Terabithia
• an Artemis Fowl series
• To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before collection
• The Kite Runner book
• Number the Stars book
• and two versions of Swiss Family Robinson, the unabridged and abridged versions

But do you even need a homeschool room? I answer that question here.

Because here’s the truth about the homeschool room.

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It’s nine o’clock! Time to start studies…

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For the homeschool mama who wants more freedom, individualization, and purpose in her homeschool & life: Deschool your Homeschool…

You’ll know this intensive is for you if…

What is the school mindset that so many homeschoolers want to deschool from?

This is the question that homeschool families have a hard time answering for themselves.

We know that we’re trying to leave a schooled mindset behind, but we don’t always know what it is we’re trying to leave.

What do homeschoolers want to deschool from?

1. So we assume kids should always be busy, and be kept busy.
2. We assume kids must have constant exposure to new things.
3. And we assume kids need to identify in a particular grade.
4. We assume kids need teachers to learn stuff.
5. We assume learning comes best through lectures, textbooks, and testing.
6. Naturally, we assume kids need to learn certain things at certain times.
7. We assume kids typically are at the same developmental level to receive knowledge bits at similar times.
8. We assume kids will be interested in things we’re interested in because we’re interested in them.
9. From the school system, we assume we can organize learning and can create systems of learning.

Naturally, we assume all sorts of ideas because we’ve existed in schools ourselves.

1. We assume teachers need to be certified.
2. We assume we have to switch from the role of mother to teacher dependent on what we’re discussing.
3. Since we’re taught this, we assume there are only certain times of the day when kids can learn.
4. We assume there are only certain subjects that are considered learning.
5. And we assume that kids’ emotional connection & attachment can be put on hold for seven hours.
6. The culture teaches us that the most important persons in a child’s life are his/her peers.
7. We assume that someone else, a prescribed system, developed by the experts would know better than parents, how to advocate for an education for our children.
8. Children wouldn’t know how they should be educated.
9. We assume that an education has to be pre-planned even for that child, that can’t just happen as they go.
10. We assume that there is a particular time to learn and a specific time in life to produce.
11. Of course, we assume everyone needs base knowledge.
12. Or we assume there is only one way to get a base knowledge.
13. We assume that base knowledge has to be learned in sequence.
14. We assume that the base knowledge learned in sequence will be remembered because we tested.
15. Even if we know that kids don’t care, we assume that because we tested, kids know. Even if we know that they don’t care.
16. We assume that imparting anything is a good done for them.

What we’ll do…

• an assessment of your present homeschool
• an assessment of your children
• also an assessment of your belief in education
• exploratory questions & discussions to shift your perspective
• a plan to practically shift your homeschool toward your real children & your perspective on an education

How we’ll do it:

• We’ll be digging deep into our thoughts & emotions about an education.
• Uncovering practical tools to deschool ourselves & our children.
• Enable accountability to practice these plans.
• We’ll allow a 1 1/2 hour group intensive time. 
• You’ll receive personal feedback and journal questions for you to continue the work afterward.

Bring your journals and a pen, without the kids. We’ll dig deep!

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