Five dangerous things about homeschooling – with explanations

1. There are no such things as days off. The best explanation is: No matter what we are doing, when we try to ‘take a day off’ of school, we end up doing something that is educational. An illustration is: when we go on vacation, we often end up discussing topics that are educational. This has happened so often with us that I can’t come up with a single example.

2. Chinese restaurants become botany lessons. We were having dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant, when one of my daughters held up a bean sprout and began to describe the different parts. There have also been times when I have been told on more than one occasion that I’m eating ovaries (snow pea pods for example). It can definitely affect your appetite if you don’t know what’s going on.

3. Household products can quickly turn into items for homeschooling projects. We were working on a ‘fossil’ experiment, complete with plaster of paris, when I started thinking about a possible ‘handprint’ project and was thinking about what else I could do with the plaster. Everything ends up fair game.

4. Every room eventually turns into a ‘school’ room. Kitchen works for science experiments; dining room can be used for ‘seat work’; living room, bedrooms, even bathrooms for the messy stuff (or if you need a big mirror for something).

5. Stuffed animals end up being used in examples of animal husbandry or to demonstrate the political process. My youngest showed me the first when I came to check on their progress in getting ready for bed and she had a stuffed sheep on their stepstool and a plastic knife in her hand. ‘what are you doing?’ ‘I’m slaughtering the sheep for my food’. Also, one other time when I walked down for a bedtime check, and all the stuffed animals were out and split into two groups. The explanation? They were having a ‘debate’ on political matters. On another occasion, after finding the animals out, two facing a group, I had to ask again what the purpose was. This time the two were having a debate after which the group would vote one into office. Don’t remember which office it was, but it was interesting.

Now honestly, these aren’t really ‘dangers’ but with these examples and more, we have discovered that homeschooling does become a way of life. Hopefully other homeschooling families can come up with examples of their own, but if you have the mindset of ‘training your children’ instead of just simply going through the three ‘r’s so they can get a good job, you will find that the joy of helping your children grow in every area of your life.