What do homeschoolers do all day?

by Angela Jacobs
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"What do you do all day?"  
I have heard this question many times over the years.  People who have never met a home-schooled child are always so curious and may have never heard of homeschooling before.  Some have the mistaken impression that we sit behind a desk all day while our mother lectures us on all subjects as we fill out the corresponding worksheets.  Others think that homeschooling means we attend an online classroom and our parents are rarely involved in the actual educating.  Then there are some who think we do nothing more than goof around singing songs and painting pictures all day.  While each of those types of homeschooling families definitely exist, they aren't what I have come to view as typical.
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What home-schoolers almost always have in common is not only the desire to provide their children with a better education, but to establish deeper connections with them as well.  What better way to do that than to feed their hungry young minds?  Home-schoolers realize that it's not how children learn that matters, but that they learn, and that their love of learning is not squelched.  We combine whatever techniques work for our own children and, if we need to, make it up as we go.  So what does homeschooling actually look like?
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​ It's riding your bike in the park for PE, and making a Home Depot kids' project for workshop.  It's teaching your kids fractions as they measure the ingredients you need for dinner.  It's using textbooks as a guideline, while taking every real-life situation as an opportunity to teach them new skills and reinforce old ones.    Homeschooling looks different for every family because every family is different.

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It looks like letter crafts at the kitchen table or literature on the couch with your favorite stuffed pigeon. 

​It's seeing the planetarium exhibit when it comes to the local library and reading the history book out loud to your kids in a Starbucks.
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Library time!

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