Homeschooling is a Lot Like Law School

This week marks Week 11 of homeschooling (we did take off for Spring Break). Starting in January seemed like a fabulous idea at the time.  It was my chance to see if homeschooling would work before I became bound to an entire school year.  Why I chose to start an entire year's worth of kindergarten in January still confuses me. 

In theory, having a pre-done and pre-planned curriculum at my fingertips was genius.  But starting it mid year has been tricky.  The lessons that coordinated with Columbus Day landed around President's Day and Christmas showed up in math a few weeks ago.  Thus, I've had to rearrange some of the literature and enrichment and social studies projects.  And although I've got nicely scheduled lessons for math and phonics, in reality we're on Phonics week 12 and Math week 21.  So if you look at my pre-done lessons for week 11, in reality, we're only actually doing the Bible verse for that week. 

I've been told that my inability to follow pre-done lesson plans is because I'm an out-of-the-box thinker who doesn't like to be confined to a rigid set of rules.  (I mean, isn't one of the benefits of homeschooling to have a little freedom and to get away from the institutionalized norms?)  But the truth of the matter is that law school did this to me.  In law school, each student gets a syllabus and usually a schedule at the beginning of the semester to use as a guide for what they should be studying outside of class.  Typically, the lectures for each class coordinate with this schedule.  And then, at the end of the semester, each student is responsible for all the material included in the syllabus and schedule and they are tested accordingly--one test for the entire semester.  Thus, there's a lot of personal responsibility to get to the end of the syllabus, but little accountability along the way.  So some students cram an entire semester's worth of material into a few days before the exam.  And other students systematically work through the material on an individual or group basis throughout the semester.  It's the perfect preparation for handling a real case load.

Homeschooling is a lot like that.  Mom (or Dad) gets the material and/or the lesson plan guide and then creates a way to get to the end.  For us, it means that I find ways to push 5 days of work into 3 longer days each week; the other 2 days we do fun activities. And then I try to optimize those 5 days be pushing up the difficulty notch each week so as to not bore Boy Wonder (who, like his Daddy, hates meaningless repetition).   My goal is to get to the end of the 32 week lesson plan book, having covered all the objectives designed for the curriculum and having a child who has retained all that we've covered. 

At some point, I might have the guts to create my own objectives and develop my own "curriculum" combining different books and authors.  But for now, I like having the syllabus-like lesson planner to use as my guide for the year.  And I love finding new ways to explore the materials with Boy Wonder.  So yes, I would do it again and buy the pre-done lesson plans.  And although it is confusing, I really don't regret starting in January.

I'm sure that in time I will have to adjust my methods.  The law school approach might not always work.  But for everybody who thinks that mom wasted 4 years studying the law just to stay home with children and homeschool, just know that this was probably the best preparation I could have had for homeschooling! Law school is a lot like homeschooling.