Giving New Meaning to Parenting

My daughter began attending pre-school at a local church this month and it’s working out really well. I have to admit that I was worried that it would interrupt school with my older son, because her class is in the morning when we are usually doing school work. Quite the opposite has happened.

I called the pre-school and asked if we could use one of the rooms in the church to homeschool while Cindy-Lu was in class. They were more than happy to help out and now I just drop Cindy-Lu off at her class and then my son and I head to the church library and get our work done.

I’m amazed by how much work we are able to accomplish in those two and a half hours. There is nothing around to distract us, nobody knocking on the door, no ringing telephones, and no toys calling my son’s name. When we are at the church, my son knows that it is school time and he works without complaint. Before we leave for the church in the morning I have to go through each book we will need and put them in my bag and gather any other supplies we’ll need while out. The day goes much more smoothly because of that extra bit of organization.

When we do school at home, I tend to be less organized. We also tend to do our work in a different place each day. Sometimes we use the dining room table, sometimes the coffe table, and sometimes we do school right on the floor in our office. I don’t take the time to go through the day’s schedule and be sure that we have all the right books, pens, pencils or rulers that we might need for the day.

I need to be a bit more disciplined and organized when we’re doing school at home, but for now, I’m just pleased with how well things go while we’re away from home.

Have you tried homeschooling away from home? How does it work for you?

by Karly Campbell

Photo graciously provided by Mr. Peebles, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved