Poking Fun In The Homeschool

With the Homeschooled Young Man going into his junior year of high school in the fall, I've been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking back on our homeschool years.

We have been downsizing our homeschool materials for an upcoming used curriculum sale and it has brought back some fond memories of days gone by.

Just today as I was sitting in my rocking chair, a chair that holds many fond memories (our church nursery was remodeled and they bought brand new rocking chairs and gave away the old ones. They were delivered to my house and what a blessing it was to sit down in one, pick up the phone and call my out of state friend and say "Guess what I am doing? I am sitting in one of the rocking chairs that we both rocked our babies in!" It was a precious moment, remembering back to those days, for her 19 and 16 years ago, for me just 15 years ago.

Ok, rabbit trail here, back to the title of this blog post Poking Fun In The Homeschool...lol.

Finger Pointer Thingy

My son walked up to me this morning and poked me in the side with that finger pointer thingy. I am very ticklish and I was just giggling like a school girl as he kept poking me with it. The more I laughed the more he poked. I was not so much giggling at the tickling as I was at not having seen that finger pointer thingy in a very long time! He came across it as he was digging through his closet the other day.

I remember the day I bought that finger pointy thingy, we were at a Scholastic Book Fair sale and I was buying my teaching supplies, like a real teacher don't ya know? Hahaha, it was one of our first years of homeschooling, ya know the one where you have the Homeschool Momma dress on (actually I wore a cute denim apron that my Mom decorated up with buttons that had pencils, school bell, books and cute stuff like that on them), the student desk, decorated classroom, student with feet flat on the floor, pets banished from the room until school was over, ya, you're gettin' it now! lol. Yes, I was one of those 8:20am-3:00pm homechoolers. We even had school colors and a school mascot, we were Home of the Pugs!

I had big plans for that finger pointer thingy, it was going to keep my boy's eyes on the board, keep him engaged and force him to learn. I was going to fill that bucket (child) up as full as I could with information that he could spit out on a test!! You bet ya, he was going to learn!

Long about October of that same year, the Homeschooled Young Man asked if he could do his history on the couch with the dog, I told him as long as he got his work done. Then next thing you know he was under the kitchen table (his all time favorite place) on the floor with the dog doing science. A short time later he discovered fort making with sheets, blankets and kitchen chairs to study in. These shenanigans nearly ended our homeschool career before it really got off the ground when Homeschool Dad saw what was going on. Because you know, homeschooling dad's think that learning can only be done in a straight backed chair, a desk and feet flat on the floor.

Over time I sold the school desk (yes, it was the kind with seat attached and desktop lid that would lift up), took off my cute denim apron (I still have it), took down the classroom decorations and instead of doing school at home, we started HOME schooling. Better known now in the teenage years as car schooling since we live in the middle of nowhere and I am driving the Homeschooled Young Man back and forth to 4-H, job shadowing at the hospitals, doctor's offices, and his high school pre-medical school program, and to volunteering. We just pack up the school books, pile into the car and off we go! His chemistry book seems to be intriguing to many doctors and starts up some interesting conversations with them. They have shown him apps that they still have on their phones for the Periodic Table and chatted with him about struggles in O Chem.

After attending my first homeschool conference, I also realized that teaching is not simply filling a bucket with information that can be spit out on to a test. That one really rang my bell.

My homeschool decor has also changed, I have cute laminated quotes and pictures all around our homeschool bookshelves. They perk me up on a long day and get me through the tough times. The picture below is from The Old Schoolhouse magazine I've had it for years on my refrigerator and no matter how bad my day is, I can look at it and just laugh, I don't know why it makes me feel happy, but it is just so funny!

You can see how our homeschool has evolved over time, changed and morphed into something wonderful and unique to our family, now do you see why I was giggling so hard when being poked with the finger pointer thingy? It is amazing how a little finger pointy thingy can bring back so many memories.