Homeschooling While Homesteading
When I look back at a lot of the decisions we’ve made since having children, many of them come back to the home. We chose to try homebirth with our first child and it completely changed the trajectory of birth for our family. We have since had all four of our children at home and I can’t overstate how amazing that experience, and the people we’ve shared it with, have been.
When we began to really dig into how we wanted to raise our children, what roles we would play in their day-to-day lives, and what type of life we wanted to carve out for our family as a whole, homesteading came up. This coincided with a conviction to head down an agrarian path for many other reasons. The goal is that this provides a work and home life that keeps our family together and allows us to give our children what they need – our time.
As our babies turned to toddlers and I began to think about their ongoing education – because we believe learning is not confined to K-12 – homeschooling seemed an obvious fruit of this home-based life we wanted to create. And so we became homeschoolers.
Our boys are now at an age where their education requires more and more of our attention. There are many homeschooling philosophies and if you wanted to put a label on us I suppose you could call us Classical Education Charlotte Mason Unschoolers. That is to say, perhaps we don’t fit into a neatly packaged box, or if we do it is one painted with a different color. All of this flows out of our worldview, as the education of every child springs from the influences of their parents’ values, which is to say we are trying to build their education on Christ, His Word, and His Church.
In terms of specifics, honestly, my top priority is to turn them into voracious readers. So, we work on reading and math and writing and penmanship. We are covering science and social studies and history. We also want to give our children a set of agrarian skills that we are just now learning. Shoot, my eight-year-old has far more experience milking goats than I do. My six-year-old hammers with more accuracy than I’ve ever wielded. I’m guessing they’re going to be better at just about everything than I am, which, now that I think about it, might be one of the goals.
But I didn’t sit down and teach them these things. Our neighbor brought them in to help with the goats because she and they were interested. And now they’ll be equipped milkers if we get our own milking operation up and running.
Hammers, nails, screws, tape measures, and screw drivers are all the rage right now and Abram’s garden gate (for his own garden) just makes me smile. His garden was started one day by his own determination and if I look to the right of that garden a ways I’ll see his big brother nailing together the boys’ workshop from various bits of wood from the scrap pile.
That’s the part that comes naturally, the part that is a fruit of a lifestyle where they’re involved in doing, making, growing, and working. I also think that it is a lack of other things less mindful that facilitates this type of learning and desire to help and do.
The hard part for someone like me, who creates a cloud of chaos wherever I go, is sitting down and hammering out the other aspects of their education that we deem important. So I block off a few hours, 4-5 days a week, for those things that involve sitting, reading, writing, and exploring with them. My lack of focus and organization, coupled with the girls’ energy and needs makes this interesting.
These school hours combined with the fact that the other half of the day is dedicated to freelance work and from-scratch meals for six, means there is very little homestead involvement on my part at the moment. I plant some seeds here and there, help out when busy planting/harvesting times happen, and collect eggs from time-to-time. Mostly, though, I stand back and take pictures of Stewart and the children’s homesteading ventures as time allows.
Right now infrastructure construction is again at the forefront of our homestead projects, putting a significant halt to fall gardens and the expanding of animal operations that we’re looking forward to. But these projects are done alongside of the children, so while it’s not food production, it’s certainly part of building a homestead which means it’s also a part of their education.
That is the long answer to the email I received this morning which nudged me into writing this post I’d been meaning to for sometime. The short answer to how we homeschool while homesteading and with small children in tow is actually pretty simple: It’s absolute chaos and not something you want advice on from me because I actually don’t homeschool while homesteading. That is, if homesteading is the act of gardening or tending to animals.
But since homesteading is an education in and of itself, and since my children have facilitated some of the most important lessons I have learned, perhaps I am the one getting the education… or maybe I’m just getting schooled. Either way, that’s the view from our “classroom”.
I have always wondered this! Shannon, you’re such an inspiration to me-you truly truly are!
We homeschooled our kid, too. (She’s now “graduated.”) One of the things that we learned (because parents learn, too) is that teaching faith and survival techniques and problem-solving skills FAAAAAR outweigh anything you could get academically. Yes, my kid is a voracious reader – but mainly because we value creativity and imagination and research. Of course, the other part – and maybe the most important – is that she understands her value and worth and knows that her contributions (to our family, to society) are needed. Thank you, Shannon, for all the work you and your husband are doing. Love coming at ya from Maine!
I’m pretty sure that cooking three meals a day from scratch on a wood burning stove or in a solar oven is a big part of homesteading :-).
Thanks for sharing about how you homeschool. It is a lot like how I envision our family will be when my kids are older and your perspective is so valuable!
Heather – I kind of thing these things apply to homestead as well, but truthfully I have slowed down on using the solar oven and have been using propane quite a bit lately. The wood stove still hasn’t cranked up yet this year, though maybe sometime in the next week we will. 🙂
This is nice to read. I think one of the greatest blessings you have or at least one to not take for granted is that your husband is home to homestead with you. As we have begun homesteading over these last several years I continue to take on more and more. We have the dairy goats, the water foul, the chickens, we had pigs, but no longer. I have several large gardening spaces and I homeschool the oldest of our 3 children, while the younger two are still encouraged to learn simply by participating in the day. I am not shy of hard work, however this year more than ever I am coming to realize that to grow our own food to feed our family year around, which in MN (zone 3) means a great deal of preserving and an incredibly intense gardening season, I can’t also homeschool in the traditional way. I also sell eggs, which the hubby delivers once a week, and bake bread to sell monthly, which takes it’s own time too. It’s an extreme amount of work, especially taking care of all of our animals. Combine animals, gardening, children, homeschooling, preserving, and basic infrastructure to better homestead in the future (oh and occasionally actually cleaning the house and all that other fun grown up stuff like bills) it’s almost impossible to do all of it in the way our society is set up today. We could do it if my husband could work and home, but since he must drive to the city 5 days a week and often has to work in the evening once home, because we have not found a way to not have that income (what a blessing it is that your family is debt free Shannon and its’ something we are working towards). I share this because I think many of us are stuck in this in between zone of wanting to live off the land much like yourself, (doing it all, like homeschooling and providing from the land for our family) but are unable to financially, likely because of poor decisions that got ourselves in debt.
With all that we have on our plate, the only way I have personally found that I can successfully homeschool is to do it in the off season time or the “slower” times and go year round. For example, July is relatively quiet for gardening and many of the projects at that time of the year require me to have my husbands help so I focus on homeschooling. May and September/October are over the top busy with planting/harvesting/preserving. It’s an all day task that the kids join in to. I don’t bother with the school books. By going year around it gives us a great deal of flexibility and takes much of the pressure off to get so much done all at once.
Now, off to go winterize our coop before it gets much colder!
Therese – I empathize with your struggles. Our school also ebbs and flows with whatever is happening around us. It is an extension of our life, not its own entity. Our life certainly has its own struggles like sometimes we have to take time away from gardens to build a cabin or a kitchen. It’s also a way of life than many do not want because of its lack of comforts. But it has afforded us such blessings as working from home and not needing to be beholden to bills and mortgages. I think it’s a tough row to hoe no matter which direction you go and we all live with whatever ramifications come with our decisions. But I believe that everything we have is a gift and certainly having my husband present at home, even if he is working, is a huge blessing.
Thank you for sharing the beautiful photos and the stories of your work. Our family is two older boys and two younger girls also. I admire your determination and energy. Congratulations on all you have accomplished.