The two-year lockdown due to COVID-19 was both a blessing and a nightmare. But I’ll be speaking about how it blessed me, and hopefully, my family would benefit from it, too, especially my children.
We had trial lessons. We were not consistent, but we tried from time to time during the two-year lockdown and it was when I also discovered and learned more about other learning approaches like Waldorf and Charlotte Mason. I also discovered my love for DIY to develop creativity and to save money, and my love for co-learning with my children.
After the lockdown was the time where I realized that I’d be homeschooling my children, at least in their early childhood.
Here are the reasons why:
1. Connect with nature.
Starting last year, we had more than 20 fieldtrips for our girls. We want them to connect with nature, to travel, to see places, see mountains, see different trees, different landforms, different animals, and hopefully to meet and interact with people with different lifestyles and cultures. We hope that they learn through experience, aside from books and videos.
2. The child is the curriculum.
I believe that every child has his own interest, strengths and weaknesses. And I believe that one curriculum won’t always fit every child. Sometimes, curriculums need alterations especially in homeschooling. I also believe that some households apply only one learning approach, like Montessori for example. But in our home, we mix and match.
I believe that through observing my children, I will be able to “follow them” by first learning what they are interested in, what skills they need to develop, what they already mastered.
In order to apply this, “The Child is the Curriculum”, I also make lots of research about different learning approaches, and I study different curriculums. And most importantly, I observe my children.
3. I am mentally unstable, my husband is studying Law and we just know that regular school is not for us yet.
I still cannot commit to bringing my children to school everyday because there are days when I don’t want to get up early. With my husband’s tight schedule, we know that for now, and maybe for the next few years, homeschooling will be the best for our family. It may sound a bit selfish to some, maybe but I just know that they might miss school if we push attending a regular school this year.
Related to #1, travelling often became a part of our life since 2022 and we want our kids to educate themselves while travelling, without worrying that they’d skip classes and miss lessons, quizzes and deadlines.
Also, Austin and Max both express that they want the beach, the farm, the zoo, the church, the park to be their school. We were once going to a Wildlife Park and they kept on shouting “Punta kami sa school namin.” Austin also expressed that she wants to be homeschooled and that she isn’t comfortable going to big schools yet.
What about their social life?
Every Sunday, we attend church, and they have playmates there. We also plan to enroll them to different sports, and to look for different workshops where they can also socialize with other kids. We are also open to playdates (like go on fieldtrips together) with YOU!!! 🤍
Why different learning approaches?
Montessori. This is the approach I know the most. Some of the things that I love about Montessori are: 1) It focuses on children’s independence. I want my children to learn to choose, move, and express themselves. 2) It teaches me to respect children, and 3) to help them learn what they want and don’t want.
The concept of the prepared environment will be applied in our homeschooling. This will be the most Montessori thing in our homeschooling.
I believe that a prepared environment will help them to choose what they want to do, which will help me in learning what they need to learn, what they want to learn. I also believe that a prepared environment will lessen my work in cleaning because every material has its place, depending on its category, and children won’t call me to get a specific item because they already know where to get it.
I also love repetition and mastery. In homeschooling, I won’t rush to finish a lesson just for the sake of following the curriculum that I made. If my daughter is having a hard time in a specific lesson, we might spend more time and more activities until she masters it. Quality is better than quantity.
Waldorf. My favorite in this learning approach is how art-based it is, if I am not mistaken. My girls and I love DIYs so much. They love writing their own books, sewing clothes, composing their own songs. I also love how they let children do their notes freely. I love Waldorf students’ study notebooks!!!
“In the Waldorf approach, children create their own book of what they learn during each 3 to 6 week main lesson block.” (Art of Homeschooling)
Here is a video where you can see a sample of a Waldorf main lesson book.
I love Waldorf’s “head, heart, hands”.
Charlotte Mason. The approach I least know about. But I have some living books which I think will help my children in learning different topics in a fun way. I, myself, loves literature and I definitely want my children to also love literature.
We just recently saw a wasp and Austin didn’t believe me at first that it was a wasp. She first argued that it was a butterfly, then a bee. So we studied together through images. Then, we opened Nature Stories for Young Readers: Animal Life by Florence Bass and here we learned sooo much more, in a very entertaining way because we were led to imagine images in our minds.
Austin got sad when she learned that mother wasps leave their eggs forever and that they won’t see their little ones. She asked me if the one we saw already left her eggs.
That’s all for today. 🤍 I hope these insights will help you understand why, and I hope that you will learn from this blog post. I am excited to share more, I am excited to learn more from others, and most especially, I am so excited to co-learn with my children.
Buhay Montessori 