Turning The Tide

I'm currently working on a little  lesson re-tooling here at Monkey Island Academy and thought I'd write a bit about it.  I just read a blog post over at Explorations in Learning about her search for "That still elusive balancing point... between rigorous schooling and... unschooling"  Yep. I know how she feels!  I'm not convinced that such a thing (perfect balance) exists for me, at least not in a permanent sense, but still I continue to adjust and adapt our homeschool to get as close as possible to that ideal.  I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't, right?

Our pendulum tends to swing widely during the course of the year, depending on how busy we are with outside activities and obligations.  We started out this school year using more structured curriculum than I think I have ever used during my 9 previous years of home schooling.  Ben was starting high school, and I was panicked.  I needed hand-holding not only for his subjects, but for Charlie's and Will's as well.  I felt if it were all written down for me, our days would run smoothly.  And really, it did help to get us up and running.  On days I felt completely muddled, I was able to grab the coattails of the schedule and hang on for dear life.  But now that it is getting cold again, and we aren't drawn outdoors quite so often, now that we aren't quite so busy, it feel like we need to relax a bit.  We have accomplished so much since September, and I am glad for it.  I feel less worried about Ben's high school years.  The hand-holding helped.  The structure helped. It truly did.  But now?  Now it's time to cozy up and watch winter from our respective cozy perches on the couch, or from the pillow fort on the floor.  Hibernation, relaxation.  Stacks of good books.  It sounds right, doesn't it?  

How is it that structure and bullet points and each-with- his-own- shiny-curriculum was right from September through November, but the seemingly opposite approach is right December through (probably) June? 

The author of one of the first blogs I started reading  with regularity years ago, Melissa Wiley, came up with a term that actually answers the question above quite well.   That term is Tidal Homeschooling.  Here is a small excerpt from her description of just what that means:

...The truth is, I couldn’t find any label that completely fit my family, so I made up my own. I call us “Tidal Learners” because the ways in which we approach education here change with the tide. Now, this doesn’t mean that we’re flighty or inconsistent, changing direction haphazardly. We aren’t Fiddler Crab Homeschoolers. What I mean is that there is a rhythm to the way learning happens here; there are upbeats and downbeats; there is an ebb and flow...

An ebb and a flow.  I love that.  We certainly are not flaky or inconsistent either, and I remind myself of this concept of the tides and rhythm,  if I ever feel lousy about changing things up year-to-year or mid-year, or 2 weeks in.  

I try to make our changes flow, and base the changes not only upon my feelings, but upon how the kids feel as well.  Often when some subject or another has begun to feel clunky to me, or I feel we have exhausted the usefulness of a book, I ask the kids about it and, more often than not, they will express the same feeling.  Then I know it is time for a change. 

 As for our upcoming changes, we will be staying with the same subjects, but losing the encyclopedias and textbooks.  We will be reading more history together, rather than the current three-way split.  We all miss the discussion and shared experience of read-alouds.  We need that back.  And we'll be starting our days together with a morning basket of books to read together too.  The morning basket is a feature of our home school that got left off the list some time ago, I'm not sure why, but it is time for its return.

I never have felt comfortable with labeling our homeschool as one style or another. Classical, Charlotte Mason, unschooling...we seem to grab a bit from one or the other at different times in different combinations.  Even our school names -Old Oak School and Monkey Island Academy- reflect the differing moods of our studies; are we reciting Latin at Old Oak School today, or swinging from the trees at Monkey Island Academy? Sometimes you don't know which way the day will go. 

 And when we like, we turn the tide.