Homeschooling five kiddos is a time management challenge, especially when they are all at different levels! Since this past year of homeschooling began, I now have new respect for the one-room school teacher from back in the day! Currently, we have one son about to graduate, another in high school, then one in middle school, my seven year-old doing elementary work and a very energetic, two-old “preschooler”… needless to say, it has been an interesting year!

My oldest three are closest in age and for the longest time, they learned most things together,

which made schooling at home a breeze, because I only had one or two subjects where they learned separately. however, within the last three years, that changed and now it is like having five different school schedules all rolled into one.

I’ll be honest, in the last three years, I haven’t enjoyed homeschooling like I used to. Not all of it has to do with homeschool- we had a traumatic move to a new state away from everything familiar and all our earthly familiar comfort zones, a new baby who, while precious and very welcomed by us, was a pretty demanding fellow, and a whole new life to adjust to, as well as some family issues to work through- it’s amazing how one life event can drive you to your knees and affect every area of your life. In the last three years, the Lord has allowed us to be shaken to the core, as a family we have had to face some pretty serious heart facts and it hasn’t been pretty. My husband has been challenged like never before to be the priest of his home and to lead his family by the Spirit of the Lord, I have gone from being a serious tangled mess to at least a stabilized human being ( I thank the Lord for being my anchor), and our children have all had adjustments to make, fears to overcome, and a whole lot of perspectives on life to work through. I have no idea if we are done on that journey, but I do feel like it is time to learn how to re-enjoy homeschooling my children. Pressure to conform to other’s ideas about education, life stresses and the demand of a new baby have all affected my joy in the last three years as a teacher, I seriously would dread going through lessons some days because I knew my children could see how difficult it was for me and it also affected their perception. I mean, if I, the teacher, don’t enjoy teaching, how can they enjoy learning?

Well, I have decided that I am going to take a step back and re-evaluate this year concerning homeschool. We were led by the Lord years ago to homeschool our oldest son a year before he would have started private school and one of the goals we had was that we wanted each of our kids to have was a love of learning. I didn’t want to fall into a boring pattern that took all of the fun out of learning, so in those early years, we had a blast homeschooling. A few weeks ago, I started thinking to myself, “What made homeschool so fun back then?”

For one thing, we were not curriculum driven. I familiarized myself with what the boys needed to know that year and I found creative ways to teach it. We didn’t have a set curriculum, I pulled from a variety of resources and media and planned fun field trips that would let the lesson sink in- I was so motivated to make sure that it would ‘stick’ that I would do just about anything to make it happen. Some called that eclectic, some called it eccentric and some called it a form of unschooling… I don’t really know what it was except teaching creatively, and we loved it. Once my oldest moved into high school, a lot of that changed, I had to do a lot with him separately, by then my fourth oldest was in preschool, and it all just got complicated. Before I knew it, my organization gifts kicked in and we had a more curriculum based plan to get the job done every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I think curriculum can work just fine in the homeschool setting… it’s just that it wasn’t joyful for us when it became the master. It did however help bring order to our chaos and traumatic times and I am grateful that when I didn’t have it in me to school that day, there was a list to tell me what to do!  And I still rely on it right now to get me through my hard days, BUT- I want to enjoy homeschooling again! While I do not feel like I can completely abandon curriculum like I did in times past, I am feeling the creative side of me saying, “Hey, we need a little fun here!” So, to start, I had remembered that one thing I used to love to do with my older boys when they were younger was craft and experiment time… we used to have so much fun making things and doing experiments and weird science activities together. I’ve started collecting ideas off of Pinterest, the mother of all things creative!, and have implemented Little Hands Craft and Activity Time in the afternoons in my home.

Most of the activities will be geared toward my seven year old and my two year old, but if I know my older children, and I am pretty confident that I do, it won’t be long before they have to get their hands into something we are doing! In fact, on our very first activity, my 12 year-old had to play a little! My oldest two made their way into the kitchen to watch and reminisce about the days when they had craft time. But here’s the thing: we had FUN, we were ENJOYING something for the first time in a long time. Afterwards, we watched a science show on Netflix called Beekman’s world and though learning was taking place, the love of learning was being nurtured and as a homeschooling mom, it felt GOOD.

Here’s what we did:

Wanna keep kids occupied for hours? Make GOOP!!! This concoction is sooooooo fun and easy to make.

2 ingredients: Corn starch and water (for added fun you can also use some food coloring to color your goop)

Pour a box of cornstarch into a container and add water to a desired consistency.

That’s it. Get a shallow tub to mix it in and voila! Hours of fun, messy GOOP. I even had to get my hands in this stuff!

And yes, it is messy. (But it cleans up super easy with just water, so no worries!) We laid a vinyl tablecloth down, gave the kids different utensils to “mix” with and there they stayed for a loooongggg time!

So- what is the science behind this sensory wonder? A good explaination can be found here: The Science Behind “Feely” GOOP

Want to know where I am getting lots of my ideas? Two great sites: Play Create Explore  &  I Can Teach my Child