slow down

One of my favorite things about homeschool (how many times do I write that phrase :)) is the slower pace of life.

It doesn't have to be that way.  Many homeschoolers have a frenetic pace of going to a tight schedule of fantastic activities and classes, and an intense academic curriculum.

But a lot of times when people ask me, "How are you home with your kids all day? I could never do that!" I ask them back, "How do you handle the morning rush and then dinner and bedtime and homework crunched into 3 hours? I would hate that!"

My friend posted this post about maple syrup snow candy this week.  It looks lovely.  By now I know that I'm not the type of homeschooler who does this (see my post: "Acknowledge your personality type and cut yourself some slack."  Oh, wait, I didn't write it yet.  Well, the title says it all).  If we still lived near her, perhaps we could have benefited like the time she did the mentos and pepsi experiment in real life.  But I was vicariously enjoying it and thinking about how absolutely wonderful it is that the very nature of homeschooling is that there is so much wonderful TIME.  There is time to take a day to make candy.  There is time to go to a museum and meander through it and think about the artwork.  There is time to stop and think about a pasuk.  There is time to go off on tangents, have discussions, and ponder things.  There is time to fling a rubber band 500 times to really integrate how it works. There is time for a cuddle on my lap and playing a song 4.5 times in a row until the kid moves on to something else, and to read books over and over and over.  There is time to work on character and time to work on interpersonal relationships and time to handle crying the way you actually want to handle it.

And if, during all that, you didn't get to the academics you thought your child "should" get to, well, there's time.  Tomorrow.  Next week.  Next month.  Next year.