Homeschool Help: Student-Led Learning

Several years ago, I homeschooled our boys because it made sense, but it was never plan A. With all that is happening in the world, many of us are on plan B whether we want to be or not. I thought I’d offer a couple of helpful suggestions for those of you who may have had this thought: I send my kids to school for a reason.

I get it, and I’m here to show you that it’s not nearly as scary an idea as you think.

First, you need to know that I’ve got four kids at vastly different stages of learning—eighth grade, fifth grade, 4K, and 3K. Developmentally, we’re all over the place, but I have to keep everybody’s brains moving, so I look for things that can engage everybody at the same time.

I made this up when I was homeschooling full-time. We start our day with “music art.” (Clearly, I phoned it in with that name. I’ll think on it and get back to you.) I truly believe this is something EVERYBODY can do. I’m offering overachiever and whatever works options because we’re all working with different resources, levels of energy, and desire for engagement.

STEP ONE:

Overachiever: make a booklet out of paper and cardstock.

Whatever works: find some paper.

STEP TWO:

Overachiever: choose music that you can tie in to something else—for instance, I chose an Alabama Shakes album, “Sound and Color,” because March is Women’s History Month, and I thought it would be cool to feature a band with a frontWOMAN instead of a frontman. (I have other reasons for picking this album re: content that we’ll explore later this week.)

Whatever works: pick an album you like.

STEP THREE:

Overachiever: play one song each day, providing various writing utensils—crayons, markers, pens, pencils.

Whatever works: find something that writes.

STEP FOUR (same for everyone!):

Have the kids create art in their booklets inspired by the music. Don’t give too much instruction here. Let them go where they want to go with this. Older kids may choose to write words instead of drawing pictures. Each day, play another song until you get to the end of the album. In the end, you’ll have either a book of artwork or a bunch of pieces of paper you can display on the fridge.

Whatever works people, you’ve just provided music and art for your kids and started the day with something beautiful! If you’re thinking, “hey, this is so simple,” then maybe keep reading about what happened today when we did this with the title track of “Sound and Color.”

When the kids were done today, everyone shared what they drew (the song was 3:02 long).

Will (14) said the song reminded him of a city waking up.

Ben (11) chose to illustrate one line from the song (and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the world outside his window as it is so apropos to our literal social distancing).

Bea (4) drew a picture of herself, and she said she was happy. My adult brain thought she looked more startled, but then she told me those were her glasses which made me melt because hooray for glasses!

Case (3) drew a lot of things on a lot of pages, and that’s okay because she’s three, and she created, and that’s the point.

Once the kids shared, I highlighted a couple of concepts—landscapes and self-portraits (because that’s what Will and Bea made). We started an “art words” poster that we hung on the wall and added those words along with “crayons” and “markers” (the words the girls felt belonged). We’ll add to this poster as we learn more about art over the next few weeks (our schools are officially out until April 27th, but I’m planning through May 8th just to be on the safe side).

We also looked at some examples online of famous landscapes and self-portraits. We could have continued this line of learning all day long really, and that’s how homeschooling works sometimes. I say this because I know a lot of you are freaking out a bit at the idea of having to homeschool (understandably), and I’m officially giving you permission to make a tiny plan and then see where it goes. To me, this is the best kind of learning.

In half an hour, we covered music, art, art history, vocabulary, and oral presentations. And it was fun.

Y’all, this isn’t super fancy or complicated—our classroom is our dining room at the moment. Nothing is the same. Nothing is normal. But for the foreseeable future, we will eat our meals surrounded by all the things we’ve learned. And we’ll be okay.

(Is this helpful? Should I share more things like this? Let me know if you want more of this, and I’ll sneak in some more posts like this. And I’ll add my standard disclaimer—please reach out if you are feeling lonely or anxious or angry. We’re in this together (apart).)