Our Lockdown Homeschool Schedule ( or unschedule)

This year has seen us return somewhat to a looser, more unschooling approach to our days. At first, as usual, I found it hard to let the structures we had so carefully developed, honed and tweaked unravel! Unschooling does have a slightly unsettling chaos about it. It can also mean more mess and more parental facilitation ( at all hours of the day!) And yet there is also so much peace and joy in it too.  

When the children were younger we often enjoyed seasons of unschooling but as they reached highschool age we began to structure our days around a curriculum.

Curriculums definitely have their benefits and we still incorporate curriculum material into our days ( see end of post for details) to keep the basics ticking over, but our kids seem to really thrive when given the opportunity to really focus on  what they really live and have an interest in. Unschooling tends to lead to in-depth spurts of learning in specific areas of interest. This can leave ‘holes’ in some subjects which can be problematic but it’s amazing how many subjects one project will cover.Also, even in schools there are holes in the curriculum. Not all history can be covered and a lot of practical subjects aren’t covered. Taxation and mortgages aren’t covered in maths lessons and politics is often only briefly mentioned. 

Even something as simple as an art project can develop and involve many other skills. For example, Seraphina has been working on creating colouring pages, downloadable prints and cards to sell online. This project began with art and ended with her learning  IT skills, in order to enable pictures to print at different sizes without losing picture quality. It also involved her learning business skills and laws, accounting costs for time and materials and photography and social media skills so that she can present her artwork in the way she wants to. Here is a link to her shop. 

This year has had a lot of loss for our family. The loss of my Dad effected the girls very deeply. It didn’t seem right to simply get back into our normal routine straight away. We needed time to grieve. My dear Mum has also needed a lot of extra care too which the girls have wanted to be involved with. 

They have also had to navigate their own emotions surrounding the circumstances of this year. The fear that stems from loss and the deepening of faith that grows from greater clinging to God.

These are life lessons, real education, learning about values, learning about what matters most, learning what to put down in order to hold onto the most important things of all; faith in God, relationships, giving of self, supporting one another, work/life balance and meaningful work.

In the Spring, Seraphina really wanted to plant a garden in honour of her Grandad as he was a horticulturalist. She asked him lots of questions about what to grow and how to grow it which he loved to answer.  She built a raised bed and put together a mini greenhouse. Some of her vegetables did very well while others succumbed to pests, blight, too much sun or not enough water. She learned how much physical effort goes into preparing and maintains potato beds. She also learned about how hard  it is to grow your own food yet how rewarding it is despite the effort. I think these lessons were equally as valuable as anything she could have learned from a book. 

This year, Boo has made the decision that music is going to be her main focus. She spends much of her day writing, recording and producing and has developed so much through that. Not just in terms of learning how to get a song out there, but also how the creative arts require as much discipline and effort as any other job if you want to create something of real and lasting value. She has also had to navigate the world of social media and has definitely become aware of its addictive effect. She has also experienced  the rush and disappointment of gaining and losing likes and follows. Yet this has helped her understand the careful balance between allowing other’s ideas and encouragement to inspire without letting them effect the integrity of what she creates. She has had think about  ‘relevance’ and ‘brand’ and how much she wants that to effect what she puts out there. Her song Good as Love was featured on BBC introducing last October. It was very emotional as she wrote that song for her Grandad who always supported and encouraged her in her music. 

Tilly has also been doing lots of creative bits and bobs. During lockdown she has  been learning guitar and piano, writing songs, crocheting clothes and making homemade balms and salves. She has also started writing a blog, got into calligraphy and has been designing journal pages.

Inspired by her big sisters Nola has written a song and with the help of her big sisters produced it and even made a little video for it. She has also discovered a keen interest in animals of all kinds and has made little projects and power-points on her favourite animal of the moment. This interest in animals was really inspired by a little wild  baby bunny that we rescued and cared for earlier in the year.  She has also been learning the recorder and realised that she actually enjoys writing stories contrary to previous experiences and is working on a children’s book.

Children will learn because it’s what they’re designed to do. They don’t have to be forced or coerced to learn. Unless, of course, it comes to subjects they really dislike. Everyone is made with unique gifts and individual quirks though. It’s unlikely someone will want a career in something they have never enjoyed doing and have no natural affinity for.

Still, we do keep up with maths, science, history and geography to ensure they know the basics in most subjects. But these lessons are done in a easy to digest way rather than through text books.

Below I’ve written down some of the more structured things we are still doing but bear in mind, although it looks like a fair bit on paper, we work through them at our own pace and only in the mornings so afternoons are completely freed up.

For Maths we use Life of Fred and Maths-watch. 

Science is mainly kitchen experiments. 

For geography we do map drawing, and learn about different countries and cultures through You Tube travel diaries. 

For History we use Story of the World, Horrible Histories and the ‘You wouldn’t want to be’ book series. We also watch a lot of the Ruth Goodman documentaries. But even reading and watching period dramas, books and movies  is a great way to learn history.

We also do a lot of Reading Aloud. 

Matilda and Seraphina are enrolled on Catherine Mooney’s English Course. Matilda is learning French with Dreaming Spires and has virtual Violin lessons. Seraphina is working through her Lamda grades. Boo is doing singing grades and Nola is taking Piano lessons with her big Sis. 

Nola also uses the free and excellent Good and Beautiful language Arts curriculum. 

For Catechism, we are working through Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism and do Bible study as part of our morning basket.

 (We don’t necessarily do a morning basket in the morning) ... ( in fact sometimes we do it in the afternoon or the evening or on weekends or not at all for a while) Sometimes, instead of Bible study we’ll learn about a Saint especially if it’s their feast day or perhaps play ( and try to sing along to) some lovely chants or hymns.

With things as they are in the world at the moment and with less ability to get out and about we’re putting our mental, emotional and spiritual needs first. We are being gentle on ourselves.

 I hope you are all well too and being gentle with yourselves as well.

There is a garden - Indeed, it is Spring there

It’s been a quiet season. These past few months have been wrapped in a soft blanket of grief. Autumn and grief seem to be so close to one another. 

My Daddy died in September one day before his 88th birthday. 

Nola said he got to celebrate his birthday in heaven.

We played Linden Lea at his funeral. It was the hottest September day I’ve ever remembered. All the Roses were blooming in the Cemetery Rose Garden. His flowers were entwined into a beautiful cross with a garland around the coffin. There were bluebells woven through the centre of the cross. The bluebell woods along the stray lanes and almost lost to modern life ‘Twitterns’ of Sussex were a beloved place for Him. The sort of place that goes beyond the stuff of earth. 

I miss him. His fierce, artistic, guileless spirit, his passion to know and experience life fully and deeply, his stark remarks, his perennial sayings, his stories. And yet, as the months have passed I’ve sensed that spirit still. It is the same but different; enlarged, unfettered, alive, soaring, close. Tangible as his old Irish Shillelagh leaning up against the bookcase. Untroubled by illness, loss, trauma, doubt, it shines, purified and pure by a place where we will one day see one another and love one another properly.

A place beyond the dim frosted ice glass sky of winter.

In May ( my Father’s favourite month ) I heard a voice. I’ve heard a similar voice only 3 times in my life I think. It wasn’t audible but it was clear as a bell. It came from behind my right shoulder. 

The voice said ‘There is a garden. Indeed, it is Spring there.’ My father was a gardener. He used to say ‘I paint with a spade.’ 

At that point he was far from his beloved garden, and laid in a hospital bed. I knew that this word was for both him and me. When I told him about it he said yes. He could understand. He knew. 

The girls have had dreams of their Grandad and in every one he was in a beautiful garden. 

I have felt his companionship on dog walks, as I read through his old diaries and school letters and while praying the rosary.

The diaries and letters are some of my most valued possessions. Garden diaries, travel diaries, liturgical diaries but mostly, plain, brief, simple records of everyday life.

How much beauty in the ordinary of those words recounting nothing more lofty than the planting of spring bulbs, a birthday tea, the anniversary of a wedding.

A glimmer of the ordinary everyday. How we take such days for granted!

It has made me realise that however, unimportant and flawed these simple, broken fragments of everyday life are a way of remembering, re- membering, re-connecting with something, though gone, remains in another form in the present moment.

"The details make life holy. If you want a little happiness in life don’t forget to look at the little things. It is a poet’s work to see the incidental, pluck it, place an appropriate silence around both sides and see the profound in what passes for a passing moment. It is an artist’s job to as much discover art as create it. Prayer is a way of making the common profound by pausing, tying knots around a moment, turning our life into a string of pearls."- Noah Ben Shea 

I have found myself going inward during the last few months. This inwardness has been further compounded by the lockdowns.

 I am beginning to feel a stirring of life within again now. Like the little bulbs I planted back in September that are slowly being awakened by faint yet growing light. 

Now as I find myself writing here once more I have a strange conflict. A perennial conflict. I want to write and share and yet I find platforms like this uncomfortable. They kind of wordlessly make it seem as if the one writing might have found the answers to life, the universe and everything.

I definitely haven’t.

Anything I write here is a fractional, edited version of my own limited, growing understanding based on my own experiences. 

Thank God for Grace. I need it. Every day.

Yet I’ve come to realise and accept that it seems that like the bulbs, much if my life is to be spent in quiet, unseen places which is probably where I feel most at home. Yet, seasonally, at the waxing of the light I stir. And each time of emergence finds me the same but a little different. 

Closer perhaps ( I hope) from the perennial plunging of tentative roots and reaching upward of tender shoots to that great light which awakens.