Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
A Day at Home with the Paines ....
I never keep records any more - after eleven years, who would? I do think records are useful and have their place, especially in the early years of home education. I am just not disciplined enough to compile them regularly. As a result this ‘typical’ day is a composite from my memory, and hopefully resembles something like the truth.
Everyone gets up when they are rested enough, except April who has school to go to. The rest of us are home-bodies. We all get our own breakfast, anytime from 7am to 10am. Sometimes the boys get busy before they eat, and get around to it later rather than earlier! Our home honours everyone’s differing biological needs as much as possible. Things have a way of working out if everyone has to be responsible for themselves - it seems to breed co-operative behaviours.
Robin is the busy one. He holds the home together in a practical sense. I hold it together in a relationship sense. We are the typical stereotypes when it comes to gender. Robin will make the coffee, have breakfast, do last night's dishes, put the laundry on, (doesn't sound stereotypical, does it?) and then disappear outside to do whatever exciting or mundane work he does out there. Generally it involves injuring his back, like finishing building our house or landscaping our four and a half acres, all of it on a fairly steep slope. Sometimes he fiddles with the car or maintains tools, or the alternative power system. I love him dearly because he does all that, and more!
April showers (sorry!) and eats a little, and makes her lunch. In a disgusted tone she relates how most of her school friends get their mums to make their lunches. She'd never give up the right to choose her own food for the day! She then feeds the animals. Dozens of guinea pigs, and an assortment of chickens and a couple of ducks make up our ‘farmyard’. April has grown up caring for her small furry friends. She spends a little over an hour daily looking after them, which is pretty good going and a fair commitment for a girl her age.
I forgot to mention that before she gets out of bed she tries to get some reading in. She is an avid reader, and still manages to spend quite a lot of time reading in the evenings. Like many ex-home-educated high school students she is ahead in her class and has time for leisure. Unlike many of her classmates. At 8.30am she disappears down the hill to school a few hundred metres away. Yes, we live that close.
Roger showers (it doesn't have the same ring does it?) also in the morning, usually after April. The children seem to have worked out a strict order for use of the bathroom. Thomas, who spends the first moments of his day sleepily climbing down his ladder, and jumping into bed with me for a cuddle. I rarely get up until we have finished this little ritual. He then waits for Roger before having breakfast. Roger often sleeps in, and Thomas uses this time to talk to us about all sorts of things, or to watch us from our bed as we go about our morning chores. I forgot to mention - since Roger declared he wanted his own room, our bed has been located in the living room, a large open plan living/kitchen/dining-and now, bed-room. An owner builder's design problem!
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
