Making Homeschooling Easy

Happy New Year!  I hope you have enjoyed Christmas and New Year.  Today, 6 January, is the feast of the Epiphany which concludes the twelve days of Christmas.  As much as I enjoy getting out the Christmas decorations and making the house look beautiful and Christmas-y, I have to confess to a sense of quiet satisfaction when things are packed away, the house is looking almost bare and the last of the wrapping paper and tinsel has gone. 

One of my Christmas gifts was a book I have been coveting for a while.  It’s a gorgeous book about risotto.  I used to think that risotto was a boring dish of cooked sloppy rice.  I had tried making it and was most unimpressed.  Then I read Tales of Risotto.   

It really changed my mind about risotto and I learned a heap about the how, why and wherefore of cooking risotto.  Now I can make it regularly and try various risotto recipes.  And every time I cook from this book I am super-impressed with the flavour and texture of what I have made, everyone in the family loves it and I feel very ‘Italian’ and clever each time.

In New Zealand, January is a happy, higgledy-piggledy month of holidays, slower days and quieter rush-hour traffic.  It’s also a time to start planning the coming year with the children. It helps to put aside some time, after you have rested and when you are feeling refreshed, to consider the year ahead and make your plans.  I am always very encouraged when I think of the words of Jesus: “my yoke is pleasant, and my burden is light.”  I don’t think it’s normal or right for us to be living a life of great stress and exhaustion, and I do know that, as homeschooling mothers, we do often put the stress on ourselves, and become exhausted. 

I am talking to myself when I say, ‘It’s time to kick back and slow down.  It’s time to refresh, regroup and renew your energy. And you don’t have to complete this by the end of January.”  Just like making risotto has become easy because someone who knows has shown me, so homeschooling can become easy for you.  Homeschooling is easy; a gift and a joy – IF you take it slow, are kind to yourself and your family, concentrate first on being a good mummy and on enjoying your children.  The learning will come.  It will happen.  It will be fun, and it will the best kind of learning – joyful, and remembered.

So enjoy the summer, keep the slower pace, take time to rest, those of you in New Zealand and Australia.  If you haven’t already got your homeschool diary, order it soon; the final print has almost sold out.

Keep warm, those of you in the northern hemisphere.  Use those cosy winter evenings to get a few early nights.

And enjoy your family.

Stephanie

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