homeschooling with challenges

Over the years, we’ve become great at homeschooling regardless of what is going on in our lives.  Let’s face it, living with Epilepsy leaves our day to day world pretty unpredictable.  Our schedule and our schooling style must be extremely flexible to even make it through.

I suppose this is how we became Eclectic and Unschoolish in Homeschooling style.  Originally, I began this adventure with the hope of having lots of structured learning.  I really wanted a repeat of Public School at home in the early days.  Over time, I came to realize that type of learning wasn’t going to work for us due to our needs at home.

I quickly began to research other means of learning and I simply stopped with the structure.  We simply learn now – however that manages to happen.  And you know what?  They do learn and they absorb twice as much learning than they ever did in our structured learning days.

Our homeschooling days are relaxed.  We do projects that can take weeks.  We take our time working on them because we have no need to be rushed.  Sometimes the kids don’t even realize they are learning. It’s afterwards that they come up to me and say “Mom, did you know we just learned this?”  Oh that sneaky Momma! “Yes, I sure did!”  I love those moments when it all sinks in the most.

In learning this way, we are able to stop what we are doing when a seizure happens.  We can take a day off.  We can rest as we need to.  I can easily say that our doctor’s appointment can be scheduled at any time of day without interrupting our homeschooling because we make it fit to our day.

I like to think we have taken our learning to a new level.  Sometimes it’s delight-directed in that I set up lessons to learn about things that the kids are currently interested in.  Then their are days when we do lessons that correlate with our curriculum, such as learning about plants in spring and ice in winter.  Or reading the next book in our language arts lessons.  We have many different choices of things to do every year and it just works for us.

No matter what happens in our day and no matter what pops up for us, the important thing is we never give up on Homeschooling.  We never give up on learning.  We work through the bad times and the good as well.  It’s really just a way of life and it’s become a large part of our life.  Once you take out the ideals of something different, it becomes easier to make it through the process.

I believe adjusting your homeschooling to your needs may be the hardest part but it can be done.  You can Homeschool through life, through the good and the bad stuff.  It just takes a bit of maneuvering to make it happen.

We are linked up with the Schoolhouse Crew for the Homeschooling… When Life Happens series.  Click the image below to read what others say about Homeschooling… When Life Happens!