Show & Tell
Shanna Clark
The Clark Crew:
Homeschooling
Imperfectly
Our days are always hectic, sometimes chaotic,
often imperfect, but mostly fun!
Isit here reflecting on our school week, trying to think of some- thing encouraging to say or to share with you. However, all Ican
think about is how we have completely
thrown our lesson plans out of the win-
dow this week. You see, our home has
been invaded with a nasty little stomach
bug, and our kids have been passing it
back and forth for a full seven days with
seemingly no end in sight. Because of
the illness, there has not been one day
when each child has completed all of his
or her lessons. I’m thankful that this is
my eighth year of homeschool and not
my first. During my first year of home-
school, I would have been devastated
about all of the missed lessons, scram-
bling to try and make them up, but in
my eighth year I have finally achieved a
sense of calm confidence. My idea of the
“perfect homeschool day” has changed
drastically from when I first began.
Generally when people hear of both
our family size and the fact that we homeschool, they gasp and ask the same question: “How do you do it?!” I always smile
and reply that we take things one day at
a time, sometimes one moment at a time,
and we pray a lot! But every once in a
while I have a fellow homeschool mom
ask me that question and I know that she
is looking for a very practical answer. So, I
will try to provide you with that here.
The first thing I do is to spend a significant amount of time researching our curricula picks each year. I consider what we
used the prior year and if it worked well
or not. I seek out the opinions of friends
when considering a new curriculum and
read reviews from other homeschool
www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com