I Don't Know How You Do It! How to Homeschool Your Young Children Without Losing Your Mind

By Kate le Roux

Are you planning to homeschool? Maybe your friends are looking at you as if you are crazy and your mother-in-law is planning an intervention. Perhaps you have already begun the journey but find yourself feeling overwhelmed by the chaos. This short book by experienced South African homeschooling mom and ex-schoolteacher Kate le Roux will help you to begin to think about how you can make homeschooling WORK for you and your family. Ten encouraging chapters dealing with scary subjects like curriculum, socialization and finding that elusive me-time will help you to get your mind right - before you begin to lose it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kate le Roux
• Release date: Sep 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393009924

Kate le Roux

Kate le Roux lives in Cape Town, South Africa, where if she stands on tiptoes she can just about see Table Mountain from her kitchen window. She grew up on a diet of CS Lewis, LM Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott, and since being allowed into the Young Adult section at the local library at the age of thirteen she still hasn't really left. She spent a good number of years marking mostly horrible English essays and getting high school kids to act out bits of Shakespeare which she loved, leaving only to focus on being a mom to four crazy kids.

Book preview

I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU DO IT!

How to homeschool your kids without losing your mind

Kate le Roux

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Everyone has an opinion

Chapter 2: Comparison sickness

Chapter 3: Curriculum

Chapter 4:

The Daily Grind

Chapter 5: Attitude Shmattitude

Chapter 6: Socialisation

(Or Conquering the Fear of Your Kids Growing up to be Weird Nerds Who Have No Friends)

Chapter 7:

Me-time Myths

Chapter 8:

And baby makes ... it all seem impossible

Chapter 9: Scream time

Chapter 10: Perspective

Copyright ©2019 Kate le Roux

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or other, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the author.

Introduction

So you have decided to homeschool your children. You have thrown away the school registration forms and announced it on Facebook. The grandparents have had their say and some of your friends are looking sheepish around you. You know they think you are either nuts or saintly, and you think you might be both.

Maybe this was an easy decision for you – you were homeschooled yourself or you read a book about it when you were high on oxytocin and carrying your newborn around in a baby wrap. Most likely, though, somewhere along the line you have come to the decision as you face that question every parent of a child over two is asked: So, where is she going to go to school?

I used to be a schoolteacher. I spent ten years in classrooms with chalk dust on my hands and piles of books on the back seat of my car. I thought of all the studying I did and all the experience I had and concluded that parents who homeschooled were deluded and yes, arrogant to think they could do it all themselves. A few years later when I had a toddler and a baby of my own, I read a book someone lent me that made me realise that homeschooling was not the same thing as school at home. I realised that it was a lifestyle of learning, an extension of the parenting my husband and I were already doing, and I began to envisage a future where my darling children and I would spend our days discovering things in the garden and snuggling up to read stories. They would be best friends with each other and by the time they were adults they would have graduated from the high school of life knowing how to solve quadratic equations, sew their own clothes and make jam.  But then I had another baby and there was a cute playgroup up the road, and without thinking about it much we began a journey towards traditional school. It was only when we needed to make that decision about Grade 1, that homeschooling became an option again.

I remember staring into my mirror one day thinking that it wasn’t too late to change my mind quite yet. The deadline for school registration had not yet passed, and although we were planning a fourth child he had not quite begun to exist just yet. I could still send my kids to school, shut the baby factory and keep life simple. And that thing that I had been daydreaming about ever since my first child was born might actually happen – I could pack lunchboxes, wave goodbye to my husband and the kids and have the house to myself for a few gloriously peaceful hours every day until they came home.

Maybe I was crazy, but I put that dream aside for a while and we went ahead with both homeschooling and having another baby. If I wasn’t crazy, my poor mother certainly thought I was! That was a long time ago – the fourth kid arrived and our homeschool journey began on a warm January day when the three-month-old wouldn’t stop crying and the house was a hot mess. But it happened – a bit of Maths and handwriting and reading and colouring was done despite the needy little brothers, and now that little girl who put on her favourite dress and brought her soft unicorn toy to school with her