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A magical formula for homeschooling success

By Cindy Rollins

Twenty years ago my oldest child was 5 years old. I had been reading about homeschooling since before he was born, so you can bet I was rarin’ to go. I have such fond memories of that first year sitting on the couch reading about Daniel Boone, Dan Beard and Teddy Roosevelt. I modeled that whole first year on ideas I got from Susan Schaeffer MacCaulay’s For the Children’s Sake that I had providentially picked up off a sale table at the local Christian bookstore. It was a serendipitous year and the glow of it has never worn off in my memory. After that things got a little hectic. I began adding baby boys to my collection on an almost yearly basis. At the same time the homeschooling movement was exploding and instead of sitting around reading books I was constantly overawed with choices.

I learned how to throw money at every secret fear and panic that I had. And so the years, good and bad, began to add up. The little boys, who had come so fast and furiously at one point, began leaving home at an equal pace. As I watched them leave home, though, something grew within me: confidence. They were leaving the nest and really and truly making it in the world. They were also returning to give me feedback: “I am so glad you taught me this,” or, “I hope you are continuing to do that with the little guys. It made a big difference in my life,” or even, “Wow, that was a major waste of time.”

And so I began to distill everything I had learned and done over the years into one concept that I realized was the tie that binds, the thread of grace, the heart and soul of the matter. The most important life lesson that I brought away from 20 plus years of homeschooling is summed up in this poem by Julia Carney:

Little Drops

Little drops of water,  
little grains of sand,  
make the mighty ocean  
and the beauteous land.

And the little moments,  
humble though they may be,  
make the mighty ages  
of eternity.

So our little errors  
lead the soul away,  
from the paths of virtue  
into sin to stray.

Little deeds of kindness,  
little words of love,  
make our earth an Eden,  
like the heaven above.

You got it. It is not the grand schemes, the big purchases, nor the entire year’s lesson plans that make up the fabric of our homes and schools or our children’s educations; it is the little moments that we faithfully administer year after year.

I learned this quite by accident. When my eldest was 5, we began something that eventually became known by the clever (?) title: Morning Time. Morning Time was just my way of gathering all those subjects together that generally fell through the cracks: hymn / Psalm singing, Bible memory, poetry memorization, prayer time, composer study, Plutarch, Shakespeare, artists, folk songs, reading aloud, etc. all the things that were important to me but were outside the curriculum.

Every morning we would, and do, gather together and spend a few minutes on these things. Spend five minutes a day for 20 years singing hymns and I can guarantee your children will know a lot of hymns in the end. I just cut our family hymnbook down from 115 to 95 hymns. The hymns we chose to sing over the years have become a biography of our spiritual and theological journey. Add to all these tiny minutes the discussion that takes place as you read and think and memorize together and you have a Socratic program of the highest order.

Let me put this concept another way. My parents gave me the gift of personal daily Bible reading. That is probably the most valuable gift I could have ever received from them. As a mother, you will find me on an occasional Saturday morning studying Matthew Henry or reading Keith Mathison, but my true spiritual reserve comes from a lifetime of daily Bible reading, not complicated Bible study.

The more complicated your plans, the less likely they are to take place. Simply put, if you have something that you want your children to assimilate like poetry or scripture or music or Shakespeare, forget the grand schemes, forget what the Konos mom is doing down the street, forget the running around. Start giving that thing one or two minutes of your time daily and watch the years roll by. I promise this is the magical formula for successful homeschooling.

If you are interested in more information on having a daily Morning Time with your family you can find some resources at my Morning Time blog: http://morningtimemoms.blogspot.com/.

Cindy Rollins, who resides in Hixson with her husband and children, is a homeschooling mom of nine. Visit her blog at http://www.dominionfamily.blogspot.com/. E-mail Cindy at DominionFamily@gmail.com.

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