Just what is Co-Schooling?!?

I am sure many of you have no idea what I mean when I say that we co-school our children. My husband and I are both extremely committed to this idea of co-schooling our children and we do everything in our power to make our home a place where learning is a delight to be celebrated and cherished, and not drudgery.

“I think that no matter where your child goes to school, you can give them a fabulous gift for life by showing them that you LOVE learning and LOVE learning with them. ” (Anonymous)

Let me give you a little background to our story. When Tim and I met, we both said we wanted a large family (meaning at least 6 children if not more) and we wanted to home-school our kids. But you know what I have realized over the past several years? That there is what you plan and then there is what happens and it is in what actually happens that we find God’s plan for our lives unfolding. And also it is there that we find the courage and strength to embrace the load He has asked us to carry. In short, we find His Grace.

Our family has not grown in number the way we planned or hoped for. On the contrary, we have suffered loss and infertility for the past several years, but oh the grace! How the grace abounds! Likewise, I had always thought that we would home school, but my husband has not been as open to it in recent years. He feels the children will do better in a more traditional school environment – in particular our daughter since she and I tend to butt heads! So I submit. And I pray. And I wait for his heart to be changed. That alone could be a whole separate article! In the mean time, I decided to pray and ask God to reveal what it is we were called to in regards to our children’s education. And so, this idea of co-schooling was born in my heart.

Co- schooling to me is about so much more than just being an involved parent at your child’s school. To me, co-schooling is:

…Providing enrichment activities and lessons at home that are complimentary to what your child is learning at school.
…Attaining unit plans and syllabi from teachers ahead of time so that you can plan your lessons accordingly.
…Filling the home with diverse, efficacious reading materials, music, and games.
…Fostering a love of learning thereby helping your children to become life-long learners.
…Encouraging curiosity and learning at every step – enabling the child to see the world for what it is as a vast classroom with a myriad of “learning stations”
…Reminding your child that learning does not end when a bell rings at the end of the day – and hopefully seeing them engage themselves as they grow so that they won’t want it to end!

Co-schooling is an attempt to reap the best of both worlds by having them learn, pray, and play within our community and compliment that with our nurturing, educational environment here at home.

Here is an example of how it works now with the preschool set. A while back Emma and her pre-kindergarten class had a field trip to the zoo. While the curriculum as a whole is less educational and more play than we would prefer, I think it is okay, because that is so necessary at this age too! So, after the zoo trip as a complimentary home-school activity, we drew & colored animals that we had seen at the zoo, watched the Baby Einstein’s World Animals video, ate animal crackers, and did an animal parade. We also went to the library to find a few books on some of our favorites from the zoo trip, like the iguana, the guinea pig, and the brown bear.

One of the markers of our success at instilling a LIFELONG LOVE OF LEARNING is SYNTHESIS. Synthesis is a cross-curriculum blending of concepts using multiple intelligences. At the zoo, the kids saw the brown bears and began reciting from memory Eric Carle’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? book!!! That, my friend, is synthesis! That is a marker of an educational environment that has instilled a love of learning! We have integrated what we do at home with what happens at school and the children have connected the dots.

If you find yourself torn between two worlds like I did, I pray that this is some encouragement to you that you truly might be called to some sort of middle ground when it comes to schooling your children. At least for us, we know this is where we are supposed to be right now. Who knows what steps will come our way in the years to come!

Do not fear, take heart, and pray that God will reveal to you the next step in His plan for your family!

Stacey is a wife and stay at home mom to two energetic children: Emma who is 4.5 and Timmy who is 3.5. They are Irish twins! Trying to be obedient to the call God has put on their hearts of growing their family and raising little saints, Stacey currently co-schools her children. Her children attend a traditional pre-school part-time and are homeschooled the rest of the time. Stacey’s column, “Standing in the Gap” focuses on way to weave together the worlds of homeschooling and traditional schooling.