Special Guest Edition: How We Homeschooled Today by Oliver Cresswell
Blubber gloves, puppies, and self-regulation
I asked
to write me a guest post after I stumbled across his writing here on Substack. He writes beautifully—not surprisingly, because it turns out he’s a professional writer. And I love the way he writes about children and education. I think lots of you will find yourselves nodding along in agreement and recognition as you read this post and his other writing over at Owl By Night. Enjoy!And if you’d like to write me a guest post about how you homeschool, you don’t have to wait for me to ask—get in touch, everyone is welcome.
I’ve written before about why we ended up homeschooling our children, or rather how we sort of fell into it. What it has looked like is always changing, and far from perfect. For about a year and a half my wife and I had a ‘one week on, one week off’ rotational schedule. I would work for a week while she homeschooled the kids, then I’d homeschool the boys for a week so she could attend to her professional life. This all came to an end this Summer as my work life exploded, requiring me to travel a lot to be on location, as well as all the research and writing that goes into the TV shows ahead of time. We made a decision to step more fully into the roles that we felt were calling to us.
As such, my wife is now the full time homeschooler, and I’m the substitute. She’s moved to a much more self-directed method of homeschooling, facilitating and supporting the boys’ interests more than sitting them down at a desk to attack their workbooks (though there is still space for that). She’s also, together with other dedicated homeschooling moms in our area, setting about creating a homeschooling co-op in Nova Scotia (more to come on that over on Owl By Night).
Today was one of those (now rare) days where I got to substitute. My wife had a dentist appointment and took some much-needed self care time afterwards, so I ignored my emails and my phone to wade hip deep into the wonderful chaos that is unschooling two wild boys.
We started the day with a National Geographic documentary that the boys asked to watch: Killer Shark Vs. Killer Whale. They loved it and frequently paused it so that questions could be asked and narration reiterated. Apparently orcas will often hunt great whites and, with great precision, eat only their liver! Who knew?
This was followed by a house-wide obstacle course initiated by my 5 year old who also worked incredibly hard to put it together. This lasted for about 20 minutes before I had to stop to tidy the kitchen and start the wet mix for the bread I had to bake today. Said 5 year old continued to run the obstacle course by himself, because his older brother had also stopped playing to cuddle with our new puppy. Our 5 year old then proceeded to ask me to play again every 5 seconds for 10 minutes without interruption while my patience slowly thinned. It was at this point that I went downstairs to meditate and regulate my nervous system.
I should mention as an aside here that learning to take care of this little pup is pretty much how we’ve been homeschooling for the last couple of weeks: learning when to feed her and how much; learning her signals for when she wants to go out to pee, poop or play, which is often; learning to leave her alone when she’s napping (with varying degrees of success). It’s like having a new baby!
Once things had settled back down we had smoothies and sandwiches for lunch while watching Bluey, and my 7 year old coloured in his Bluey colouring book—how he regulates his nervous system.
After lunch we went outside to play with the pup. Before long my 5 year old was setting up a little baseball diamond in the back yard, but what promised to be a lesson in taking turns and compromise quickly devolved into a screaming match and my 7 year old being sent back inside because he refused to either take turns or compromise. I helped my 5 year old regulate, and once his brother came back out we talked yet again about respecting people’s boundaries (this has taken up a lot of our time lately too), about how play is about saying “yes” and not “no”, and all apologized to each other. Finally, we had a solid half hour/45 minutes taking turns batting, pitching and fielding before our hands got too cold.
I returned to the bread and my oldest joined in to help halve the dough and put each half into its own pan. It’s at this point in the process that I refer to the little dough balls as kittens needing to be put to bed and tucked in cozily in the warming tray—it’s his favourite part. He later helped me pat them down and tuck them back in again for their last rising.
As I sat down to start typing up how we homeschooled today, thinking that we were done, my 7 year old began leafing through a book of STEM experiments to try and my 5 year old wanted to do some Khan Academy. So my eldest and I (and then also my youngest) created a blubber glove to test how oil acts as an insulator against ice cold water, and I read aloud about how seals and whales use blubber to insulate themselves in the frigid waters of the poles.
All in all it was a good day with a lot of emotional regulation, which is mostly what homeschooling is to be honest. Self and child/ren. Not every day is as full as today either, or as diverse in its learning. And you should also know that we had cereal for dinner.
If you’re new to How We Homeschool, you might like to take a look at some previous Special Guest Editions:
Will Orr-Ewing on flexischooling alongside Charlotte Mason.
Dixie Dillon-Lane on homeschooling through sickness.
Eloise Rickman, on putting children’s rights at the heart of home education.
Ruth Gaskovski on building community.
Katherine Seat getting out of the house on a noisy day in Cambodia.
Renee’s account of a homeschool day with her son, who has autism.
Mary-Ann Horley’s account of home education at home and on holiday.
Allyse Hopkins’ very relatable day with her family of four in New Zealand.
Susie Wales’ life with her three boys in Florida.
Rachael Ringenberg’s thoughtful glimpse into her life with four girls in Vermont.
Joel Bowman’s ‘away schooling’, travelling around the classical world with an eight year old.
If you’d like to be next, get in touch! Everyone is welcome, whatever your homeschool looks like.
Thanks for reading. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up for free and never miss a post. You’ll get my daily How We Homeschooled Today posts, longer posts on specific topics, lots of book recommendations, and of course the Special Guest Editions!
 | A guest post by
|
A lot of emotional regulation. Yes! I homeschool my three sons ages 4, 6, and 7 And I’m constantly taken off guard by how my main job seems to be nurturing and training them in emotional regulation. Such important work.
I’ve heard from a few friends that puppies are just as tiring as newborns, so well done for managing the juggle!