Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the inaugural post for The HSR! We are The Homeschool Secular Resource. We are here to help you find resources and information for homeschooling. We are seeking to create relationships among businesses, non-profits, organizations, and other institutions which host educational programming within SWFL. We are the Founders of Homeschool Rocks! and Camp HSR! and we’ve been threatening to take this on for awhile, so let’s all give a big, enthusiastic “thank you” to Coronavirus for slowing us down and giving us some extra time at home.
Not really, but cheers to looking at the bright side.
So who are we? We are moms (and a few super special dads). We are teachers. We are friends. We are homeschoolers (and a few super special traditional schoolers). We are business owners and entrepreneurs. We are non-profit Directors. We are fun, boring, motivated, lazy, positively absurd, and completely average.
Most of all though, we are here to help. For years, we have been mucking our way around the vast world of parenting and homeschooling, collecting other awesome, brilliant, like-minded folks. Each year in SWFL, the number of homeschooling families expands, and we have been thrilled to welcome them into our network, advise, seek advice, socialize, and learn. Today though, as I write this inaugural post, our landscape has changed. Nearly overnight, the number of “homeschoolers” has multiplied. Families who never intended to homeschool have had to adjust to live with kids at home all day, and now, if not already, districts are asking them to start doing schoolwork at home.
WHOA! So this is homeschooling?
The short answer is NO! This is not homeschooling. This is quarantine-schooling. This is traumatic. This is stressful. This is mandatory. This is lonely. This is scary. This is sudden. This is unsettling. Homeschooling is none of those things, but alas, since this is where we are, we hope we can help.
We’ll have tons more posts to follow in the coming days and weeks, but for now, let me leave you with this: TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND SLOW DOWN. Notice how I screamed that there? That means you should listen.
You’re scared, and so are your kids. This is a new situation for everyone, but it’s forcing us to focus on family and home and nature. It’s forcing us to step back from the hussle and bussle* of “normal” life, and really that’s not such a bad thing. I wish we took a break when we still had yoga classes and toilet paper, and ya know, no deadly virus, but alas, here we are. Settle into home and allow your routine to be the absence of routine. Take a walk first thing in the morning and don’t be in a hurry for it to end. Collect items from nature to make a flower headband, bring a magnifying glass and examine tree bark, or draw clouds. Let everyone stay up late on a Tuesday. Make huge messes in the kitchen teaching them how to cook. Watch movies together and read a lot of books – read books that were made into movies! You don’t need a routine right now. That will come back, for now, don’t exacerbate the trauma by forcing yourself to feel normal doing a workbook at your dining room table when that’s not something you’ve ever done before.
Is everyone calm now? Good. Give it a couple days, weeks, a month. Your children will still go to college, trade school, or the olympics if they take a month off to look at bugs and do art projects. In the meantime, we’ll be back filling your inbox with tips, resources, quips, and stories to help you navigate this crazy world of parenting and whatever-schooling.
*If you haven’t stepped back from the hustle and bustle, seriously, stop being ridiculous and go home. You’re going to kill someone, literally.
