Every day felt like I was one tantrum away from crying my eyes out for the first few months.
We started our school year homeless. A medical condition forced us to leave our comfortable home. We scrambled to find a solution. Our family moved into an Airstream travel trailer and relocated almost a dozen times in the course of one year. This was not how I expected to start roadschooling with my son.
My seven-year-old needed a great deal of parental guidance as we moved through that school year. This experience also connected me with many other homeschoolers going through their own transitions and crises.
One of the blessings of homeschooling is that when the going gets tough, we can stick together as a family and not miss out on school days. Maintaining a "normal" school experience may be more difficult, but the ability to bond together during hard times is something no conventional school can offer. I hope these lessons will help you during your own season of transition or crisis.
10 Ways to Keep Homeschooling During Crisis or Transition
Keep It Light
If your child is really struggling with a concept or resistant to learning new things, keep it light and fun. This is not the time to push through a difficult lesson. Montessori understood that a child who does not feel safe cannot learn. Meeting them where they are, with gentleness and patience, is the lesson that matters most right now.
Children Respond to Our Stress
Children are remarkably sensitive stress meters. They reflect how we are feeling, often before we have acknowledged it ourselves. Find support for yourself while you are trying to support them. Reach out to a homeschool community on Facebook, a co-op, or a support group. You cannot pour from an empty cup.
Use Play
Play-based learning is invaluable when everyone is overwhelmed. It is good to relax and simply play for a while. A deck of cards or a set of dominoes lends itself to dozens of math-based games. Wooden shapes can be used to create art scenes. A moveable alphabet can be used to write stories. Montessori's entire practical life and sensorial curriculum is built on the understanding that play and learning are not separate activities for children. They are the same thing.
Have Resources Ready for On-the-Go
During crisis and transition, families often spend a great deal of time in the car. Having a small bag of ready-to-use materials, simple activity sheets, a notebook, colored pencils, and a few card games, means learning can happen anywhere. Preparation done in a calm moment pays enormous dividends during a difficult one.
Choose Open-and-Go Curriculum
Using ShillerLearning's curriculum during this period has been a genuine gift. No prep work needed. We can simply open and go without spending extra time getting ready. On days when we arrive somewhere new and barely have time to unpack, having a curriculum that requires nothing from me except showing up has made all the difference.
Try Audiobooks
Librivox.org has thousands of free classic books available to download. Your local library is another excellent source. Listening to a book while drawing or doing a quiet activity is deeply relaxing and genuinely educational. On the hardest days, an audiobook and a sketchpad have saved our school day more than once.
Embrace Nature Study
Spending time outdoors provides movement, fresh air, and the opportunity to learn something new in any environment. Nature study requires almost nothing: just your attention, and perhaps a notebook and pencil to sketch what you observe. Montessori believed that the natural world is one of the richest classrooms available to any child, and it travels with you wherever you go.
Journal
Journaling helps children process their feelings and develops writing skills at the same time. During crisis, do not be meticulous about grammar and spelling in journal entries. Let your child express themselves freely. The emotional processing is the point. The writing skills will follow. Research on expressive writing (Pennebaker, 1997) confirms that writing about difficult experiences produces measurable improvements in emotional wellbeing and cognitive clarity in both children and adults.
Be Grateful for What You Have
If you are moving, dealing with a natural disaster, or have lost your belongings, homeschooling can feel impossible. But learning can happen with little to no materials. Make math problems with rocks. Spell out words with a stick in the dirt. Use food to explore adjectives. The options are endless when we take a moment to look at what is available. Even traditional Montessori materials can be improvised for little or no money. Montessori herself began her work with children who had almost nothing, and she found that the richest learning environments were built from attention, relationship, and creativity, not from expensive materials.
Accept Help
This one is hard. During crisis and transition, people often want to help but are not sure how. Find specific ways for people to contribute and do not be afraid to ask. Accepting help is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of wisdom. Montessori believed that the community around a child is part of their educational environment. Let your community show up for you.
-- Maria Montessori
What has your experience been like homeschooling during hard times? Do you have encouragement or feedback to share? Leave a comment below. Your story may be exactly what another homeschool family needs to hear.
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