Homeschooling with a new addition.

Homeschooling with a baby certainly brings along some challenges.

I was pregnant our first homeschool year and I had some of my own physical (I was huge and had frequent pain) and emotional (#hormones) challenges but lessons weren’t constantly interrupted by a beautiful screaming, crying bundle of joy, or a pint sized baby explorer with a sense of adventure and a penchant for unauthorized snacks, like Legos!

I’ll admit, before the baby was mobile things were a lot easier. She didn’t squirm or wiggle when I held her, she napped more, and she was pretty much stationary unless I moved her. We are well underway into our second year and there’s a baby on the loose! She crawls, grabs, climbs, flails and a host of other tricks that mark her growing independence, which is great for her but tends to interrupt my lessons with the older kids quite a bit.

The fact of the matter is I have 4 homeschool students, one of which is an infant. And I have to encourage her sense of wonder just like the older kids. Babies are constantly learning new things and from my observation of her it seems like she wants to do what everyone else is doing. So the baby needs a curriculum too. I monitor her developmental milestones of course but she needs engagement beyond rattles and teethers. Enter sensory bags! (Shout out to Pinterest). You know, the ziplock bags full of colorful, squishy excitement to hold baby’s attention?

One morning, with zeal, I made 3. One with colorful painted buttons floating in water, one with glitter in water and one with colorful plastic discs. I was so excited to see her use them and enjoy them. Well, the big kids found them first. So they squeezed and pounded them and to my dismay, 2 bags had a slow leak and the paint was peeling off all my colorful buttons! It was a sensory disaster.

So I trashed those bags and transferred the the plastic circles to a clean clear water bottle. The circles swirled around and caught the light beautifully. And baby was somewhat interested but it wasn’t quite what I’d imagined. I’d love to say I found activities for her that kept her busy exploring in a safe, quiet, self contained way but I haven’t.

Which is the point of this article really. The reality of what is, is typically far from what I’m projecting. And my acceptance of that reality is to my benefit. If I fight my reality I become frustrated or overwhelmed easily. The reality is, she’s a baby. The reality is she prefers power cords and plastic bags to play with (yes, I let her pull bags off the roll from box at will sometimes. Cords are a ‘no’).

Disclaimer: the bags are flat and unopened straight from the box. She is not permitted to taste them. Thank you and calm down.

The reality is our dynamic is constantly changing. The reality is homeschool is flexible. HalleluYah!! School doesn’t have to end the same time everyday so if the baby has a poop explosion that leads to a midday bath that interrupts my math lesson, it’s all good. Time is on my side. And truth be told my other kids are still learning. Lesson one, bathing baby demo. Test the water with your elbow, everyone gets a try etc.

I’m not the author of this book (my life) anyway. We tend to get upset when things don’t go as planned in general.  But, I’m really just upset because it didn’t go according to MY plan. Yah is running this show and there are many moments in my day where I feel His hand helping me and guiding me. And often times there is some unplanned moment that occurs that ends up teaching me something about myself,gives me deeper insight into the kids, or some greater truth of life.

So if you’re out there and your homeschool day isn’t going as ‘planned’ just know mine probably didn’t either and its absolutely fine. Please leave comments or questions below.

Be blessed and Shalom.