One great technique I have found through our homeschooling journey is to keep a journal at hand. Sounds simple? It is – but the journal is not for me. It is for the children. In fact, they have one each.
Spending our days homeschooling toddlers can be haphazard, especially when their attention spans are erratic and their interests are equally so. At the end of the day, I ask them if they would like to scribble in their handy-dandy journals. And on most days, the answer is “Yes!”
I am always relieved when we manage to agree on at least one thing a day, and the journals have been a life-saver. It is not just a simple book I have encouraged them to keep rather than scribbling on sheets and sheets of A4 paper they leave lying around. They are not alternatives to the walls and the couch, well they definitely are – but that was not the main reason I decided on incorporating a journaling routine.
I found that having them write down, or draw out their things they have learned for the day help them to calm down in the evenings after hours and hours of non-stop mayhem.
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A Way to Creativity
Psychologists have always advised on keeping journals for adults. Writing out feelings, problems, and/or planning days ahead have worked wonders when it comes to anger and stress management. This is probably why there are a gazillion blogs strewn across the internet with women of all shapes and sizes reveling in their need to spill the stress beans in the evenings.
Writing things down and having a special place to document all of it reduces stress significantly. It helps people work on their emotions, such as fear and anxiety, and is overall a reality check – with up close and personal brutal honesty.
The same goes for children. And my homeschoolers have been able to release their temperaments, even on the most challenging days. Whether it is our imaginary trip to Egypt or picking up old tickets from a science museum visit and pasting them in the journal, my children have found solace in the importance of having a special book that they themselves can author. Their handy-dandy journals are also the most consistent educational tool we have used so far, and overall, the most appreciated.
Their journals have allowed them to express themselves creatively and have encouraged them to appreciate the world from their angle. Sometimes, the scrawling is difficult to decipher but with a bit of prompting, a picture certainly paints a million words, especially in toddler-jabber.
Not too long ago, we went away for our first family holiday as homeschoolers. Besides feeble attempts to squash the whole house into the car, the only homeschooling equipment we were able to pack was their handy-dandy journals and their art kits. This was more than sufficient.
In the evenings after an exciting day out, the children would spend at least an hour on the verandah of our chalet, drawing out their adventure for the day, carefully recapturing the moments that were most important to them. In fact, on one torrentially rainy day when we were trapped indoors, and my tireless son whacked his forehead on a door hinge, it didn’t take long for his sister to document that through the drawing of his oversized forehead and a bright clue plaster. Though this was an incident I care not to remember, her drawing reminds me that it happened and it was an important lesson to my daughter, who had endless questions on why Allah allowed us to bleed.
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Their Own Perspective
Many of their own questions have been answered through their journals as they take the opportunity to look up answers in their encyclopedias, diligently understanding them and transcribing them into their own words. And with more questions answered before the day is done, there are even fewer bedtime-delay tactics that sometimes echo into the night. For my daughter, who says she has difficulty of falling asleep because her brain will not stop thinking, journaling has been therapeutic for her as she releases her artful contemplation of the world before brushing her teeth.
It is through journaling that they can experiment with colors and textures (crayons, oil pastels, markers, and color pencils) in one place. The subject of “Art” is often neglected in school syllabi, especially in parts of the world where emphasis is placed on the memorization of facts and figures, and the returning of the same during exams.
But artistic values are important to let the right brain juggle the weight left brain. The right brain is the organ that helps build interpersonal-skills, social-skills, creativity, and generally out-of-the-box thinking - and deep down, I truly believe that this simple homeschooling tool will spur a creative dimension in all the other subjects we plan to cover.
But journaling alone is not all about drawing and scribbling. The children have also been able to practice their basic writing and counting skills in the little enclave of their worlds where prejudice does not exist. I have noticed how much more confident they are in shaping letters and numbers and are enthusiastic in writing out long, complicated sentences for the sole reasons that they are interested in writing them out rather than having to trace them in a workbook, something which, they never enjoyed in the first place.
The best part is, there is a sort of record that is kept of our homeschooling journey and it is kept by my homeschoolers themselves. I don’t have to worry if they are not learning something new, because each page in their journal speaks a million words of different shades and hues. It is not only a journey document for me, but an antidote to my nerves as a homeschooler, in which I am reminded that my children are capable of creative expression and have the confidence to appreciate the world from their own perspective.
