A Time to Slow Down
Ah January! A new year. A new season with new hopes combined with renewed energy! What?
Obviously, I’m being sarcastic here because if your home is like mine, the first full month of winter usually means a slower pace in our homeschool rhythm. Learning doesn’t seem to be happening that much and creativity seems to be hibernating.
This reality shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, when we look at how God created winter. It’s a time when nature takes a break from creating small and complex structures before blooming fully again in the spring. I believe the same is happening with our children’s brains. They still need to receive good quality input, but they don’t seem to have the required energy to keep building connections between all the pieces of information they’ve been absorbing so far.
So, since God gave its nature permission to grow slowly in the winter, we too should grant that same privilege to our kids. We have to trust that the seeds that we’ve planted and nourished in the previous months will eventually
sprout and produce good fruit.
For a productivity-inclined mom like me, this season of slow growth can sometimes seem endless. But, as God reminds me through Ecclesiastes 3:1, there’s a season for everything and growth takes time. This means, there’s a season when a lot is covered, and there’s a season when progress is
slower. So, how do I manage this?
One way I found is to spend time reflecting and reviewing what’s been learned and accomplished so far. To do so, I use a method suggested by the Simply Charlotte Mason website ( Give your home school a KISS ).
Basically, I’m reviewing every school subject we touched on, but also the atmosphere and the habits in our home. For each, I identify what I can Keep, what needs to Improve, what needs to Stop, and what needs to Start.
Not only does this give me a good snapshot of where we’re at, but it also provides all the info I need to fill in our mandatory midyear government report, and prepare for our meeting with our resource person.
Though it may appear daunting and lengthy, this exercise is also a great booster for my confidence and motivation. By the way, if you need more ideas on how to spice things up during lethargic days, I encourage you to go back to last month’s newsletter and read Rachel’s article (A Little Motivation
Please) where she suggests simple and fun activities.
After I’m done reviewing the first part of the school year, I like to chat with the kids, over several days, about my observations and prompt them to recap some things we’ve covered. It gives me an idea of how much they have internalized and gives them excitement and confidence over what they’ve
learned.
All this to say that winter doesn’t have to be stressful if progress doesn’t seem to be happening as we wish it would. Since God gives us permission to slow down, let’s take this season to celebrate what’s been accomplished and gently keep preparing the soil for a new growth spurt.
P.S. If you would like to go more in-depth with this idea of slow growth, I recommend the latest book by Jennifer Dukes Lee, Growing Slow, published by Zondervan. It has been an inspiration for writing this article.
