What Mattered Most

My son Joshua worked a long time on the card he designed for his poem, Black Jack. The results were delightfully funny, and he knew it. This was his idea of a joke. He laughed as he delivered it. Of course, I laughed in a different way when I received it.

The joy and exuberance of it, the elements of play and delight, are what hold me. The lesson of the card is that joy matters. It's the wellspring of creativity, the best and highest motivation for learning.

Learning can be hard work. It often is. But it can also be our joy.

Slowly, over the years, my children taught me this. Joshua's love of nature, even its unsavory aspects, led us to strange activities. The first of these was our "insect zoo". He captured insects, put them into clear containers, fed and observed them. We studied large pictures of bugs, learned about their body parts, and examined how they functioned. During this time, I had recurring nightmares of large bugs crawling toward me and over me with heightened details. I was relieved when this stage passed. But for my son, it was a glory. I still have photos of him, his face beaming, with his arm around his zoo specimens. Years later, when he became a National Merit Scholar, Joshua was asked to give a speech at his graduation ceremony. He talked about how homeschooling allowed him to pursue the things that delighted him. He used the insect zoo as his example, and he thanked me for allowing him to do it. His words were, "This is homeschooling at its best."

The perspective I now have of nearly two decades is a great advantage. There are many things that were foggy to me when I was slogging through the daily effort of homeschooling which are now clear. Beyond any doubt, our best work was done when there was joy. It's that simple. Nothing we did, and I mean nothing, mattered more.

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Take a few minutes to think about what is enjoyable in your home school. Is there anything that delights, that brings fresh joy? This is important, but few homeschoolers think of it. The reason for paying attention to this is that the joy shows you something that is ideal, something that you should emphasize, protect, even repeat in other subject areas. What is working well? Why?

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What does your home school do best?