I’m guessing there are roughly three types of homeschoolers who clicked on this post.

Number 1:

My title completely offended you because you believe your shittah doesn’t stink like your fantasy blog posts of homeschool euphoria. By the way, this was a test. A vocabulary test.  I read a post somewhere about having a word of the day and using it as often as possible on that day.  It will get your kid into Harvard or Yale, apparently.  It must be true.  I read it on a homeschool blog. Snort.

(Shittah:  n. plural, shittim. A tree, said to be an acacia, probably Acacia seyal, that yielded the shittim wood of the Old Testament)

(Arse: n. plural, arses. A British bum or Germanic buttock)

And you thought I was using foul language as click bait. Hmmmphf.

Number 2:

You are new to homeschooling and have been laboring under the assumption that you are just ill-equipped and not cut out for this task, since you haven’t been able to summon woodland creatures with your endearing voice, mold homemade soap and use broken toys and environmentally friendly glue to teach your kid to read. And my title has given you hope that there is, in fact, someone more like you in this field of work.

 Number 3:

 And then there’s my sistas! You cough and mutter “ahem….bs” when you are forced to read another fluffy feel good load of Snow White and her meadow magic teaching adoring dwarfs to whistle while they learn the periodic table!  You gals brought popcorn, didn’t you? I bet you did actually LOL when you read it, and then you snuggled up to read what you always thought, but never wrote in the comment sections; which was something to the effect of “Ya, right.  And I bet the sunshines out of your butt too.”  OMG, she said butt.

But whatever the reason you clicked, I’m so glad you are here! And if you were offended, please relax, you are still awesome, and probably on the list of top 100 homeschool bloggers.  If there is such a list?  I certainly wouldn’t know, since I’m sort of new and, well, mouthy.

So as not to accuse anyone of lying about their perfect days of joy filled learning, I will stick to what I know about how a typical homeschool day goes around here, and that literally means “never as planned.”

For instance, this is our first year to school year round.  My kids fought me tooth and nail about doing school in the summer.  No, they didn’t bite me.  Well, not yet anyway.  They snarled and whined and growled, and ultimately gave in when I took the tablets away and hid them in an undisclosed location in my closet, next to the cookie dough bites and the stash of loud obnoxious toys that uhh… mysteriously went missing.

Wait, I read somewhere that we shouldn’t call it school?  Because it takes the love of learning and turns it into an institutional activity with a beginning and an end.  Yes, learning does happen at all hours and anywhere (like tonight at play practice when my son learned that, just because you use your own dollar to buy a 16 oz. Dr. Pepper, doesn’t mean you get to drink it at 9pm when mom is planning an evening alone with her thoughts and her laptop).  But the part where they wield a pencil to paper with a face in a book, yup, that’s school at our place.

Some days all mine want to do is binge watch SpongeBob and gorge on peanut butter stuffed pretzels.  And I’d like to hideout in my room and binge watch the back of my eyelids, but this stuff won’t learn itself! Those days it takes serious punishment and/or bribery to get the work done. And that’s just to get the teacher up and moving!  Reading an article about how smoothly someone’s schedule goes for them everyday, while fairies fly about their child’s halos, is like watching an episode of “Full House” when Danny Tanner perches on the edge of DJ’s bed and makes all the bad juju go away with the cue of sappy music and an Olsen twin toddling in with something moronic to say.

We owe it to the homeschool newbies to keep it real. Sure, go on and brag about the big moments!  But remember the key word is “moment.” If your genius 5 year old decides multiplication is easy because of the neat macaroni necklace game you’ve constructed, super. By all means, blog about it, just don’t leave out the part where he/she couldn’t figure out an answer when the macaroni was replaced with beans in bowls, or that it took 143 feet of yarn and tears to grasp the concept.  Keep it real.  It’s so much more interesting to read.

A typical homeschool day at our place never goes as planned.  Sometimes it goes better than planned.  But never without at least 1 tantrum, 3 complaints, several missed math problems, and me fussing or yelling more times than I can probably count on an abacus; which we do not possess. I guess I can compare our homeschool days with trying a new dessert recipe.  I have all the ingredients.  I have read the instructions.  We know what the product should look like when complete.  It won’t be exact, but, as someone once said..

“You don’t have to be perfect to be awesome.”

Me

To finish up, I’d like to really ram my cynical protractor blade home with a list of other homeschool blog posts that I cringe at and then scroll-nado on by:

1. Anything for sale under the guise of free printables.
2. Giveaways which require me to do monkey tricks with social media. (okay starting now).
3. Sensory table ideas.  My kids are older than the target audience, but seriously… what else does pre-K do these days?
4. Spelling word crafting. At a minimum of 10 words a week, ain’t nobody got time to spell them all in rhinestones and elmers.
5. Video newsletters.  Just my personality flaw, but I get embarrassed and blush and sweat just watching.  Its awful. Stop. Please.
6. Weekly update posts. Unless something funny or amazing happened at the dentist, I don’t need to know every move you made.
7. Oils. Paleo, Miracle Make-up. I’m just not that into me.
8. “Let it go” advice.  Cause somebody has to do the dishes before they grow legs and walk out of the sink and attack us while we giggle under our blanket fort, which we’ve padded with dirty laundry and held together with the history book we’re learning via osmosis.

Ba-dum-bum-chisssh!