Blogging Through the Alphabet: O is for Overkill

I'm coming into this challenge late! But years ago, I completed a "Blogging Through the Alphabet" challenge and it was a lot of fun. I figured it couldn't hurt to start halfway through!

This week the letter is O, and my word is overkill.

It's easy for our homeschool work to turn into overkill. I have always worked hard to make sure that doesn't happen in our home. One of the reasons I homeschool is because I believe the public school systems kills the love of learning. I have two kids in public school that have proven my point of view. Don't get me wrong -  my two older kids are on the honor roll at school, participate in sports and other extracurricular activities, and generally like school.

However, they don't have the same love of learning they used to. They don't enjoy reading books because it takes them several months to get through one book, all the while dissecting every passage and answering the *dumbest* questions about the book. They don't enjoy math because the Common Core has destroyed the way they teach math and has turned simple problems that should take less than a minute to solve into complex problems that take way too long to find a solution.

In our homeschool, I try to keep our lessons focused and pointed. I try not to add in unnecessary worksheets. I try to find curriculum that isn't too teacher intensive and doesn't have an extreme amount of daily work. I do my best to only add in the crafts or science experiments that will be meaningful to my children. I don't assign them a ton of books to read, yet they read on their own. I am using an all-in-one language arts curriculum instead of a separate spelling, grammar, reading, and writing curriculum. I try to keep our school day short enough so they can have plenty of free time.

It's a constant battle against feeling like I need to add more to their day and knowing that their day is a balance that works for us. As Mercie gets older, it's more of a battle trying to find things for her to use that will enrich her without killing her love of learning. I'd love to hear from moms of middle schoolers on how they make that happen!