Home Ec Days not Homeschool?

I read an article the other day that has me a bit disgruntled. Sorry, I didn’t save the link as I just clicked out of it. I am also not going to say that everything in that article was bad, but, it did leave a bad taste in my mouth and several others. It implied that those of us taking days to teach home ec, or to sew or clean and calling it home ec days are being irresponsible. I disagree. I do know, that not everyone who is homeschooling is being responsible, but this article seems to really talk down on those trying to home educate their children through real life experience that even take place at home.

First, if you have girls and their goal is to grow up, get married and have children, Home Ec, is going to be their life. There is much more to home economics then what people even think about. In fact, if I tried I could probably build a complete curriculum, from math, to science to reading and history out of home economic subjects.

When I got married, I knew how to sew, and bake a few things. However, I was greatly lacking. My nine year old daughter can fix a complete meal and make her six year old brother’s birthday cake from scratch this year, by herself with three of her younger siblings, with fresh ground flour!!

Let’s start in the kitchen. You learn about health and nutrition, measuring (math), cleaning (science), chemicals (science), you can further it, by adding in some history. Buying groceries, staying in budget and menu planning all count.

How did they cook or eat on the Mayflower? Pioneers? Civil War? Ancient Times and more. You start reading about these things, so now you have covered history, reading, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and probably spelling.

Now, your children start reenacting these lessons, and you have covered drama. Now, you ask them to write about it and take some pictures, you have covered art and language arts. If you are a cool techy mom, you have them write a blog post and post it on your blog. So, tell me again how having a day in the kitchen can’t be a good education?

Let’s talk about cleaning the house and organizing. Seriously if you have watched Hoarders, I suspect you and I both know that we all need a little education in organization. From your oldest to your youngest, we all need to learn to clean, and organize. The youngest can help pick up and sort, by color, shape and type (math readiness). The olders can measure to find places for things (math), get down on their knees and scrub and so forth. They will learn not to mix cleaning chemicals (science). If you need shelves, they can research a pattern to use (research skills=language arts and reading), buy the supplies (math), read and follow the instructions to build the shelves(reading) and then build them. (physics) They can then research the tools used now and throughout history.

Should I dig deeper? Do get the idea? Wondering if children really will dig deeper and want to know the history of how we got to where we are as far as home ec? Why yes they do.

Education, as in REAL education, the stuff children remember for the rest of their lives doesn’t NORMALLY happen from a textbook. I remember the cover of my 7th grad history book, but…I don’t remember what I learned from it. I remember being frustrated and not liking the teacher. I remember what happened if you got in trouble in class. I remember that if you could do so many push ups of sit ups, you got an A even if you didn’t do any of the work.

Do you want me to break down how taking a couple of days off the books to sew is still educational?

Everyone needs to know a few basics from sewing on a button, to stitching a small tear together. If you learn more, you will learn to read a pattern, about different fabrics, maintenance of the machine, picking out a pattern, following instructions, measuring, counting, adding and more. You can study why sewing was a must have skill over the years, and more.

Now, I think the responsible thing to do as far as recording this time, is to journal it, or list the skills learned or practiced in a special section of your record books called Life Skills. This helps cover the academic area of taking these days. I know some have time to include these projects in their homeschool day and get the bookwork done. It doesn’t work for me, I get in that “zone” and need to stay there, or it won’t get done. So, for our family, we take a couple of days to do these projects. Many times these days are taken during Christmas and Spring breaks.

These hands on projects last so much longer than a workbook, unless it is food. lol But, really, our children hang on to the real life lessons learned and carry them with them for the rest of their lives. Remember many of these Home Ec Skills are treasured virtues in Proverbs 31 and Titus 2, many of which have been lost in today’s society. Why shouldn’t this be part of their home education?

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