Modeling Structure & Freedom

School has offi­cial­ly begun! Lord will­ing, you’ve found the start of this year to be refresh­ing and excit­ing. Each Sep­tem­ber offers us a chance to start fresh, with no mis­takes yet. We have clean binders, note­books, fresh pen­cils, and a clean grid. If you have a large fam­i­ly with mul­ti­ple ages, you may find your­self jug­gling not just school sub­jects, but work sched­ules, dual enroll­ment pro­grams, sports, and co-ops. How do you keep it all straight while also main­tain­ing the clear bound­aries and secu­ri­ty that are chil­dren need to thrive? 

Start each day strong. Start each day togeth­er. Start each day with symposium. 

My fam­i­ly starts the day with what we call sym­po­sium. Sym­po­sium starts some­time between 7 and 7:15 and every­one is expect­ed to be in the liv­ing room at that time. Truth be told, I some­times need to wake a child. 

Dur­ing sym­po­sium, we read scrip­ture, pray, and check in with each oth­er. Here are some things that come up reg­u­lar­ly dur­ing our morn­ing meetings: 

• Sched­ule — a per­son­’s work shift, piano les­son, or online math class…
• Expec­ta­tions — chores for the day — usu­al­ly assigned to spe­cif­ic peo­ple at this time, or spe­cif­ic things that I want to see in their school for the day. 
• Requests — A com­mon ques­tion from me to my guys is:  “Do you need me to look at any­thing or help you with any­thing spe­cif­ic today?” 
• Food — din­ner menu and who’s on din­ner duty (this is assigned on a rotat­ing basis. They all know what nights they do din­ner etc, so this is a reminder)
• Misc — any­thing else that we want to make sure every­one’s on the same page about. The week­end expec­ta­tions for example. 

Peo­ple ask me what the one thing in my home­school is that I could not do with­out. It’s sym­po­sium. Dur­ing this time, we study the word togeth­er, build our fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, and learn how to live life in com­mu­ni­ty. It may only be for an hour each day, but it’s the best hour.