Teaching from rest

Homeschool families are the busiest people I know. The homeschool community stays on the go and keeps their kids busy. I believe it has to do with “socializing” their children because society says they must be. There is nothing wrong with being busy and going here and there but I don’t feel called to do that. My calling is at home and being content with my surroundings.

When I first picked up the book Teaching From Rest by Sarah Mackenzie, I thought it would tell me how to teach my children while I rested and watched. Ha! I was so wrong. This book has changed my homeschool completely. I felt like I had to do all the things all the time. All the curriculum I bought had to be finished or I was a failure. I had to go on every field trip planned and attend every homeschool meeting and make sure my kids were socialized. This book made me realize that was all a lie.

Sarah Mackenzie wrote this book to show others how to truly rest in God’s presence and serve Him wholeheartedly. She is the mother of six children and has some great experience to share with others through her writing. In Teaching From Rest, she explains how you can have peace in your homeschool while teaching everything your kids need to know.

As I began reading this book I learned quickly that I would need a highlighter to remember my favorite parts. I highlighted entire pages. It is that good of a book. She begins with talking about who we serve and who we are working to please. Is it man or God? It should be God and when we know we are serving God, we should also trust that He will take care of us. Our homeschools belong to Him. He brought you to this place and He will guide you through it.

“Rest is trusting that God’s got this, even if I’m a mess, even if I’m not enough, even if I mess up every day. Because I do.”
(Teaching From Rest, pg. 4)

Offering our homeschools to God each day makes us do it with a grateful heart to Him. Remembering that our children are a blessing from God gives us everything we need to educate them. Surrendering them to God is accepting His grace. We grow tired because we forget about grace. We are not sufficient to do everything for our children, but He is.

“If we started thinking about ‘school’ in terms of encountering certain ideas and mastering certain skills rather than finishing a particular book or ‘covering’ material, we would free ourselves to learn far more than we can by binding ourselves to a set published resource. Of course we will use such resources to reach our goals, but the resource will be our servant, not our master.”
(Teaching From Rest, pg. 22)

That quote made a huge impact on the way I view curriculum. I have started thinning out everything in my school room because I don’t use it. I was a slave to all the books that say unused. They simply didn’t work for our homeschool and I held on to them because of guilt. Learning that I am free to give up things that don’t bring me peace was very liberating.

There are five ways to simplify your curriculum in order to teach from rest:

Do less – You will be burned out very quickly trying to fit in 10 subjects a day including several different levels. Go deeper into subjects your children love instead of broadening the amount of subjects.
Integrate – You can find several subjects in one simple book. You can read it together and then look up the location on a map (geography). Then you can have the children write about the book and look up words they didn’t understand (writing and vocabulary). If it’s a living book you can learn about the history of the book (history) and so on.
Understand the limitations of published resources – These resources can be a good thing if you don’t let them rule over you. Use them to your advantage. Children are people, not books. Give them what they need in order to succeed. Good books are a great place to start.
Bake in review time – Plan ahead for times of assessment throughout the year. If something isn’t working for you, push through to your “review” time (which should be scheduled a few times a year). After careful consideration, decide whether or not it would be beneficial to change that curriculum or keep on going.
Remember the point – Educating our children is making sure they have good, true, and wonderful things to learn about. Run everything through the Philippians 4:8-9 litmus test. If it passes, then use it. If it doesn’t, then ditch it.

The author also speaks about simplifying your schedule and having a designated morning time. Having time first thing in the morning to do the important things such as Bible reading, poetry, hymn study, and read aloud time. I have incorporated this recently and my children love it. We all come together for this time before our day begins.

Sarah Mackenzie reminds us to be who we are. Trying to do a certain curriculum that we, as the teachers, hate is not conducive. It actually makes us feel overwhelmed and regretful. If doing dioramas and making pyramids out of sugar cubes is your thing, then do it. But, if it gives you anxiety and stresses you out to do those things, don’t do them.

I learned that I don’t like crafts at all. My kids aren’t really into them either (which is a huge blessing). I used to feel terrible that I wasn’t doing crafts every day with my children. But, after reading this book, I know I am doing the right thing. I do what works for us. We love to read, so we devour books. We love to draw, so we draw to our heart’s content (we even do nature journaling). We love science, so we go outside and explore a lot.

I highly recommend this book to every single homeschooling mama out there. It will change your life. It will give you peace about what you do and help you to trust God with your homeschool even more. Teaching From Rest doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means doing the important things. Doing the Godly things. Doing the things that make the biggest difference in your children’s lives and giving them a solid foundation for a great education.