Book Review: Slow Homeschooling by Milva McDonald

'Cinnamon Reads - warm books to curl up with': Slow Homeschooling: Short Essays About Mindful Homeschooling by Milva McDonald

Sometimes, you’re craving a good book and it pops out of the blue, just when you are totally ready for it. “Slow Homeschooling” is that book for me. While scouring the net, looking through slow living blogs and joyful homeschooling posts, I stumbled across Milva Mcdonald’s blog A Potluck Life, where she writes about her take on homeschooling and homeschooling 4 kids, the slow, relaxed way. It was after reading a handful of her posts that I spotted her book and downloaded it immediately.

Slow Homeschooling book cover

As a homeschooling parent and an author, who writes about homeschooling, working-from-home and homemaking, the whole discussion on slow homeschooling really appeals to me. Since we are transitioning into an eclectic and more relaxed form of homeschooling ourselves, this book is just what I wanted to sink into, with a cup of rich coffee to enjoy it with.

Each of the 23 chapters in the book is a short essay on the various facets of creating a homeschooling lifestyle focussed on joy, your children’s interests and a learning-rich home environment. Since Macdonald’s four adult children have created interesting and successful careers and lifestyles for themselves, you know that the concept of slow homeschooling does not just sound good, but works in the real world too.

Amidst all the homeschooling “noise” and options available now, even more so during this lockdown, when many more parents are considering homeschooling their kids, a book like “Slow Homeschooling” is just what you need to re-focus on the pillars of your own homeschooling life and homeschooling children at a more enjoyable pace. Instead of getting distracted by the plethora of shiny new curriculums, online classes and learning tools, we can instead, centre ourselves and find out how we would like to nurture our homeschool life. 

The total opposite of “helicopter homeschooling” and over-scheduling our kids with multiple classes and expectations, “Slow Homeschooling” is about more freedom in our homeschools and letting our children follow their own interests in the quest for knowledge. 

Through her own homeschooling stories, McDonald shares how slow homeschooling actually helped her children grow into the accomplished, multi-talented people that they are today.

This book is just as relevant for a newbie homeschooling parent, who is confused about curriculums, scheduling and methods, as it is for homeschooling parents a few years into homeschooling, who are transitioning to a more relaxed way of homeschooling. You realise that less is more when it comes to setting up a homeschool, and that you can keep things simple. You can give yourself permission to chart out your own homeschooling path instead of trying to replicate the school system at home or teach your kids as per other people’s standards.

Mostly, you realise that just because you take a simpler, slower paced approach to homeschooling, doesn’t mean that your kids will learn less. In fact, they thrive.

So, fellow homeschooling parents and aspiring homeschooling parents, I encourage you to read Slow Homeschooling by Milva McDonald, and weave in some of the wisdom that she shares, into your own processes. This book may also inspire you to slow down your life and create more mindful experiences on the whole.

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