What Should Our Home School Look Like?

This question has been bouncing around my head for the past several months.  That image of the picture perfect family snuggling on the couch, a warm fire blazing in the nearby hearth, taking turns reading aloud from a book published in 1804, is, I am fully convinced, just that - an image.  I have a house full of varying personalities and learning styles, and somewhere between one and four of those personalities (depending on the day) are not keen on reading aloud, let alone sharing a couch cushion.  Throw a fire into the mix, and pyromania breaks loose.  I know I'm not the only one.  No, that is not a scene I care to attempt.

Likewise, the picture of everyone sitting around the table, nose stuck in workbooks isn't happening.  It might work for one or two of my children some of the time, but others, eh, not so much.  One of the reasons we chose home schooling is because we don't believe children should sit all day.  Learning should be bigger than the space of a desk, bigger even than a classroom.  Learning should be liberating, not restrictive.  The world is our classroom and all that...

Still, there are things we need to do, things they need to learn, and I'm finding that some of those things have to get done between - or in the midst of - the more pressing business of living life.  This doesn't mean, of course, that we neglect those things they "need to learn." It simply means we can put off a grammar lesson to experience the sheer joy of working together to construct a dam, water and all, and we can spend Christmas break preparing for a Geography Bee and Fair.  It means the line between School and Life can be blurry to non-existent now and then.

Somewhere deep down, a little voice whispers, "Isn't that the point?"

I'm finding the answer to my original question elusive.  What should our home school look like?  I can't seem to snap a mental photo that rightly captures every day of our home schooling adventure.  There's no telling what it will look like in a month, but at this swiftly passing moment in time, it looks like books and paper all over the dining room, an open kitchen window, and muddy, muddy children laughing together while Mom cleans up the kitchen and gets lunch ready.  Overall, it looks a bit like Life - busy, jumbled, unpredictable, and somehow moving forward.

It looks, if I may say so, simply breathtaking.

P.S. This afternoon, we'll be studying personal hygiene (a.k.a. showering), followed by the proper use of brooms and mops!  :)