Off-grid living is a major drawcard to so many people, and why wouldn’t it be with electricity from the sun, water from the rain, and freedom from the ever-present bills of today’s society but would you consider living completely off-grid with children and homeschooling them while producing food that is chemical free?
Let’s face it Homeschooling can be hard work when you first start especially when you go with the curriculum-based variety that I have, the amount of work that they can send you can completely overwhelm and stress you out. After all, this has settled down though, the curriculum based works best for us as I have the constant work schedule and where they should be in the overall scheme of things, it can be a fantastic experience for both child and parent and not that difficult to work into your life. Most people think of homeschooling as something that life has to work around, not something that is added to your lifestyle and that needs to work into it.
When I first started homeschooling my whole life revolved around keeping up to speed with the workload that came through the door (and it was immense), luckily for me though I had another homeschooling off-grid mother doing the same curriculum through the same school as I was and encouraged me to talk to them and let them know what my life entailed.
The upshot of this was that once the school knew that I had 4 children under 7 and lived completely off-grid only putting the internet power on when needed they changed what I was doing to a three times week face to face satellite sessions and artifact-based program which means sending pictures, art and photos of the children’s work. This has been fabulous as we are always out and about in the gardens, traveling and doing most of the programs work as photo or video based.
Living off the grid has added to the learning process for each. Every child in the household instead of just blindly eating, drinking, and turning on lights now understand where their power, water, food, eggs, and meat come from and tends to find it surprising when brought from a supermarket.
They are flavorless and come in so many packages. Just the other day the kids asked to have tomatoes with their freshly caught fish and as I had none left on the vine had brought some vine-ripened tomatoes at the supermarket, none of them ate them and in their words asked “why do they taste like detergent and why don’t they taste normal”.
When children have grown up or are growing up in a self-sufficient, organic environment they see things a little more clearly and as free-range lifestyle learners, they are learning what society asks of them but are also filling their minds with useful life skills that are not present in today’s society…
How many children in the concrete jungle could tell you where meat, fish, and eggs, come from at the age of two let alone 4??
How many know how peanuts are grown how honey gets to their table, or have the first idea about rainwater as a natural source of drinking water? Not many even the teenage population have trouble with these questions, to be fair a lot of adults don’t know what goes into honey production but our children do as their father is a beekeeper of 30+ years.
Living off the grid can be an expensive experience to start with but the end results for the family that you have around you are more than worth it and then homeschooling your child is no picnic in the beginning either until you find your groove but with both of these in the fabulous sink you’re your life whether combined or separate the family benefits and grows as a unit instead of non-communicative household dwellers. Life is defiantly a better place when you share the world in a nurturing natural family way whether as a whole or just a single part of the homeschooling and off-grid life…
YoZenQi Holistic - Megen Hibbins 