SIOUX CITY | When the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were in full swing last month, Laura Cvrk saw the Games as a learning opportunity for children, Noah, 16, Abigail, 14, and Hope, 13.
While their public or private schooled peers were enjoying the final days of summer vacation, the Cvrks were getting two weeks of school in as a unit study.
"They don't know that they're getting school. It's part of life that we've just incorporated in," Cvrk said.
Cvrk, a mother of seven, has home schooled all of her children. The Olympics are of special interest to Hope, a competitive swimmer, who served as a basket carrier at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in Omaha.
"We're reading some history and reading some biographies and autobiographies of some athletes. We're marking the map of what countries the athletes are from. It's all kind of tied together, the geography, the history, everything," said Cvrk, who pulled down a large classroom-style map mounted above the doorway between her living and dinning rooms. She bought the map at a school auction.
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Cvrk has even covered the use of performance-enhancing drugs, a controversy that has clouded the Olympics in recent years and led some athletes to be banned from competition and stripped of medals. She called on her oldest daughter, Elizabeth, 24, who works in the laboratory at UnityPoint Health-St. Luke's, as a resource.
Cvrk got her feet wet home schooling her oldest son, Isaac, now 25. At the time, the family was living in Italy while Cvrk's husband, Cory, served in the U.S. Air Force.
"We lived about 50 minutes from the base so it would've been a long bus ride every day to and from kindergarten," she said.
But it was before her children were even born that Cvrk decided she wanted to home-school them. At a church in Colorado, Cvrk met a woman experience in home schooling. She was intrigued by the practice, which, then, was illegal in the state of Iowa.
"We started home schooling because I really felt called to do so. I felt like that's what God was showing us to do," said Cvrk, who said her husband's work schedule also influenced their decision. If the children attended public school in Sioux City, they would only see their dad, who works a 2 to 11 p.m. shift Tuesday through Saturday, on Sundays.
"It's been the best thing to help our family be together and have time together," Cvrk said.
If Hope has meets out of state, Cvrk brings school on the road. When the family traveled to Brookings, South Dakota, Hope swam in the morning. In the afternoon Cvrk took the kids to the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet.
Back at home, the children read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and watched the TV show "Little House on the Prairie."
"We did some activities. My daughter made a prairie dress and things like that that we could incorporate into school," she said.
Cvrk utilizes the Bob Jones curriculum to teach language and reading; teaching textbooks or Math-U-See, a mastery-based and student-paced curriculum, for math; Sonlight, a Christian-based curriculum, for history; and Apologia, a creation-based home-school science program.
"Abigail, because she's special needs, her curriculum is tailor-made for her," Cvrk explained. "I use all kinds of things that I pull together to help her out."
The biggest challenge for Cvrk hasn't been wearing the hats of both mom and teacher, she said it's the opposition she's faced from other people, including family members and friends. Her dad was a teacher, as well as both of her in-laws.
"At first, they weren't real fond of the idea," she said. "Now that a couple of the kids have graduated and they've gone on to college and not had any trouble getting in or taking an ACT, have won scholarships, have not had any trouble surviving in college, I think that's helped."
Isaac graduated from Western Iowa Tech Community College with a construction degree the day before he graduated from home schooling. Elizabeth also started at WIT before she finished high school. She went on to swim and attend school at College of Saint Mary in Omaha before transferring to Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Micaiah, 20, graduated from WIT last year with an electronics degree. Deborah, 18, will attend Morningside College in the fall. She already has two years of college-level work under her belt.
Cvrk said home schooling looks a little different for each of her children.
Noah goes to school for varsity band and choir, marching band and jazz band. His day starts at 6:45 a.m. at East High School. Depending on the day, he'll stay at East for first period or return home before school starts.
At home, Cvrk said Noah works independently for the most part. When he has finished a section, he checks in with Cvrk and they discuss what he's learned.
"He knows what he needs to do. For science I'll tell him, 'Go over the next section.' After he reads it, then we talk about it. I ask him questions, make sure he's understood what he's read, check his labs if he's done any labs and then he does his history," she said.
Abigail eats breakfast and finishes her chores before beginning home school at about 9 a.m. School takes her about two hours.
Hope begins her day at 5:45 a.m. with swim practice. When she returns home, she eats a second breakfast and dives into her school work, which she could finish as early as 10:30 a.m. Then it's time for a nap.
"You're really schooling all the time. The time that you're sitting at a desk or table is a lot shorter," Cvrk said. "If they understand it, you go on to the next thing."
Home repairs, oil changes and cooking all become part of home schooling in the Cvrk household. Once a week, the children take turns fixing lunch before their dad goes to work.
"They have to tell me what they're going to fix, plan what their sides are going to be, tell me what they need from the grocery store and then they have to prepare it and do that time management of having it on the table by what time we would be eating," Cvrk said. "That's Home Ec. It looks different than Home Ec. in school, but essentially it's the same kind of thing."
Home schooling was the right choice for Cvrk's family, but she said it's not for everybody. Learning how to learn and loving to learn, she said are key, as is being flexible and wanting to be around your children.
"I wasn't patient when I started, either," she said with a chuckle. "God has worked a lot of things in me over the years."
