homeschooling

The best part of homeschooling is that it is more relaxed, you can learn in ways that work for your child, not for a classroom. You can do a craft every day if you want. It doesn’t have to take a lot of extra work or time to make homeschooling exciting. You also can make it more exciting for yourself as well as your kids, find ways to keep learning yourself.

Making Homeschool Exciting

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Topics of Interest

Unit studies are a great way to incorporate what interests your child. This year we are going to be doing unit studies for our history learning about different time periods that my kids are interested in.

Slow Down

You do not have to do every subject every day. Create a schedule that works for you, your child, and your family in general. Some kids want to do everything, all in one day because they are enjoying the topics that they are learning about, but on the other hand, maybe you want to spread out the subjects so you can really dive into a topic. This is where unit studies come in handy too.

Get Out of the House

You are not limited to staying home just because you homeschool. In fact, you need to plan to get out of the house.

Field trips. Yes, things are different right but you can go on virtual field trips to at least give you the illusion of getting out of the house on a field trip.

Go to the library. This is where we go when we start feeling like the walls are closing in.

Read Alouds

I am not a fan of sitting and reading a book, a novel, to my kids. Just not my cup of tea, but, I do like getting audiobooks. These are great for in the house or on the go. We can all listen, I don’t want to bury the book in the backyard instead of reading it, win-win.

My oldest also likes to listen to audiobooks on her own while she draws or colors or builds with Lego.

Science Experiments & Hands on Learning

Try something new once a week. It doesn’t have to be a science experiment once a week, but try your hand at something. One fun, hands on learning activity we have done as part of a history lesson, was creating Hieroglyphs.

Play Games

There are so. many. board games out there that you can use in your homeschool, and your kids are going to be learning while they play. Make learning fun, and your kids are going to be learning forever. Make homeschooling exciting by bringing out the board games once in awhile.

There are also games on Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers that other homeschoolers and teachers have created for learning.

Baking & Cooking

I love seeing my oldest cooking and baking on her own. Do you know how much learning is happening when you cook and bake? You are following a recipe, you are learning from any mistakes that make occur, and how to overcome those mistakes.

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Second Breakfast for Homeschoolers

Everyone is curious as to what homeschooling looks like for “seasoned” homeschoolers. What homeschool looks like for homeschoolers who were homeschooling before crisis-schooling. There is not a right way to homeschool. Please make sure you are homeschooling legally, and enjoying being with your kids.

How To Homeschool – How We Homeschool

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We are relaxed homeschoolers. I am not pushing a schedule on myself or my kids for the most part. We all know what needs to be done each day and we get to work.

Homeschooling has become a way of life here. We try to stick to a traditional school year, but we don’t stop learning through the summer or Christmas vacation. We’re just not doing book work during this time.

How to Homeschool with No Wake Up Calls

We do not start our day with wake up calls. Well, I do, I get up earlier than my kids. But my kids get to sleep as late as they like. They are growing like weeds, and they need their sleep. we are not keeping with a public school schedule where they need to catch the bus at 7:30am to be there for 9am.

Instead my kids get to sleep until 8:30 or 9, which is when they typically get up. They have breakfast, get dressed and all that stuff before starting school. And we’re not rushing through breakfast.

Slow Start to Lessons

We rarely start lessons all at the same time. I have a kid that is up earlier than her siblings. She is finished her math lesson for the day by the time her older sister gets up most days. And she loves it. She’ll get her independent lessons finished for the day, and join us for group lessons like history or science.

How to Homeschool with Independent Lessons

This one trips people up. How to do multiple grades for your kids? We use Teaching Textbooks for my older girls, and Gauge, grade 2, will be using CTCMath this year, so that is all independent from each other, and they are all able to do the work on their own.

Language Arts is independent too from siblings, we’re using Grammar Galaxy again. Austin, grade 6 can do this completely on her own. Brookland, grade 4, needs a little help here and there, and Gauge requires my full help. It is easy to juggle that help when they are working on their own, independent studies too.

For Example:

• While Brookland is working on Math, I am helping Gauge with Language Arts.
• While Gauge is working on Math, I am available to help Brookland with her language arts.

We do still do Science, Social Studies, History, etc together. This year we are doing unit studies to fit what they are interested in. They will all complete work to their grade level not to the highest or lowest grade.

Time Frame

We are usually finished by lunch time. We might choose to do a science experiment or field trip in the afternoon. We might go to the beach, or the play ground before school is out for the day. Or to the library to grab more and more books.

We do not cover every subject a day. In fact, the only things we do everyday are math and language arts. We are reading everyday, both for language arts and for pleasure, because we are very big readers here.

There is a day of the week where we cover a different subject. We don’t want to burn out on school so that it becomes something we hate.

• Monday might be science.
• Tuesday, History.
• Thursday might be foreign language.

Life Skills

You will be amazed at the skills your kids pick up because they are at home and am to take a more relaxed approach to learning and doing things they enjoy. My 11 year old LOVES Lego. Putting together a dog kennel, which became our turkey run, was a breeze for her. She is used to following Lego instructions so this was just a larger set to put together.

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Deciding to Homeschool. Now What?

Welcome to the wonderful, sometimes crazy, and often scary world of deciding to homeschool. Taking that big step to homeschool is scary for a lot of people, it was terrifying for me.

Deciding to Homeschool Your Kids

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The hardest part of homeschooling is deciding to homeschool your kids. You know in your heart that this is the right choice for your child right now. The hardest part is making the decision that your gut is screaming at you to make.

Research what you need to do, legally, to homeschool in your province/state and then do that. Send the letter, fill out the forms.

Once You You have Decided to Homeschool: Take time to Deschool

If your child went to a brick and mortar school, take time to decompress from that. Deschooling is the adjustment period a child goes through when leaving school and beginning homeschooling.

The general rule of thumb is one month of deschooling for each year that your child was in school.

Try to limit your recreation of school at home. Homeschooling is an educational lifestyle, not school at home with a strict schedule.

Don’t Buy all the Curriculum

There is this thing called shiny-new-curriculum syndrome. As you can guess it’s seeing new curriculum and wanting all the new curriculum. But when you are first starting out you don’t know exactly what is going to work for you and your kids.

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Accept Change, and Accept Change to Happen Again

You will second guess yourself all the time, especially during the first year. This is normal. Every aspect of your homeschool can and most likely will change, repeatedly through your homeschool journey.

Your reason – your why for homeschooling.

Curriculum – this could change repeatedly through a year as you learn what works for you and your children.

Find Your People

Look for people like you, find a community to support you, and to support. You can use Facebook to search for groups in your local area, this has been the easiest way in my experience to find groups of like minded individuals.

These people can provide you with support when you are feeling down and stressed about homeschooling. They can help by giving you tips, and sharing their experience with curriculum, and homeschooling in general.

If you can’t find local homeschoolers, think about creating a group at some point. Not right away, but make it a goal.

Accept that You are going to Freak Out

Accept that at some point or other, especially in the first year, you are going to freak out and feel like you aren’t doing enough, or aren’t doing the right thing. Or one of many other things.

You are going to feel like you don’t know enough to teach your child – but you can learn along with them.

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