Here are 3 tips to starting a strong stress free new homeschool year and enjoying one of homeschooling’s better perks!
It’s back to school season! And, that usually means stress in getting ready to begin a new homeschool year. But isn’t avoiding that one of the more enjoyable aspects of homeschooling?
Number 1 -Include your Learners in Scheduling your Days and Weeks
When looking at your subjects and approaching your lesson plans and schedule, be sure to sit down with your learners.
(When they are approaching upper elementary grades and beyond, this works very well. Even just discussing with younger learners what you have in mind for activities and lessons after breakfast and after lunch gives them a feeling of being part of the process.).
We usually had math, reading, spelling, and any language and vocabulary practice every day for a short time to keep things fresh in our minds.
But other subjects and activities were up for discussion.
I would ask my guys what kind of order to our day they would prefer.
I would ask them about scheduling other subjects in short blocks more times per week or longer blocks, fewer times per week.
We would discuss activities and field trip days and project and science experiment days.
We would look at any scheduled groups and sports during the week and talk about how they would want to balance those with lessons that day.
This involvement and discussion would allow them the opportunity to learn managing their time and expressing their personal preferences in how they learn and pace their activities throughout the day and week.
It also gave them a buy-in into our homeschooling.
If we found that this schedule did not suit them or our family, we would discuss it and make adjustments during the first couple of months or when there were new group activities they joined during the year.
This gave them the practice to evaluate and problem solve!
To help you and your child follow assignments for the day or week, download the following free daily and weekly assignment checklists.
Free Student Daily Plan Checklist for Elementary and Middle School Ages
Free Student High School Weekly Assignment Checklist
These checklists help you write out the assignments for each child for the day or week, hand it to them (helping them become more independent and self-accountable for their learning), allow them to check off the assignments as they complete them, and you can keep it in a notebook as a record of all your child has done during the year.
Number 2 -Ease into your New Homeschool Year
I highly recommend easing into your new homeschool year with adding subjects to your days and weeks gradually.
We usually started with the basic subjects like math and reading during the first week.
Then each week after, we would add other subjects gradually to our schedule.
We would add spelling and handwriting or vocabulary during the same week since so those subjects were usually about 15-20 minutes a piece and not very difficult to get used to.
Other subjects like science or history or a foreign language would most likely be added alone during another week.
Elective type classes like art or music or PE might be added during the week together.
Soon you’ll be used to getting up in the morning and following a routine.
I usually got a feeling of when the kids naturally woke up to get a feel for what our start time should be for our lessons and worked from there.
I would not schedule our day with time slots but time frames.
Breakfast would be first to allow me a chance to wake up also. Then any kind of Bible study or reading to get our minds and hearts ready for the day.
After that, I would figure out what subject areas to include before lunch and in what order (alternating independent work for one learner so I could work one on one with the other learner and vice versa).
By the end of about a month to a month and a half, we were up and running.
Of course, I wish I could say that every day “we were all in our places with bright, shiny faces”, but I would be exaggerating.
The framework for the day was set and the humans that we were, we would follow it as closely as we could.
Which brings me to my next tip….
Number 3 -Give you and your Learners Grace during your Days Together
As humans, we are imperfect and our days are going to be imperfect.
We can only do our best and keep on going.
Even if that means throwing aside a lesson for that day to concentrate on character building or relationship mending or resting or refreshing if we need to.
We are educating the whole child and sometimes that isn’t a scheduled lesson or found in our curriculum.
This means concentrating on character building when the need arises or following an unexpected interest at the moment before returning to a scheduled lesson.
Or, it may mean taking a step back and trying a different approach to learn something, or putting that skill aside for a week or a month and focusing on other skills before returning to the one that was presenting a challenge.
Things come up unexpectedly in life that we need to focus on for a time before returning to our regular schedule or lesson plans.
Those are times of growth and learning as well. See Homeschooling Through Challenging Times to learn how we benefitted from these seasons in our homeschool.
As we show grace and calm during our days, we are exhibiting those characteristics to our children and building our own character too.
We had a couple of sayings that yah, they’re kind of cliche, but they worked for us –
“Slow and steady wins the race!” and “It’s not a sprint, but a marathon!”
And for us, they definitely proved to be true and served us well now that I can look back and look at where we are now.
It’s your homeschool!
You have the freedom to use your time the way you best see fit for your family.
As a former teacher and homeschooler, I can honestly say that so much more gets done with the personalized instruction and care in the home than in a classroom of 20-35 kids dictated by a school schedule and all of its interruptions.
So, enjoy your time together! They fly by way too fast.
The days may seem long, but, believe me, the years are very short!
Please share this article with other homeschoolers who may feel a little stressed by the start of another homeschool year!
They’ll thank you for it!
