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photo by spisharam
Last year was my family’s eighth year homeschooling. It was also, at least toward the end, one of our worst.
What went wrong? I spread myself too thin. The kids’ activities were okay – no overload going on there. It was just me. I made too many commitments for myself and, by March, we were just trying to get through. Doing “the basics” is okay for awhile, for a season, but too long and it’s just plain boring and usually the perfect recipe for burn-out.
It’s taken me most of the summer to recover and get my excitement for school back, but – finally – the excitement is there. And, I don’t want to lose it this year, so there are three things that I’m going to make certain this school year is full of:
Friends. All too often, we homeschooling moms let ourselves get hyper-focused on academics. Yes, academics are important and shouldn’t be taken lightly, but relationships are equally – if not more – important. This year I’m going to make certain that we’re taking time to foster and savor friendships – for both me and my kids.
Fun. There can be a fine line here. My kids aren’t those “love of learning” types that I hear so much about, despite my best efforts, many aspects of school are not fun (can you say “math”?) for them and that’s just the way it is. I’m not going to wear myself out trying to make sure every aspect of our school day is fun, but when you’re doing “just the basics,” you can pretty much rest assured that the school day isn’t going to be a lot of fun.
My kids and I like hands-on activities. This year, I want to make sure that the science experiments, history crafts, and learning games don’t fall by the wayside like they did last year. For me, that’s going to mean leaving lots of room in our afternoons at least two or three days a week and planning two to three weeks in advance.
Field trips. We used to go on tons of field trips. As the kids got older, I quit planning them like I used to. Last year, we didn’t go on a single field trip, that I can recall. It wasn’t intentional; we just got busy. Even though my kids are now 8, 10, and 15, I still think there’s as much educational value in a well-planned field trip as there ever was, maybe even more so now that they’re old enough to pay attention (hopefully!) and listen to the field trip guides.
I also want to be mindful of the fact that my youngest is just a year older than my oldest was when we began homeschooling — I don’t want her to miss out on some of the fun field trips my oldest enjoyed just because I’ve already been there and done that.
Have you spent time reflecting on what worked and what didn’t in your homeschool last year? What positive changes will you make in the upcoming year?
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I am new to the life of homeschooling, but really have been doing it from the start by the sounds of things. I like your refocus to make learning as enjoyable as you can. Our children are 5 & 3 so really, just coming down the pike, but we enjoy field trips to all sorts of places and enjoy sorting in a way of toys and laundry, measuring by making cookies or some great treat, you get the picture. The tough one is wriging, needs to be integrated some how…we do short stents of it is all. They do a lovely job when I remember this simple thing, God first all else will come into place. Remember to pray always and enjoy teaching the minds that have been entrusted in your care. Sincerely, Mommy of two little blessings & so much more!
Last year was our first year homeschooling. It went great, but there are a couple things I plan to change. First, I am with you on the friend thing. My daughter loved homeschooling last year, but when asked what we could do different, she asked to do more activities with friends. So, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll have to plan stuff with friends to make sure it actually happens. I think I’ll schedule it into our school week. Second, I am going to plan more hands-on activities in the winter. Fall and spring have plenty of opportunities for outside hands on, but the winter seems to drag on. We will have to plan some projects to look forward to.
Last year was our first year and it was not great.
Field trips are at the top of my list along with games and hands on activities, a friend and I are trying to start a homeschool group in our area and I am really excited about the friend potential:)
Also it makes me sooooo happy to know that I am not the only one with kids that don’t have that whole love of learning gene:D
We are NOT math people in this house!
I related to much of this post. I blame our hard, not so fun year on my pregnancy. I simply didn’t feel good and couldn’t summon the energy or creativity to homeschool like I wanted to. I am hopeful that this year will be better and that we’ll make it part of our life and we enjoy spending time together and learning rather than doing school at home. That’s my hope anyway!!
I really enjoyed this post, you gave me some things to think about, beyond books. I am for sure adding in more fun and hands-on stuff this year. I am so unorganized most of the time, that these things were pushed to the side-burner way too often last year. I might be up for more fieldtrips, but doing more stuff with friends is hard, when I have so many kids of diff. ages, and diff. activities.
I enjoyed my visit here! God bless you on your new school year.
Yes, there are a couple of things I will be doing differently also. We will be adding field trips as well as more experiments and projects. I really was stressed a lot this last year and we didn’t do as many as I would have liked. Thanks for sharing your list with us!!