Homeschooling can be fun and terrifying, exhausting and exhilarating! As I finally return to writing after a busy season of holidays, end-of-semester papers, and winter illnesses, I want to offer you the guidelines I use to keep my year in perspective. These are my five favorite tips for you, homeschooling mama, wherever you may be in your homeschooling journey.
1. Don’t play the comparison game.
SO much easier said than done, right? Here’s the thing we’ve got to remember though – homeschooling is about customization. Each child is individual and unique! Sometimes a curriculum we use with one child won’t ever work with another. Our daily schedule might change every time one of our children enters a new phase – this might even be every two weeks! We will drive ourselves crazy if we drift into comparison-land, because no plan or child’s work will ever measure up to the rest of the collective world’s. If you are ever feeling discouraged about your days or your child’s work, first double-check that you aren’t comparing them to another’s!
2. Don’t overcompensate.
As we’ve been talking about comparison, let’s also remember the treasure of being unique ourselves: we have gifts to share with our children that no one else does! When I was first deliberating over math curriculum, I over-analyzed, over-thought, and became overwrought. Math was not my personal strength, so I believed that it must be even more important that I choose the best possible math books for my daughter. Because I didn’t want to feel guilty about not being everything to them….wait – we can’t be everything to them! That is okay.
My husband wisely told me to pick the curriculum that would enable me to get it done. Yes, prudent planning helps us offer a deep, well-rounded education to our children. But if I have gifts in one area, that’s where God wants me to focus more. He has not only given these beautiful children to me, he’s given me, with my unique talents, to them! If my children’s gifts and interests end up being different, there are still so many ways to help them pursue those fields, and they’ll be more pro-active in seeking out such opportunities. I can’t offer my children an exceptional science program, but I can give them books and locate resources to give them a good, a sufficient one. (In fact, I have a friend who plans such thorough science lessons and experiments that I’m learning more things!) I’m more than able, though, with very little effort, to provide them with some wonderful fine arts opportunities and in-depth history and literature tracks. We might even have a lot of fun doing it…
3. Do something fun. For you.
…which brings me to my next favorite tip: choose something, some book or some program, that is fun for you! Homeschooling is work. You’re likely working with multiple students at different levels; often, we can’t teach in a set-apart classroom setting but are teaching as we manage a household and run a day-care (for our babies!) simultaneously. Children will struggle, sometimes every day! They’ll ask us questions that stump us, challenge us to adapt different educational methods, and make us marvel. So sneak in something that you look forward, a subject that you would like to learn more about or that you are excited to share with them. A happy mama is a much better teacher than a bored one, and homeschooling is part of our lives as well as our children. A course that re-fuels us and inspires us to teach will likewise make the homeschool day more enriching for our children. Last year I said “no” to certain subjects so we could study the instruments of the orchestra and focus on ancient mythology, and those few minutes each day became a time we all looked forward to.
4. The Value of Tweaking
“Tweaking” is one of those lovely words; as you say it, your lips cannot help but part up in a cute smile. Murmuring it actually makes your face do exactly what the word implies. Altering your schedule or your curriculum should change in just this way; it should be simple, it should increase the day’s sweetness, and the manner in which you tweak could even be cute or silly. So often, the most regular obstacles presented by our children, can be diminished by a slight change. For instance, if the entire morning – getting ready for the day and completing schoolwork – seems like a never-ending battle, requiring your child to get dressed before coming to the breakfast table might eliminate that first conflict and break the entire cycle. If your student is fighting your attempts to teach handwriting or reading, waiting a couple months before trying again might be just the trick. For your older student, changing one component of a subject or providing a warm cup of tea might make that hard problem just a little bit easier.
Whatever the issue, at home or in schooling, before despairing or considering a complete overhaul, first consider if there isn’t a way a little “tweaking” could make a huge difference.
5. Eyes on the Goal
My meaning here is two-fold. Planning varies according to personality but, for me, it’s easier to keep in mind where I want my students to end up. What skill sets, writing habits, and wisdom do I want them to possess at the end of high school? Or at the end of elementary? Or at even the last month of this school year? If I can identify the goal, then I can work backwards to plan a reasonable course of study.
The second message is more important though: remember what your mission is as a mother and teacher. We all have gifts we want to share with our students, opportunities we want to provide for our children, authors we want them to read, universities we’d love for them to have…We could go on and on. But, ultimately, our goal is to help them to heaven. Everything else is secondary. While we should aim to provide the best education and form them with immense love and virtue, certain details will fall through the cracks and we will sometimes fail. But our children needs trials and difficulties just like us to grow and become saints, and it’s essential to remember that the Author of it all is orchestrating their lives, not us. We’re not the writer, narrator, or even lead character of our child’s story. Hold that truth within your heart and let your worries go. We can’t give them everything, because then there would never be a need for them to trust their ultimate Lover and Teacher.
One Reply to “Five Tips for Homeschooling”