From the time my kids were young, I have wanted to volunteer in our community both to teach selflessness and to provide ways for my kids to give back to the community. Being a homeschool family means that we have more flexibility to volunteer, so we use that benefit to serve others.
By being deliberate about looking for volunteering opportunities, I have found three great options that really make a difference.
It can be challenging to keep the overflowing amount of homeschool materials organized especially if space is at a premium in your home. Focusing on the endless possibilities of creating storage options and having a tidy homeschool space at the same time, these storage hacks will have you rethinking small homeschool spaces.
Now that homeschooling has exploded into nearly two million children being educated at home across the United States for multiple reasons and with varied religious or non-religious backgrounds, homeschool curriculum publishers are almost as numerous! While having a plethora of choices at your fingertips is a great way to give your child a customized education, it’s also a great way to send a homeschool parent into analysis paralysis.
Why do many homeschool families feel overwhelmed at the beginning of a new school year? The main reason, in my experience, is choosing curriculum. Curriculum choices abound and choosing what to teach your children each year can be overwhelming. Couple that with countless homeschool curriculum publishers each with catalogs and websites, homeschool friends
I remember my very first year homeschooling; I ordered one of those big boxes of curriculum from one publisher. Everything came in one box, and my shopping was done in one swoop. I was thrilled!
Fast forward a few years later. I'm still homeschooling, and we still order a boxed curriculum each year despite my new-found expertise in educating at home.
Throughout my years of homeschooling, I’ve come to realize the importance of managing my time. The following tips have helped me to streamline my schedule and put systems into place that keep my family running more smoothly than we would otherwise.
Homeschooling is a hodgepodge of ideas, theories, practices, tools, and resources. How you go about using resources and putting those theories into place is dependent upon your family priorities. That’s why it’s so important to know in the beginning what your homeschooling priorities are.
Children who don’t like to write are easily intimidated by writing assignments. You may think you’re assigning a manageable and short assignment of only a paragraph. Your kid believes you’ve just assigned the next American novel.
Tears will emerge. Your child will wail, “I can’t do it!” You may want to tear out your hair in frustration. Don’t do that.
Each year my goal is to read more with my kids. If you are like me, you write an extensive book list, order or reserve the books, scope them out, and get excited.
Then I sit down to read, and my book-loving bubble bursts within minutes.
I hear my voice rising decibel by decibel, minute by minute, trying to be heard over the Hot Wheels cars zooming over my feet, the tickle-fest that just broke out, the phone ringing in the kitchen, and the whining because somebody didn’t want to read that particular book.
Sound familiar?
Now that most of us have been back to school for a while, the fun of homeschooling has worn off. We have settled into a routine and are past the introductory review and on to the meaty stuff. This is when sometimes homeschooling loses its luster and stops being fun.
Sure, we can throw in some hands-on projects, do unit studies, or read fun books, but the day-to-day grind can become monotonous. You may even find that the curriculum you chose isn’t working for your family, which can be hugely demoralizing.
Walking through the aisles of my first homeschool convention vendor hall, I could feel the anxiety building. Booth after booth of amazing curriculum that I’d only seen in homeschool catalogs was now before me in real life. I wanted to run through the aisles with a bank card in each hand to swipe, swipe, swipe and fill my bags with all the books I could carry.
The anxiety set in when I realized neither my arm muscles nor my bank account could handle the weight of my greedy curriculum dreams and I would have to make some hard decisions—what do I buy?
