What planner are you using this year? Have you found a new math curriculum? What’s your schedule looking like for fall?
The buzz in the homeschool world is hyped around planning, planners, and all things organizing. I get it. We’re homeschool moms. We plan things. That’s what we love to do!
It gives us a sense of control in our often chaotic lives. Add it helps us to manage our days full of history lessons, co-op meetings, and dance lessons.
If you browse Pinterest for the term homeschool you will undoubtedly run across drop-dead gorgeous homeschool rooms dedicated solely to learning. The cutest ones I’ve seen have small desks and chairs in a perfect row, student work hung on the wall, an alphabet chart running close to the ceiling, orderly book cases or cubbies, and a welcoming rug on the floor. There may even be a cozy reading nook with soft cushions or a bean bag chair. It's enough to inspire jealousy when you compare that vision to your dingy bookshelves crammed with paperwork and a crumb-laden kitchen table that doubles as homeschool desk.
Homeschool moms have sonar hearing for words like planner, list, and curriculum sales. We find joy in laying out the next school year to come, as we should! The anticipation of an upcoming school year is a great motivator, but sometimes we can let the planning get in the way of other things that are really important too—things like enjoying the summer months and the break you have from school. Or we let stress and worry seep in while we plan. Or, worse of all, we can overlook the ones who we’re actually doing this for—our kids!
With one foot in childhood and the other entering adulthood, eighth-grade is a pivotal time. Choosing homeschool curriculum can be nerve-racking when you realize that eighth grade can set your child up for success or hold him back. I found inspiration for my son's curriculum choices in a very odd place—a 1912 eighth grade exam.
Kids with ADHD are bright, funny, and charming. Typically, they are highly intelligent and creative. But when it’s time to do a lesson for school, these positive traits can be replaced by other not-so-positive traits: inattention, hyperactivity, daydreaming, irritability, even outright defiance.
Trying to parent a child with ADHD is difficult. Trying to teach a child with ADHD can feel almost impossible, especially if you are using a traditional approach to homeschooling.
I was so worried about summer slide and about keeping ahead of the curve that I didn’t stop to think about any other consequences of my choice to school through summer.
Homeschooling through the summer kept the kids academically up to pace. For instance they didn’t lose math concepts since they were practicing them all summer long. What they did lose, however, was a true sense of freedom, breathing deeply, and just being.
The idea of reading stories aloud to our children is almost as old as the idea of parenthood itself. Long before printed books were available, children learned history, language, and more simply by oral retelling. Now that many of our children are exposed to technology at a young age, reading stories aloud can seem a bit outdated.
But using read-alouds with our children, especially children who have ADHD, can be wonderfully beneficial.
I am a true savorer of the seasons. I’m not one to rush through to the next thing, but instead, I like to embrace the season, let it sink in and enjoy it. Even so, there’s nothing wrong with following Helen Keller’s advice to “be thankful for what you have while working for what you want.”
So even though I can be thankful for slow lake days and Popsicles melting down to my kids’ elbows, I can also be thinking ahead to the approaching school year. Here’s five things I’m doing this summer to get ready for a great homeschool year to come.
Besides being a wonderful time to relax, swim, and enjoy the hot weather, summer is also a marvelous time to encourage a love of recreational reading in our children. Although summer is usually busy with outdoor fun, family reunions, weddings, and picnics, leave room for plenty of time for lazing about with a good book.
Use these four simple tricks to keep your kids reading all the way through June, July, and August.
Summer vacation —we all look forward to the days off from homeschooling: lounging by the pool, catching up on reading, taking that class we’ve been eyeing, finishing the to do list we’ve been putting off.
Summer is amazing, right? Wrong! Well, kind of wrong. Summer is nice, but those picture perfect days are short lived. Before too long our kids are going to be driving us bonkers.Let’s face it, homeschooling means our kids are used to structure. They are used to days filled with learning, and too many days off will make us all a little crazy.
