On a typical Saturday morning, I’m sitting at my kitchen table surrounded by our school books and planning our upcoming week. To an outsider, I might need to seek help for a book addiction. Such is the life of a classical, Charlotte Mason educator. There are a lot of books.
Planning our days, prioritizing what needs to be done and when is something that gives me great joy — now.
I hate being asked about socialization. It assumes that my children live in a cave, 50 miles from any other human besides their immediate family.
It has taken a while to get here, though. Finding a rhythm to the school part of our days, balancing school work with the rest of running a home, and knowing when we all need to take a break and go do something social has taken a few years to systematize. It’s also taken a major adjustment of my own priorities, which was painful but necessary for our success as a homeschooling family.
A wise person once told me that you can’t plant a seed, then go uncover it every day to see how it’s progressing and expect any kind of success. In other words, when you play the long game, it takes a tremendous amount of faith to believe that what you are doing is actually working, even when you aren’t seeing immediate results.
To increase your faith in your abilities as a homeschooler, you need a plan.
Here’s what works for our family and for me as a person.
Prioritize school time
You have to make school time a priority or your kids won’t.
If you want your children to feel a sense of rhythm to their days, you need to set the tone. This is not to say they’ll gleefully go along with everything all the time, but they’ll know that the expectation is firm. When the time for school comes, and you call everyone to order, they’ll know that you mean it.
Some moms do this by playing a certain song that signals school is beginning. I don’t have a special song, but my kids do know that at 8:30 every morning, they can expect me to call them to our kitchen table for school time.
In order for your kids to be ready, you have to be ready yourself and know what the plan is. You need to know what you’re covering that day.
I use a free online planning software called Planboard from chalk.com. I plan one week at a time for my 5th grade and kindergarten students. I have plenty of toddler-friendly activities for my 3-year-old who listens to all the stories but isn’t yet old enough to have her own assigned activities. There are certain toys that only get played with during school time. They are in a specific location in our house, and we rotate through them as the day progresses.
Having set plans for the day lets my children know that I am serious about the expectation that school is happening and that we have goals to accomplish. I keep my lessons short and age appropriate for each child. I push them when they are being lazy, but I also know the signs of them being done for the day. If I’ve overplanned, which does happen sometimes, we can add that to the next day. I leave some wiggle room in the schedule for just such occasions.
Don’t try to do everything at once
We live in a world that glorifies multitasking. For many people, it’s become a way of life to try and do four or five things at once. I think this is a dangerous practice that leads to anxiety and poor outcomes.
As a mom, teacher, and homemaker, I know how overwhelming it can be to have dishes in the sink that need attention, a bill that needs to be paid, and a roast that needs to go in the crockpot, all while you’re trying to read Aesop’s Fables to your kids.
The solution to this is simple. Be present where you are. The dishes in the sink will be fine until school time is finished. If it’s time to fold laundry, then fold the laundry and don’t worry about the math lesson you didn’t finish. Don’t overburden yourself or your children by dividing your attention between multiple activities at once.
If you get out behind and there are home things that really need your attention, then take care of them before you start school. Starting school a few minutes later than the time you set isn’t the end of the world.
Involve your child
It’s tempting to underestimate children. We want to make sure the lessons are really sinking in, and therefore, we end up doing the academic heavy lifting. This is wrong. You can’t actually learn something for your child. You have to let them do that for themselves. Set your expectations accordingly.
One area that I have struggled with in this regard is reading. I suspect my oldest child is dyslexic, so learning to read has been an arduous process.
Until recently, I was doing too many of the readings during school time. As a result, my son was becoming disengaged. He couldn’t remember anything for a narration after reading.
I decided over the summer that for the current school year, we would try something new. I bought two copies of each of our books for the year, one for each of us. He follows along while I read, and then he takes his own turn. There has been an instant turn around in his ability to tell me what he learned after each reading, and he is taking charge by just opening the books and starting to read without me even asking him.
Learning doesn’t just involve books, either. Involve your children in the process of keeping a clean home. Give them chores to do. They need practical life skills, and while they may grumble, they need a sense of purpose and feeling like they are part of the family “team.” This is as educational as any academic subject and one of the greatest benefits to homeschooling.
Balance social time with school time
I hate being asked about socialization. It assumes that my children live in a cave, 50 miles from any other human besides their immediate family.
But there is a small, small kernel of truth to consider in that dreaded conversation: How will your child have opportunities to play with other children?
Homeschool co-ops are groups that meet once or twice a week to provide a variety of activities for homeschool families. Some are academic, while others are mainly enrichment. They come in all sizes and varieties, and more are forming all the time. We live in rural Tennessee, and there are at least five different co-op groups within driving distance of us. I would bet that there are some near you, too. Facebook is the best place to find these groups.
Local libraries often have homeschool meetups as well. The library in our town hosts a weekly game day and a LEGO group.
Our church has an abundance of homeschool families, and there’s a weekly activity at church for those families. If your church has a lot of homeschool families, this is a great opportunity for you to secure play time for your kids.
Don’t sign up for everything
A word of caution, though. I could have my kids in an outside-the-home activity every day if I wanted to do that. This is not what I want for us, though. We are in a period of change this year, having two children officially enrolled in school, and because of this, we have stepped away from the co-op we were involved in for the last five years.
It was not an easy decision, but it was the right thing to do for us. I was feeling stretched too thin because one entire day of the week was taken up by the co-op. If you are finding yourself frayed by the commitments you have outside of your house, do not hesitate to step away. You owe it to yourself and your kids to learn how to recognize when you are doing too much.
Know your long-term goals
The goal of education, for me, is not to make sure my kids know everything by the time they are grown but rather that they know how to learn something, and they don’t hate the process of learning. I want my children to be autonomous, sovereign citizens and lifelong learners. I want them all to know how to run a house, think for themselves, and love God. If I can accomplish that, then I will consider my life well-lived.
