We fill our lives with a lot of busyness. In the case of homeschool parents, this can put a lot of pressure on mom and dad to do their best multitasking on a day-to-day basis. You always have a multitude of things to accomplish – not only homeschooling your children, but also cleaning, laundry, cooking, errands, paying bills, making calls, and the list goes on and on. If you weren’t tired before you started homeschooling, you certainly are now! Multitasking can be overwhelming and chaotic if there is not some sort of organization to your days, weeks, or homeschool year.
I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of how to structure and organize homeschool life. There are plenty of books on the market from experts that will help you with organizational skills. However, sometimes someone else’s plan won’t exactly meet your family’s needs. I am going to bring to the forefront one simple question for you to ponder that might help you get back on track. What is most important to you and your family? In other words, what are your set of values and goals? I will break it down even further. Remember why you began homeschooling. Taking time to ponder this will help you reset your framework and manage your home wisely. Your answer might be completely different than your friend’s. That is perfectly fine, and in fact is just one more advantage of homeschooling. You have more control over how you and your family spend your time and your resources. You will find your life priorities will even affect your curriculum and lesson plans and trickle all the way down to your family’s extracurricular activities.
For example, the two main reasons we began homeschooling were:
- We wanted our family to be a strong unit based on Christian moral values, and
- We desired to allow our kids to learn at their own pace and to their full potential.
Out of these primary reasons came smaller goals with specific strategies. Early on, we decided that it was important to incorporate Bible and character-building studies into our core curriculum. Each of my children had different strengths and weaknesses. We wanted them to explore many activities, but focus on their strengths and expand on things they really enjoyed. Tailoring our curriculum to each child’s needs and having structured curriculum for me was also a must. I also wanted to teach science and history together when our children were young. Read-alouds were yet another vital part of our homeschool routine. Getting together with like-minded moms and families also helped us keep our vision. Teaching our kids life skills as they helped with chores, grocery shopping, cooking, etc. was important and became a common practice. It also became clear for us that there needed to be a daily routine and built-in breaks for everyone. Wow, we certainly had a number of clearly defined expectations!
Did everything always run smoothly? No! Did we ever veer off from our schedule? Yes! However, thinking through these things helped me understand what curricula was best for us and gave me a framework on how to best organize our homeschool and lives. Of course, we had to reevaluate our priorities and goals every so often as our kids grew and their needs changed. This meant saying yes to new things and letting go of other things.
Hopefully this gives you something to think about as you plan for your upcoming homeschool year!
