At the end of the year is not when most people probably want to talk about homeschooling mid-year. But when January rolls around, home and school can collide.
Whether you have the itch to try a different approach or you are brand spanking new to homeschooling, there are 3 traps to avoid when home and school come together mid-year.
Avoid I’m-behind-already anxiety.
Without giving you a legal synopsis on who invented standards based learning, you have to adopt what standard you choose to live and educate by. The mentality that you are already behind from your beginning is self-defeating.
Opportunities for enrichment and learning do not only happen between August and May. Avoid the tug and trend of the public educational world that tells you when you are starting mid-year, you have to catch up.
Instead of focusing on what you are not doing right now, remember that this is a big change for your family and everybody will need time to adjust to a new schedule.
Focus on what you have done which is to take control of how you will measure the progress of your children and to not measure them by some perfect child that does not even exist.
The rigors of withdrawing from public school after possible drama can make it physically and mentally exhausting for the whole family.
The beginning is a point to learn about how to homeschool and that is enough for the first year of change.
Look at 8 Components of a Boxed Curriculum and How to Use a Boxed Curriculum without Giving Up Your Homeschool Approach because you can glean some tips by easing the stress of lesson planning in the beginning.
Start taking control back of your family’s education by allowing them time to recuperate and rest before your embark on your new journey. This process is called deschooling.
Deschooling can mean several things depending on your family’s circumstances.
The common factor among most families is that it is a time to step back and assess what you want for your family.
It can mean taking time to physically rest. For some families it is a time to rethink their educational goals and for other families it can be at time to rekindle their relationship with one another.
However you choose to use this time depends on the needs of your family. Avoid setting up dogmatic rules about how long your family needs to recover.
Some families need a few weeks to recover and others need a few months. It does not mean you don’t do any learning.
It does mean you decide during this recovery period what your family will learn. Take time to explore your possibilities and options.
Avoid cracking open your curriculum immediately.
This can be especially hard if you feel that your child has been getting further and further behind.
What I want you to know is that when a parent spends one-to-one time training their children, they will excel at academics. And normally, this can be done in half the time the public school takes for the day to do academics.
What I am saying is that you have time. Take time to nurture the strained relationship with your child first. This is especially important if your child is older.
FIRST WARNING SIGNS OF HOMESCHOOL BURNOUT
Up to this time, your child’s experience with public school may be negative or maybe this year you have had a negative experience with your homeschool approach or curriculum.
This negative experiences can affect how a child thinks learning is suppose to happen. Digging deeper into something that is not working only sets you back instead of thrusting you forward. Don’t do it.
Start out your year by studying something that captures your child’s love of learning. Take a look at 50 Free History Unit Studies and grab you one or two.
For some kids this is a craft, for older children it can be a unit study on a topic they find fascinating and for others it can be creating a hands-on model of something they want to learn about.
Reading aloud together also engenders a love of learning and it is not just for preschool age children.
I have read to my two older sons until high school. Besides equating reading with sheer pleasure, it evokes the feeling of a warm atmosphere in my home.
Our reading together many times has turned into precious and personal time where my sons pour our their hearts to me about what is on their mind.
Creating opportunities to repair the relationship or even to nurture it takes leisurely moments of time. That can’t be done when your only focus is cracking open the math workbook.
Avoid over committing.
Committing to your child means not over committing to other activities outside the house.
Trying to right all the perceived wrongs to our child, we may feel that joining every field trip group, local co-op and outside classes will be just the thing that our child needs.
Don’t flee one stressful schedule to run into another one even if the activities seem helpful.
Limiting outside activities in the beginning will allow your family time to adjust to a new lifestyle without the stress of too many outside activities.
As your family adjusts to a new routine and new curriculum, gradually fold in other activities.
This allows time for you to focus on what is important, which is getting to know how your child learns best, taking time to adjust to new curriculum and reading all you can about homeschooling.
When home and school meet up mid-year, it should be a time of exploring, experimenting, and evaluating.
It is a time to focus on what is important to you and to not follow what somebody else says to do.
Avoid the 3 common traps when beginning mid-year, which are I’m-already-behind mentality, cracking open the curriculum instead of focusing on what your family wants to learn and don’t over commit to outside activities thinking that your child needs his schedule filled up at every waking moment with socialization. He does not.
You only have one new beginning, keep it memorable. How do you plan to kick off your new year?
Hugs and love ya,
Grab some more posts on how to kick off your new year!
Should A Child Have a Choice to Return To Public School?
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