We always have the best intention when we add more homeschool subjects to our already busy and jam-packed schedule. More is better right?Today, I want to share a few of my secrets that help me to divide and conquer the ever growing list of homeschool subjects.
Are You Sabotaging Your Homeschool Day?
Child’s Age Matters. When teaching the younger grades from PreK to 3rd grade, try to resist the urge to add subjects that go beyond the core subjects.
Look here at What Subjects To Teach and When to Teach Them Part I, What Subjects To Teach and When to Teach Them Part 2,What Subjects To Teach and When to Teach Them Part 3 to get a good overview of the core subjects.
I know, I know, foreign language is best taught in the early grades, but it should not be at the expense of your child not being able to read and write. Too, remember not every homeschool approach is for every child.
When I started homeschooling, I followed a more classical approach, which included teaching Latin extensively. There were some benefits of learning Latin to Mr. Senior 2013, but looking back I see that I could have given him about half as many lessons to accomplish my purpose.
Instead of helping him at the early ages, I was weighing him down with the complexes of language arts that could have waited until the older grades.
On the other hand, if your child is middle school or high school, you want to have a variety of subjects to whet their appetite. By this age, they are beyond the learning to read age and need changes in their schedule and how subjects should be approached.
Look at a few of these other posts to help with those ages too. Homeschool High School The Must Cover Subjects Part 1 and Homeschool High School The Must Cover Subjects Part 2 .
Teaching Your Children To Be Quitters
Keep it Skinny in the Beginning. Waiting until your child has a good foot hold on the basic subjects in math and language arts until you introduce other subjects will help him to avoid burn out.
Too, it will give your child a sense of accomplishment because he finishes what he starts. Why is this important? Because if your child, whatever age they are, never gets past the struggling level, he will never find the intrinsic value of learning.
He never gets the satisfaction and pleasure that comes with learning because he has only struggled with every subject.
Don’t throw out stepping stones to help him be a quitter by continually adding to his mounting list of subjects.
Reevaluate Often/Watch for Overkill. Life changes, our children grow up and have different opinions than us, and you might find a new side or angle to your child that you didn’t know existed before that you now want to nurture. Go with it!
Pitch your curriculum in the trash or toss your subjects aside when they have accomplished whatever immediate need that you wanted to.
For example, all of my boys loved covering critical thinking skills when they were younger. But as they grew older, I realized a lot of the math and history resources that I was using covered some very detailed critical thinking skills.
Covering both history and critical thinking at the same time is a much more better use of your time instead of flipping open the critical thinking workbook after having just covered those skills in history.
Avoid Separating the “Yoke“ Syndrome. Sometimes we just can’t help ourselves and feel we need to compartmentalize every subject, but learning just does not take place like that no matter how hard we try to keep subjects separate.
Even without trying, our children understand they are covering two or more subjects at a time. They understand when they are reading a paragraph about the bull fights in Spain that they are not only checking for cohesiveness in a paragraph, but they are learning about another culture.
You can be the only judge of when homeschool subjects are closing in on your homeschool day. Adding a few of these tips that I shared today, I am hoping they will add the spring back into your step and allow you to check the box “completed”.
What do you do when you find that you have more homeschool subjects than children?
Also, you’ll love these tips:
- A to Z List: Middle and High School Homeschool Electives
- Big Ol’ List of All-In-One Homeschool Curriculum (a.k.a Boxed)
- 3 Ways to Instantly Gain More Time in Your Homeschool Day
- 3 Risks of Not Tracking Your Homeschool Lessons (Even If They’re Laid-Out)
Hugs and love ya
