Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Activity, Change, Progress

Be an Exceptional Homeschool Teacher

10 Days Why A Homeschool Mom Is Not Better Than a Public School Mom (but could be). Day 1

| Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

10 Days of Why A Homeschool Mom Is Not Better Than a Public School Mom (but could be). Day 1. Patience Is Not Instantly Bestowed

Jumping into homeschooling is a scary thing. Just ask any homeschool educator. Whether she is new or not, she vividly remembers the uneasy feeling of beginning.

Looking at homeschooling from the outside in is quite different than looking from the inside out and I want to give you a peek into our days as homeschool moms.

Why A Homeschool Mom Is Not Better Than a Public School Mom (but could be).

Too, so that you can step into my toes (or is that shoes, sorry couldn’t resist) I will be sharing this series of 10 Days Why A Homeschool Mom Is Not Better Than a Public School Mom (but could be) starting with day 1 why patience is not instantly bestowed upon us.

Saying that we are going to homeschool doesn’t mean our personality as a mom is immediately going to change.

You would think that choosing curriculum for our children is the only fear, but right up there on our list of top concerns is the idea that we will need to exercise some extraordinary amount of patience.

Though I am in my 18th or 19th year of homeschooling, I admit patience is not the shining trait that bubbles forth from my kids when they describe me.

Does Patience (Calm) Equal Closeness While Homeschooling?

One definition of patience is to wait calmly for something. Normally calm is not a word that synonymous with me.

What I can say is that learning to not rush judgment on my boys while schooling them or judging other homeschoolers for their choices has made me closer to them.

Seeking calm and quite while homeschooling is key though to successfully blocking out the negatives thrown our way.

Though I never achieved perfect homeschooling, I’ve found a perfect calm for whatever situation we faced at the time.

Patience IS Power!

Beginning homeschooling with an overconfident attitude is the difference between a homeschool mom and a wannabe homeschool mom.

The point is as homeschool moms we struggle just as much as a public school mom when it comes to teaching our children patiently or waiting on them to reach a milestone.

Through the years we have learned patience through the many challenges we have met.

Learning that patience is a sign of strength and character that is tested and strengthened while on the job, not at the beginning of it, you have to be willing to learn as a homeschool mom.

If you begin homeschool with an unteachable attitude as a teacher or try to wear your feelings on your sleeve and never accept any suggestions to change, you can set yourself for failure. Who wants that?

Being patient is not about being hesitant or unsure, but it is about taking time to change your personality so that you not only savor the special moments of homeschooling, but so that you become a rock star teacher.

It’s true. The difference between a homeschool mom and a public school mom is that a homeschool mom learns patience on the job and then her enthusiasm for teaching overflows. Her children are affected by the excitement she brings to the learning table.

Today, I do admit that if you were to ask my boys about me being calm while I’m explaining a new point to them, they’ll admit I have that mastered.I still have plenty to work on though.

And don’t get me wrong, patience is never mastered, just cultivated all the time and especially while homeschooling.

I will be sharing 9 more ways why a homeschool mom is not better than a public school mom (but could be).

Do you feel that you have mastered the art of patience?

Also look at these three articles 3 Homeschooling Myths Debunked, Should A Child Have a Choice to Return To Public School and Looking Back To Stretch Forward.

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for more AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

3 Reasons to NOT Avoid the Homeschool Middle Ground

| Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

3 Reasons to NOT Avoid the Homeschool Middle Ground @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Fighting mini battles while we homeschool becomes part of our homeschool lifestyle. And it’s true that for many issues involving education, homeschoolers don’t wade in lukewarm waters nor take the middle of the ground approach. Being firmly decisive is key to surviving the harsh amount of negativity that is thrown our way.

Standing Firm on Homeschool Middle Ground

However, many things in homeschooling are more successful when you can step back and straddle the middle road. Sometimes taking an all or nothing approach can be counter productive, even extreme at times.

Look at these 3 reasons to NOT avoid the homeschool middle ground.

ONE/  When you do a unit study with multiple ages of children.

You can set your homeschool day up for failure when you use a learning resource that is too high above your oldest child’s head or one that is too young below it.

It’s a common mistake; choosing a unit study resource that is the grade level of your oldest child.

The secret to individualizing a delightful unit study topic is to  choose the middle grade between the ages of your children.

Seasoned homeschool veterans know that it’s easier to scale down activities for younger grades. Use the example of a plant unit study.

Younger students can color, label and dissect a plant. Older students or high school students can use the same unit study, but expand the activities on it to a high school level.

For example, older students can include plant history, learn about the local plants in your area and even spend some time in an apprenticeship learning from local professionals about herbs or plants. Ideas to use for an older student spring from the middle of the grade resource that you are currently using.

Not all ideas are so easy to round up for an older learner, but they are more useful than a resource used for your youngest learner.

TWO/ When you mix and match homeschool curriculum.

It’s easy to use the same curriculum provider with all of your children. Why would you do that though?

Each child is as unique as each homeschool family or should be.

Take the middle ground, avoid the extreme by choosing just one homeschool curriculum and use pieces and parts of a boxed curriculum, unit study and another curriculum to create a study that is unique for each child.

If you’re using just one type of curriculum, then one or more of your children may not be benefiting from it as much as another child. Mixing and matching homeschool curriculum will ensure a better fit for all of your children.

THREE/ When you begin homeschooling high school.

I did it too when I started homeschooling high school and that is to right away in 9th grade take a sock it to him attitude when planning.

High school is not about controlling your teen through his high school years, but it’s about working alongside each other. It is a give and take.

You give because your teen is a different person than you and your husband and he has goals and inspirations now that he too wants to meet. But it’s a take also because you don’t want to give up all your goals or plans for your teen’s future and some things will be must-haves in high school.

What I’m saying is that you choose the middle ground in high school when you help a teen keep balanced in all subjects until he decides his goals.

Some adults don’t even know what they won’t do, so don’t put a lot of pressure on a teen. Take the middle road by keeping subjects balanced until a mommy track, college track or job track is decided.

Also, grab some other tips from my other articles Homeschool Confession – My Homeschool Mistakes, Go Ahead and Make a Mistake: Homeschool Without Fear and Homeschooling – Beginnings are Usually Scary, Endings are Usually Sad, but It’s What’s In the Middle that Counts!.

Don’t give up the fight in touting the decisive ways we need to take a stand when it comes to homeschooling, but just know that the middle ground can not only be productive, but necessary many times in your journey.

What else do you take the middle ground on while homeschooling?

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for more AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

Save

Save

How to Grow to Love Being a Homeschooler

| Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

How to Grow to Love Being a Homeschooler. You can begin to homeschool without adopting the homeschool lifestyle but you would be missing out @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Whether it was a last-ditch decision or you planned for years to homeschool before your first child was born, everybody who begins to homeschool has to make the decision to grow to love being a homeschooler or not.

It can just be an educational choice or you can decide to passionately live the homeschool lifestyle.

Enjoying the benefits of the homeschool approach without adopting the lifestyle is possible, but not without being short-changed.

How can you adopt the homeschool lifestyle or be sure that you are embracing it to the fullest extent that your circumstances allow?

Look at these three ways how to measure your growth.

ONE | You have stopped trying to find the perfect curriculum.

It was about five years into my homeschooling journey when I learned that the challenge of choosing curriculum wasn’t going away. I knew that teaching my sons through everyday life was paramount.

Nurturing a Love for Lasting Learning

Living the homeschool lifestyle means that curriculum is now just a tool and you learn that it doesn’t really teach anything.

Sure, I need to have objectives and choose curriculum that gives me the freedom to teach my worldview, but I am doing the teaching.

What you are willing to do to teach your children is way more valuable than what you are willing to buy to teach them.

The challenge in homeschooling is not the endless pursuit of curriculum, but in helping your child to maintain his love of learning that he had when he was young.

Adopting the homeschool lifestyle means that you have moved beyond curriculum, progress reports, tests and needing accolades from friends and family that you are doing a super job.

Now, you simply don’t care what other people think. Did I mention it’s really liberating?

Learning that your life, no matter how boring you may think it is, it’s full of rich meaning for your children.

TWO | You maintain a homeschool routine, but not necessarily a rigid schedule.

Another tell-tale sign that you have embraced natural learning is that no longer do you fight to maintain your homeschool routine, but now homeschooling is not something extra you do in the day. It is the way you spend your day and everything else now revolves around it.

It’s hard for anything you begin to become a lifestyle overnight.

I think about being newly married or when I lost a lot of sleep when I brought my first son home from the hospital. Significant changes in my life called for significant effort to make them part of my life. It’s not long after the new changes in your life that you realize it’s hard to remember a time without your kids or your spouse.

Homeschooling becomes the same way. You are not constantly worried about completing curriculum or making grades and testing. Like life, you realize homeschooling has certain tests that need to be met, bt you meet them like you do anything else in your household.

THREE | You learned that you can’t homeschool on an ‘island.’

Associating with and joining with homeschoolers is like being immersed in learning another language. Until you do it, you can’t see where you’re coming up short.

For example, I didn’t fully appreciate how much faster we could learn another language until we had moved overseas. Having studied Spanish for many years, I had a good command of the vocabulary, but it was fragmented.

After we moved to South America and received total language immersion, it made me fully appreciate the language, lifestyle and culture.

When you refrain from meeting up with other homeschoolers or isolate you and your kids, it’s not only unhealthy, but it’s unnatural.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not telling you that you have to be a social butterfly and join every possible homeschool groups. Some groups are just too extreme for my taste and I tend to be very picky.

How Are You Measuring Up in Adopting the Homeschool Lifestyle?

What I am saying is that when you and your family stand in stark contrast to those in your neighborhood or your friends, you need a support system with others who are like-minded.

Instead of being overly critical of other homeschoolers’ choices when you meet with them, look at what you can learn from them. I received tips on how to homeschool multiple children, make time for myself and move ahead on curriculum when we were hitting a brick wall. Without the tips, I would have struggled longer.

Growing is part of everyday life and it’s amazing. If something or someone is not growing, it’s always a sign that something is wrong.

Have you adopted the homeschool lifestyle?

Grab some more ways to be an empowered homeschooler below:

3 Reasons Why Homeschoolers Are Take Charge People
Go Ahead and Make a Mistake: Homeschool Without Fear
10 Books That Boost Your Homeschool Zen (When It May Be Sagging)

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for more AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

 

Save

Save

3 Reasons Why Homeschoolers Are Take Charge People

| 6 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

3 Reasons Why Homeschoolers Are Take Charge People @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Whether you’re timid by nature (sometimes, I wish I were) or if you’re loud and get fired up easily like I can be when talking about homeschooling, homeschoolers are take charge people.

Did you know that you’re in the norm when you can’t figure out which curriculum to use with your children or when you worry about socialization for them?

What you have figured out is that you don’t swallow the bunk meted out by homeschooling critics when they tout that your kids are unsocialized or that we are die hard religious fanatics.

We very well may be religious zealots or our kids may be on the weird side, but we do know the answer is not sending them to public school.

Shatter The Image – All Homeschoolers Are Not Religious Zealots

Admittedly, I do get tired of hearing how the only reason we homeschool is for religious reasons and the reason our kids say offensive things is because they are homeschooled.

Look at these 3 reasons why homeschoolers are take charge people.

ONE | Homeschoolers are take charge people because we are willing to not just question the educational system, but to step out of it and go against it.

What you have figured out is that the educational system can’t have it both ways.

Either public schools are becoming more dangerous, only care about tests, don’t teach our kids math and reading well, don’t do enough about bullying, not to mention drugs or it is the place we are suppose to send our kids to learn to get a superior education and be “socialized.”

The public school educational system is flawed and though I don’t think none of us claim to be experts on parenting, we are the experts in knowing the needs of our children.

TWO | Homeschoolers are take charge people because we don’t make excuses for our kids.

We don’t make the assumption that could be a trap for homeschoolers which is that homeschooling ensures success.

Instead of making excuses for our kids, we are willing to exert the effort to ensure that they not only get the basics of a well-rounded out education, but we go above and beyond what the curriculum is teaching.

Not making excuses for our kids negative behavior, lack of study skills or bad attitude, we are willing to confront that head-on.

Knowing that we are not guaranteed success, but that homeschooling sure stacks the chances of success in our favor, we are willing to work hard for our kids.

THREE | Homeschoolers are take charge people because we are homeschooling to equip our kids to be independent adults and to learn valuable life skills.

Do I really need to mention that we are not interested in just meeting academic standards of public school, but exceeding them?

We already know that superior academics is a given as a standard for most homeschool families, but we want it all when it comes to educating our children.

For example, most parents know that their kids don’t know how to budget, know about checking or savings account or about taxes.

Let me rephrase that, teens may think money comes from putting their debit or credit card card in the machine and money miraculously comes from a checking or savings account.

Appreciating the value of hard work, budgets and how to manage money is something homeschool parents are not leaving up to public school.

True, not all kids coming from public school are ill-equipped to handle life skills, but we both know that teaching life skills is not top priority in public school.

We are take charge people because we are willing to work extra hard at teaching our children not only academics, but valuable life skills so they can be an effective decision-maker.

Whether Christian or secular, we want to teach our children our values and want to go above standards set by any school. Too, our children are bad on their own without the influence of public school and that too is our problem as a parents.

Going against the current is flat out hard and I too want to give up on some days. But then I think about the flip side of this homeschooling life by floating along and following the masses and that I can’t imagine.

Having it all figured out doesn’t make you a take charge person, but taking on the lifelong journey of educating your children does.

I’m glad to be in your company.

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Also look at The Truth About Delaying a Start to Homeschooling because homeschooling because it is a last ditch effort may not work for you, and 10 Books That Boost Your Homeschool Zen (When It May Be Sagging).

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for more AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

The Problem Choosing Between Homeschool Mom and Homeschool Teacher

| 8 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

The Problem Choosing Between Homeschool Mom and Homeschool Teacher @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Do we really need to choose between homeschool mom or homeschool teacher? Do our kids benefit when we separate the two roles?

My first few years of homeschooling, I hardly recognized myself.

Sounding more like a drill sergeant when we started our day than a caring loving educator, whose first concern should be the emotional well-being of my children, something had to change.

I didn’t like myself and my kids for sure didn’t like me. Like any new or seasoned homeschool educator, I too was concerned that my kids wouldn’t learn how to develop study skills, self-motivation and an intrinsic love of learning. It’s flat out hard to find a balance. More on that in a minute.

Fast forward to now after graduating two of my sons, I learned that I didn’t need to separate the two roles.

Instead of using energy draining formal teacher tactics, my focus should have been on valuing the many future opportunities that I was going to have of bringing meaning to learning and naturally teaching my boys.

Unlocking the Natural Teacher Within You

Learning to unlock the natural teacher within you is more about appreciating that you shouldn’t choose between homeschool mom and homeschool teacher, but it’s a fuse of the two.

First, it’s important to remember when you homeschool that mom is your first calling.

When you have a child, you know the role of mom is important because the emotional stability, health, safety, personality, spiritual and educational well-being of your child is a serious responsibility.

What I am saying is that I learned educating my child was just another facet of motherhood and not something separate from it.

Furthermore, like me, you are probably the first person, who taught your baby his first word and he started to learn his mother tongue. All the pieces started to fall into place as I pondered what I had done right up to the age before “formal” schooling.

Realizing that I had to leave behind the public school mentality, I didn’t have to learn how to be a teacher. To successfully homeschool, I needed to learn how to be the best mother I could be.

That huge revelation brought homeschooling into something that not only could I achieve successfully, but to treasure, love passionately and stick to because it is as natural as mothering. 

When the switch flipped to a new thinking, my focus was on teaching my sons all those things I worried about like any other homeschool mom.

Letting Every Day Life Teach Meaningful Lessons

Energy could now be focused on identifying my son’s weakness.

For example, when I was teaching my sons to write, a homeschool room was a must-have for us. I didn’t have to be concerned with a seasoned homeschool mom tell me when I started homeschooling that I would never use a homeschool room. We did and it proved exactly perfect for my family. Look at my article, Dedicated Homeschool Room or Dining Room Homeschooler.

I trusted my mother instinct, not my teacher instinct. Too, workbooks and books are only part of learning and rigorous standards are important to me and I know too for other homeschoolers.

But we have a huge advantage when we learn outside of four walls and that is we allow every day life to teach our children meaningful lessons. They do happen.

Taking homeschool co-op classes outside of the home and taking instruction from another teacher gave my boys a sense of working with others. Again, as a mother I am concerned with my sons’ lasting happiness. That means I want them to learn to accept others and learn how to communicate with them.

Did I mention they learned to take notes and manage deadlines, which are valuable study skills that I wanted my boys to learn?

Do We Really Need to Prove our Homeschool Worthiness?

All of this and more happened because naturally as we lived life, I seized moments to teach them.

Yes, I think as homeschool moms we tend to try to over achieve and feel we may have to turn every moment into something learning because we may feel the weight of our lifestyle choice hanging around us.

Shedding that let-me-prove-it-to-you mindset allows you to homeschool more freely without feeling you have to prove something to friends and to the world. Can you relate? Look at my article, Homeschooling for the Love of Learning – Does It Really Work.

Learning that things happen in life, which give me perfect teaching moments has made homeschooling natural without worrying which hat I am wearing.

Too, not choosing between two hats, but as the person that knows my sons the best, I know when it’s time to be mom and when it’s time to be teacher. Being a home educator is just another role as mom.

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for more AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.