Homeschool Simply

Why Nobody Cares if You Homeschool Year-Round (or shouldn’t)

May 18, 2016 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Why Nobody Cares if You Homeschool Year-Round @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus — Why Nobody Cares if You Homeschool Year-Round @ Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus

While I sit here writing this article, my husband has made a change into a new career that we’ve planned for and are excited about. Starting out, it means working 7 days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Grueling schedule to say the least for him, and I’m right there cooking/packing every meal for him because his workplace doesn’t have a restaurant. And a lot of times, he can’t leave the building for lunch or his lunch is shortened back from one hour.

Back to my point, what does this have to do with homeschooling year-round? Everything, for me.

That is just the point, my schedule has nothing to do with your family’s schedule and the schedules of other families have nothing to do with mine.

I too have shared many times over about the the advantages of homeschooling year-round, but it’s more important to know how to tell if you can instead of telling you why you should.

Look at Homeschooling Year Round Chaos or Calm, What is Year Around Homeschooling Part 1 and Part 2 if you want some more tips.

Homeschooling too is about not being sorry or feeling guilty for things you can’t control.

3 Quick Tips to Adapt to Homeschooling Year-Round

Instead of sharing pros and cons of homeschooling year-round because they won’t help one bit if you can’t, I want to share how to tell if you should even consider it.

Family schedule matters.

There is just no getting around it, your child’s learning ability can’t be the only weighing factor as to whether or not you homeschool year-round.

For example, my husband’s schedule is pretty predictable right now.

Homeschooling year-round gives me to time to plod along when I am getting up every morning at 4:30 to 5:00 a.m.

I wake my kids right up alongside us because I need my whole household to be on the same schedule.

By the way, this is a tried and trued tip, which has worked for me as we have experienced many different schedules. It is just too hard, not to mention stressful when half of your family gets up when they want to or some other hour and the other half doesn’t.

Guess what? The do-whatever-you -want-to- schedule for the kids comes back to bite you when you need your household quiet for the Mr. or even for a younger child.

This summer, instead of starting school at 9:00 or 9:30 a.m. like we use to, we start school closer to 8:00 a.m. or even before because we have been up for a while, finished chores and are ready for our day.

I remember back to our very first co-op I attended where the leader canceled school for the summer. I was puzzled because my kids were little and I was ready to keep on going.

Finding out later that day that her husband was the head coach at the local public school, I learned right away how a family schedule affects year round-homeschooling.

Who wants to have such a rigid day of homeschooling when dad is off for the summer? Not me.

Seasons matter.

I would like to say that seasons don’t matter here in Texas, but when you have 3 days of winter (okay, we had a bit more this year) and a lot of summer heat, days are long and hot.

Having the top of my kids’ heads baked just never appealed to me. Our time outdoors during the summer months is limited to a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening.

Guess what? That is a lot of in between time, which needs to be filled with meaningful activities.

For a majority of our homeschool years we have homeschooled during the summer than not because it filled our days with meaning and it also meant we could skip school on days when the weather changed to glorious.

When it is spring or fall, we don’t feel guilty spending a lot of time outdoors because we’re normally well ahead in our curriculum.

High School matters.

The few times we have followed a traditional public school schedule is when my oldest two sons graduated.

Whether your child is interested in going to college right away, starting a career or doing some Bible based work, you need to be sure he starts off right by finishing school close to the time he suppose to graduate.

There is nothing that stresses a responsible homeschooled teen more than having the feeling of being behind because he has a life after homeschooling.

Whether you read the pros and cons of homeschooling year-round, it shouldn’t matter to you because many years, homeschooling year-round has little to do with whether you want to or not and a lot to do with your family’s present groove.

Mercifully, homeschooling fits your circumstances and circumstances can change quickly.

By the way, I love this new schedule as we have all settled into it and knowing my husband’s deployment will be a few short months, like 3 or 4 at a time, I find the good in it.

Did I mention how much I get done each day by being up early every day? Here and there he may have off Sundays and that is a plus too.

Hugs and love ya,

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.

Linking up @ these places:

3 Reasons Why Homeschoolers Are Take Charge People

May 15, 2016 | 6 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

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,

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

April 17, 2016 | 8 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

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,

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.

How to Homeschool If You Don’t Have Time

April 11, 2016 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Living in a society that is more connected than ever before with smart phones, tablets, and computers, those devices have made life easier than it did for our parents. Unlike our parent’s time though, demands on our time have not lessened. Life now is more frantic and fast-moving than ever before.

When Time Gets Slipping Away

In the beginning of my homeschool journey, we didn’t have as many time saving devices as we do now.

Now, in the latter part of my journey, we have many conveniences at our fingertips, but I still find it hard to make time to homeschool. Can you relate?

Today, in sharing how to homeschool if you don’t have time, I want to share a few sanity-saving tips that have helped me to have forward momentum.

Remain schedule focused.

Come what may in terms of apps, planners and devices, my schedule is the only thing I have control over. And in the spirit of keeping it real, I’m not talking about controlling those moments in life that just happen. I do mean that success happens when your schedule becomes a habit.

Hard is an understatement for training wiggly, active and low attention span boys to learn study habits. But as S L O W as my progress was some days, I cut out time from other things to maintain our schedule.

If I am on the computer, on the phone or still cleaning when it was time to start school, I am not modeling the right study skills for my boys when they are young.

It’s a SWEET payoff now that I am down to the last kid and he starts school on his own while I enjoy extra coffee time, extra time on a walk or on the phone.

My boys have been trained to get started for the day by me modeling what I wanted from them. All I can think of now is back to the time when I started homeschooling and seasoned homeschoolers would say the time goes by fast. It does!

By taking time to model what you want first in the morning, you are freeing up thousands of sweet moments later. It’s been worth every effort of sticking to my schedule!

I demanded chores to be done.

In this world of don’t-require-anything-of-me-because-you-might-break-my-free-spirit attitude, I rejected that thinking and stuck to my guns when it was time to do chores both for the family and individually.

The home is a place shared by many individuals and doing a few chores every morning has been one key to maintaining sanity. The important tip though has been accepting a kid cleaned house and getting started for the day.

Not so easy to do when you want to go behind your kids and do it again yourself to be sure it’s done right. That is the difference between success and failure.

Consistency is the key to homeschooling and parenting (you know the two concepts are inextricably linked) and I want my sons to be the kind of people that other people want to be around and have as friends and marriage mates later.

Considerate, clean and being conscientious are skills learned when chores are required.

Counting the Cost of Trivial Time Pursuits

Did I mention the feel good moment when your adult son’s room mate says your son is one of the best room mates he has had? This gives me a good glimpse into how he is around others when I’m not around. You respect others when you keep your surroundings clean.

Don’t be always ready to share your time with others in trivial things.

It may sound harsh, but like any long term career there is a cost to homeschooling that goes beyond dollars.

Some, not all, homeschoolers are the social kind that needs interaction with friends on a daily basis.

While homeschooling is not asking you to make a choice between your kids sand your friends, it is about making your kids priorities. Especially if friends are non-homeschooling friends, they may not understand why you may decide to not exercise your homeschool freedom right then by visiting or running errands with them.

Be willing to limit your time on devices too.

I don’t ask my boys to do something that I am not willing to do.

Many times throughout the years, I have been tempted to slip away to check email or texts while my boys are busy writing. When they were young, it was more important that I did not do that. Now that my baby is in high school, I have more time to do things like that.

By limiting my internet time in the beginning, my sons learned to do what is important first.

Not getting caught up in the hype of frantic living takes effort nowadays.

Turning off the TV and sitting down in the floor like we still do to play a family board game is a battle, but once we get started, it’s hard to stop our family time. Homeschooling is no different and requires just as much effort today.

Don’t get caught up in the fast-paced, more is better attitude that can saturate our lives right now. Knowing that you made each morning a priority in learning brings sweet peace and progress.

How do you shove back when your life becomes hectic?

Hugs and love ya,

Also, grab some tips from these articles:

Stop the Homeschool Time Drain
Divide And Conquer The Ever Growing List of Homeschool Subjects
The Sticking Power of a Homeschool Schedule
3 Easy Fixes to Recharge Your Homeschool Routine

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.

Linking up @ these places:

Top 5 Tips for Homeschooling Parents

January 15, 2016 | 2 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Let’s face it. Parenting is hard enough, but then you decide to homeschool. Knowing which hat to wear, the teacher hat or parent hat seems more like a juggling act than educating a child.

By the way, this blog hop is organized by The Jenny Evolution, where bloggers have connected to share their top parenting tips of the year. Be sure to click the image above to visit all the other articles shared on each blog.

Look at these top 5 tips for homeschooling parents that I rounded up from 2015 that I hope will help to smooth the homeschool path for you.

My article, 3 Wrong Ways to Homeschool a Hotheaded Child really resonated with you. Avoid my same parenting mistake.

Here is my excerpt from my article that you need to scoot by and read:

When I started homeschooling my first son, Mr. Senior 2013, he was the perfect child to school or least I thought so. Along came Mr. Awesome and I was humbled because all of the sudden I had a hotheaded and stubborn child on my hands or least I thought so.

Then this next article goes directly to the decision you have to make to homeschool your children as the homeschooling parent.

You’d be surprised at how homeschooling parents feel with this article, But the Little Dear Doesn’t Want to Homeschool.

Fake It Til You Make It

Here is my excerpt from my article that you need to scoot by and read:

“In my workshop, I hear the statement often “but the little dear doesn’t want to homeschool”. Okay, maybe not quite like that, but you get the idea. And it’s not from just parents of preteens and teens, but from parents who have very young children, as young as 5 years old.”

What is the alarming truth behind who makes the decision to homeschool? It goes directly to parenting!

Then, I received a lot of emails and feedback about this next article, which is Treasure the Moments of Homeschooling Testosterone Armed Teen Boys.

It’s tough to homeschool boys, who can think completely different than I do much less parent them.

They learn differently, handle their emotions differently than girls and you have to be ready to teach and parent outside the box.

Real Life Parenting Tips

Here is my excerpt from my article that you need to scoot by and read:

“I don’t want to sound cliché, but I treasure the moments of homeschooling testosterone armed teen boys. Thinking back when all the boys were real young, my sis came over to my house one day with her girls, which are about the same age as my boys to discuss how we could join forces to homeschool our kids together.

When we looked up, my boys were outside in the yard with tree branches fighting and her girls were inside coloring pages, inside the lines no doubt.”

Then many things are required of us as homeschooling parents, but Patience, Confidence, Knowing ALL the Right Answers is NOT Required to Homeschool.

Here is my excerpt from my article that you need to scoot by and read:

“If somebody had told me that prior to starting homeschooling I needed patience, confidence and all the answers to every subject, I would not have plunged into homeschooling.”

Then, this next post, 3 Homeschooling Myths Debunked, you loved because it goes directly to facing head on some of the critics of homeschooling because we do spend a lot of time together as a family.

“Taking time to debunk popular homeschooling myths helps to avoid mommy guilt. Confronting head-on homeschooling myths that I have both encountered and that I hear from homeschoolers that I’ve helped through my New Bee program also deepens my dedication to homeschooling. It gives me a chance to ponder, because I know there is always room for improvement in both my parenting and homeschooling skills.”

Also, don’t forget to go through our New Bee Homeschool Program for more great homeschooling parent tips!

Hugs and love ya,

Be sure to follow BOTH of my Pinterest Accounts to grab more homeschooling parenting tips!

Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.

Homeschool Simply

Why Nobody Cares if You Homeschool Year-Round (or shouldn’t)