Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

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Homeschool Simply

Finding Joy In Homeschooling When You are Not Really Feeling It

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Finding joy in homeschooling when you are not really feeling it is not easy when you don’t know the secret to keeping to it.

First, it really is important to think of the blessings we have received and progress we have made to this point. We need to be thankful for them.

Finding Joy In Homeschooling When You Are Not Really Feeling It @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Discontentment is about not appreciating the progress you and your children have made so far.
The overwhelming pressure to keep pushing our children and our self to maxed out limits triggers discontentment.

Fault finding and complaining are close allies of discontentment. Discontentment can rob you of homeschooling joy.
Because we are imperfect we will always have feelings of being inadequate.

Too, we are not immune to this world’s constant bombardment of thinking that more academics and beginning at a very early age equates to homeschooling success. <

Miserable or Merciful Homeschool Mom

Second, as moms if we constantly fault find with our children and keep switching curriculum in the hopes of finding something better, we rob our children of valuable time that could be spent together.

The most rounded out, happy and contented successful homeschooling families have all shared a common thread.

The environment the child learns in and the attitude of joy that was maintained by the whole family was of far more importance than being overly concerned about national test levels.

True, it’s not easy to feel joyful if we are sick, have fallen behind in our goals, have a household of young demanding children, or have very little support from our husbands as far as homeschooling.

However, focusing on the things we do have, can do and the progress made so far are all incentives to fueling up my homeschooling tank again.

Do You Value the High Cost of Homeschooling?

Do you view it as a privilege to homeschool?
When it’s viewed that way we never take it for granted. If joy is missing in your homeschool day, have you spent time reflecting on the positive?

Savor the progress you made this year. Progress is measured in tiny baby steps. If it’s moving forward at a crawl, it’s still progress.

Contentment is of great value in your journey. Do not compare your progress to others.

Journal or record the progress however tiny it was this year.

The secret of joyfully homeschooling for one year, five or even ten years is sweet contentment.

What about you? Have you found the secret to staying the course?

Also, look at 7 Homeschool Lies I Want to Tell My Younger Self, What I Gave Up to Homeschool (and what I got in return), and 6 Things I Won’t Regret After Homeschooling 16+ Years.

Hugs and you know I love ya,

Signature T

Linking up @ these awesome places:

How Can I Achieve Simple Homeschooling? Dynamic Reader Question

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

Some days it is hard for me to write because I always prefer the weight of a spoken word over a written word when it comes to telling you things that are important to me, like your heartfelt questions.

How can I achieve simple homeschooling is a reader question and I always make time to change my blog posts to talk with you about things that are heavy on your heart.

How Can I Achieve Simple Homeschooling @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusLook at Anne’s question. Do you feel the same way?

“How can I achieve a simple homeschool ? The amount of available options and materials are overwhelming.

Even after 1 1/2 years into it. I just love all the fun and creative ideas out there and get “side tracked” by it all.

I would love to be more minimalist in my homeschooling so I don’t have to do so much sorting, organizing and constant revisiting of plans!

And your amazing blog and Facebook posts are not helping! So many wonderful things, and so much of it free. Who can resist? I look forward to your blog post. Thanks from an unintentional unorganizer who is overwhelmed.”

Satisfied with Simple Homeschooling

Certain times during my homeschooling journey, I envied the pioneers of the past, like my mother, who had very little to choose from when she started homeschooling my youngest sister.

Though I was in high school, I took notice of her home made flash cards, learning games and books she collected.
Her choices for learning products to choose from couldn’t even begin to rival with all the things that you and I have today.

My younger sister’s schooling days were simple, filled with creative learning techniques and fulfilling.

Less is more sometimes.  However, there are many times I remember too that my mom was not allowed to choose from the things we have today because back then she was not viewed as a “real” educator.  She couldn’t receive access to the same learning materials as other teachers.

Things have changed significantly during my homeschool journey because we have access to so many free things that just were not available to those that went before us.  I wouldn’t trade our options today for those limited options back then.

We face another problem today, which is curriculum options overload.
So what I am saying is that though free is available, it doesn’t always mean that it may fit our homeschool plans.
Today, we need to develop the ability as educators to reach back to the simple times of those homeschooling pioneers without giving up the options that we have now.
How do we do that?

Homeschool Teaching Goals vs. Curriculum

Struggling is something no homeschooler likes to do.

Out of struggles at times can come a clear plan of action. From my struggles of deciding which free resources to use, I had to balance them with with my teaching goals.

Along the way, I had forgotten what I was teaching that year, that week or a particular day when I was swimming in a sea of free resources.

Getting caught up in curriculum hype and teaching resources is easy to do.

Trimming those overwhelming resources to usable resources for our family is done way easier when we don’t forget our teaching goals.

Think back to the past again to the one room school houses.
Teachers had very limited resources for multiple ages. Resources were not the teaching tools but teaching goals were primary and resources were built around them.

Coming full circle today, that is why you see many seasoned homeschoolers tout over and over that curriculum is just a tool.  When free resources are used to embellish the direction we are going, those teaching resources just become tools that we are glad we have.

Just because our toolshed is full of unique tools that we may need someday, it does not mean we will use every tool when we simply want to weed a garden or trim the sidewalk.

However, when it comes to time for a big project or a unique project that suits our family, I am always glad I have unique tools on hand and organized in a way that I can find them.

Homeschool Organization – Simple is ALWAYS Best

After determining your teaching goals and being determined to stay on focus, you want to develop an organizational system that works for YOU.

Forget all the crazy notions of things you would never do, develop a simple system for immediately putting that tool where it belongs so you can retrieve it easily when you lesson plan.

A super complicated fancy organizational system does no good if you can’t use it.  It can go from useful to useless real fast.

Think of a system that does not slow you down, but one where you can download the freebies, organize them, put them in the place they belong in the beginning and that can be retrieved easily when you lesson plan. And the best part, it can be done in a few clicks with minimal time.

When I set up my homeschool files on my computer, I knew I didn’t want a kajillion different topic files because that would be hard to retrieve and hard for me look at when there are too many files.

I start with very HUGE general sweeping topics.  For example, SCIENCE, is one big main file.

I am not hunting on my computer for rocks, animals or chemistry.  All of that can fit under one topic.

File: SCIENCE.

Main Science File
I want one go to place for planning science when I get ready. Easy Peazzy.

Then next, I don’t just dump all the freebies in that ONE big file.

I took time to organizes sub-files so that “everything has a place”.

A little side tip about freebies.  Normally freebies come in either one of two ways when we get them.

One way is by grade level and the other way is just by subject.

Think about that for a few minute and it really tames all the freebies. They have a subject matter and are either grade level or not. Simple.

Knowing this, I set up my sub-files by grade level and by topic.

I go one tiny step further and even number them or label the sub-files so they stay in the order that I want them to.

For example, I put zero on Kindergarten sub-file so it stays in grade level order in front of 1st grade and so I don’t think that I missed overlooking making a file.

File: SCIENCE > Grade Level or Topic.{Life Science}

Science Files Organized

Too, you see I have the 4 main branches of science so that if a resource is not specifically grade level, it goes in there.

Then going even further, my sub, sub-files under LIFE SCIENCE are even labeled by plant, animal or human body alphabetically.

I won’t make your eyes pop out, but even under human body, I have sub files for each body part if I find those resources.

File: Science > Life Science> Topic.

Subfile under Life Science

You notice under Life Science that I have a file marked “Animals”.
Sometimes I may come across one free resource and I won’t make a sub file on that animal until I have a few more to put in a file.

This is just my system because until I make a file for it, I know I don’t have that many “tools” for that topic.
It is just MY system but it works for me. You may want to create a sub-file for each freebie you get.
Again, this is just my way of glancing quickly when I am planning and knowing that I don’t have much on that subject when I don’t have a sub-file.

You can see quickly that under many of the sub, sub files like Flowers, Insects, Dogs, Frogs and Human body that you can have many sub,sub,sub files.
Please don’t get overwhelmed with all of this, because you can create files as you go.
In the beginning, all of my files were general files like Animals until I started collecting an overwhelming amount of free resources. Then I slowly set up each file.

Phew. Back to the beginning, can you see though that a good place to start is with GENERAL CATEGORIES?

History, Science, Language Arts, Art, Music and Bible.  That’s it. Start there to organize your freebies as you plod along. Don’t spend time going back over things you already did.

Too, with the overwhelming amount of free online storage, there is no need to worry about downloading and storing your “tools”. Grab them all because homeschooling is a long journey and you’ll be surprised at how many freebies you will cycle through.

Now that I have homeschooled for quite a few years, I have items also stored on a Toshiba, external portable slim drive.

 

I love this baby.  It is so very slim and I can plug it in a second and it goes with me in my purse.

I prefer it sometimes over online storage because of how fast I can retrieve what I need.

Achieving simple homeschool means to not give up all the free resources we have today, but it means to use them to enhance, embellish and make our teaching come alive.

It means to be satisfied with a simple homeschool day like times pasts where kids eyes lit up when the teacher introduced a new tool.

Lastly, it means to set up an easy, non-time consuming system for storing and placing tools right then in their permanent place so that they can be retrieved instantly.

What are some other ways you keep your homeschool simple that Anne could use?

Hugs and love ya,

Tina 2015 Signature

Also, check out these tips for simple homeschooling:

When Homeschooled Kids Are Not Excited About Ordinary Days

Eliminating 3 Non-Essentials in Homeschooling

 

When Homeschooled Kids Are Not Excited About Ordinary Days

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

Hearing other homeschoolers say how excited their child is about a new unit study, a new curriculum or the new school year when you may feel your child is not can certainly make you feel alone.

Do you have a child that is only thinking about what is required so he can spend the rest of the day playing, on the computer or his device?

Facing head on potential road blocks in our homeschool journey like when homeschooled kids are not excited about ordinary days or about anything pertaining to learning is the way I always prefer to tackle hurdles but I didn’t always feel so confident.

Do you feel that homeschooling is like choosing  the lesser of two evils? You are in good company and not alone.
When I started homeschooling I had conjured up a vision that because my education lacked in many areas that my sons would be bright-eyed and eager to learn every day.

I was excited to learn about all of the things I never did in school, but also I was determined to make my sons’ experiences different than mine.
Back to reality, I have had many times when the only thought on my boys’ mind was when is school going to be done so they can get on the computer, turn on the game or eat the left over pizza in the refrigerator.

Guess what? That is why they are not in charge. Let me share a few of my coping techniques.

Whose job is this anyway?

Early on I made it clear to my sons that it is their job to learn even if I am the most boring teacher.

Just like I would be working on my teaching skills, I made sure my kids knew what their role was in homeschooling.
Don’t think that parents who pull their kids out of public school in which they may have had a bad experience are the only ones that deal with a spoon-fed mentality by kids.

Learning to learn is a process for our kids. It is cultivated and nurtured through time and experiences.
There are many days our kids want to just play mindless games and sit back while we spoon feed them.  They are really no different than us if we give in to that inner person or side of our personality that just doesn’t want to show up some days to teach.

The difference between our kids and us of course is not only age but the ability to see the disastrous results if we live our life or homeschool in a mindless way.

Like us, the first step in getting children infused with learning is to teach them that what they can control is to show up at school with a positive attitude.

I have found through the years that instead of putting down how they may feel about homeschooling, I give it merit or validate it.

When our children see that we too as adults have the same feelings at times, it not only makes them feel that they are not alone, but that they can share the negative side of homeschooling and not be chastised for it.

Communicating true feelings even when our homeschooling may be boring is a wake up reminder that we might need to change a few things.
Attitude is the first subtle change to making a difference in our learning and that is something that nobody else can control.

If my children are old enough to cop an attitude about learning, they are old enough to start understanding the disastrous results.

I find it is better to be frank, set boundary lines for learning and explain why you have them for your children than for them to think life is going to be about eating their favorite leftovers of cold pizza each day.

A lot of things in life are just about doing things that we find boring and mundane but we will show up.

“I am not an entertainment act.“

We carry a lot of guilt as moms and negative thinking can make inroads in our hearts.

It is hard to carry around the guilt that our day doesn’t look as exciting as another family’s day.

That clear cut line, in that your child knows your expectations, allows them to work on their positive attitude while you decide where you can make improvement.

While I am sharing secrets, did I tell you that my lapbooks and unit studies were born out of my desire to be a better teacher?

I use to think lapbooks where for only young children. I set a bar for myself, like I do for my sons and wanted my teaching and activities to be something that draws my sons to learning.

Sharing my unit studies and lapbooks allowed me to not only set a standard for the type of teacher I wanted to be but it also shoved deep down that tyrannical mother I could be when it came to learning.

I have learned to let go of the fact that it’s not my fault that some days are just well – routine.

Life and school are very similar because life is more about routine than life altering moments.

I have learned that from routine comes the tiny moments I cherish in homeschooling.

Teaching my sons to value routine was also the start of changing their attitude about learning when most people may think that routine is boring.

Establish a routine. 

We all have interruptions in our school.

It can be hard to break the habit of letting things that are nonessential take over our day and break our routine.

I feel all homeschoolers crave routine even though sometimes we don’t recognize our natural desire to have a flow to day that we can predict.

Following our body’s natural rhythm to sleep, eat and move around, we have that same desire to learn and be educated.

When my sons know what to expect each day and don’t wander around aimlessly asking what we are going to do each day, it makes for calm in my home.

Post a visual homeschool schedule if your children are young or post a class schedule in their notebooks if your children are older.

Help them to get started on time by not having so much chaos in the house that it is distracting to their routine.

I still find everything fascinating about learning but more importantly I find happiness in being passionate about teaching my sons.

Enthusiasm is contagious and it starts with you, not them.

It doesn’t mean we don’t require a positive attitude when our children show up for learning, but it means we model the type of adults we want our children to eventually be.

Weaved into that attitude is the reason we are excited about showing up each day to homeschool.

I don’t believe the only reason we should be eager learners is to get a good paying job or to go to college but for the gift of curiosity.
Curiosity has sticking power unlike any career or any college degree.

I have also  learned that it is my job to try to make each day a little better than the next day.
Because I can’t sing, dance or draw my sons will have to accept I will do my best to teach and I will accept that they will do their best to show up for days that are just ordinary.

How about you? Are most of your days just ordinary?

Hugs and love ya,

Check out these other tips!

How To Fake Homeschooling

Biggest Challenges to Homeschooling

Easy Ways to Break Out of a Homeschool Rut

Helping our Homeschool Children Find their Inner Drive When We are Not Sure We Have It

3 Traps to Avoid When Home and School Come Together Mid-Year

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

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,

2012Tinasignature Treasure the Moments of Homeschooling Testosterone Armed Teen Boys

Grab some more posts on how to kick off your new year!

Should A Child Have a Choice to Return To Public School?

“But the little dear doesn’t want to homeschool”

Eliminating 3 Non-Essentials in Homeschooling

Eliminating 3 Non-Essentials in Homeschooling

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

With our move to South America, I had two suitcases to pack with what was absolutely essential to living in South America.  Included in our two suitcase maximum for each person was not just clothes, but homeschooling books.

Non-Essentials In Homeschooling

Eliminating non-essentials was utterly crucial to making a smooth transition.  The line between absolutely vital and unimportant became very clear.

Homeschooling is similar because there are just some things that are not required to raising life long learners.  Instead of a homeschooling help, some things can become a hindrance.

Look at these Tips to Eliminating 3 Non-Essentials in Homeschooling.

Assigning a Book Report – Non-Essential.  I did it too.  I assigned my boys books reports in the beginning of my homeschool journey only because that is what I did in public school. 

Like most new homeschooling teachers I associated books reports with good readers and writers. 

The longer I homeschooled, the more I realized that my strategies like reading aloud, practicing writing each day, acting out stories, creating puppets with the boys when they were preschool age and debating an author’s viewpoint in the high school grades was incredibly more powerful.

It has been my experience that forced book reports do not fuel the love for reading and especially with wiggly boys.

Also, I learned that if I just had to assign one for the language arts teacher inside of me then assign a book my kids don’t like. Who really wants to be forced to use literary analysis on a book they love?

Instilling the pleasure of reading or lingering over vocabulary for the love of words has to be cultivated with other equally pleasurable tasks.

When you are doing copywork with your children, talking orally about the plot or rising action of a book or researching about an author, information in a book is then absorbed and retained.

More important reading is associated with pleasure and not drudgery.

College Degree – Non-Essential.  As you homeschool longer, you realize that all that is needed is the ability to learn alongside your children.

Here is a little secret I learned while conducting my homeschooling workshops. 

Quite a few of the public school teachers in my workshop didn’t want the other moms in the workshop to know they were teachers. 

Of course, I was elated and enthusiastic to have quite a few public school teachers in my workshops because I savored our time together as we shared teaching tips.

However, many (not all) of the public school teachers turned homeschool educator felt that their college education hampered their ability to think outside the box. 

Appreciating their candor and vulnerability, I realized we all struggle with things that make us feel inadequate.

A parent’s degree or lack of it has very little bearing on the success of their journey.

Check out the article The Myth of Teacher Qualifications by HSLDA.

Knowing All the Answers – Non-Essential. We may think we need to know all the answers, but when I have been honest with my boys by letting them know that I don’t know all the answers, they appreciate that I am human too.

What I have found is that knowing where to go to find the answers or how to connect with other homeschoolers has been more essential.

Too, a dogged determination, willingness to work hard and an unwavering dedication to your children's education have been the keys to successfully homeschooling.

Eliminating the clutter as I packed and weighed each bag carefully for our move, though stressful at the time, allowed more room for what was really important.

Only so much will fit in a bag and only so much will fit into a homeschool day.

Looking back now, unloading all that clutter and eliminating the non-essentials has allowed me to maximize the time we have together by savoring what we brought with us.

You'll love my other tried and true tips through they 20+ years I've homeschooled.

What about you? Have you overstuffed your day with non-essentials?

Hugs and love ya,

Patience, Confidence, Knowing all the Answers – NOT Required to Homeschool

3 Homeschooling Myths Debunked

Things Homeschoolers Know