Today, I’m sharing how to mesh your personality with homeschooling.
We bring our view of what is education to the homeschool world based on our experiences. That’s not the shocking part. How to mesh our personality with homeschooling when they collide is the painful part.
If you’re like me, you’re a product of public school or maybe you fit in the category of being a public school teacher much like the ones I’ve mentored through the years.
When your idea of schooling is constant testing (without being state mandated), over technical lesson plans, and giving daily grades, it can collide with the relaxed homeschool approach.
How to implement the relaxed and successful approach of homeschooling while maintaining much needed guidance for your structured personality is not easy, but it’s possible.
Having started my journey being severely structured and then learning how to implement a delight-directed approach was a gradual process.
How to Mesh Your Personality with Homeschooling
I didn’t take years to adjust to a relaxed approach when I saw that the delight directed approach worked.
However, the organized part of my personality knew that some guidance was needed so important skills like math and writing did not get left out.
Using strengths to shore up weaknesses in my teaching style was the key for me.
Look at how I started slowly until I lit a fire in my kids for learning.
Tip 1: Start with a content subject.
It takes time to move away from segmented subjects and understand that all bodies of knowledge are connected.
So when going from structured to relaxed, start with history, geography, or science to get your feet wet. Look at Skill Subjects vs. Content Subjects: What’s the Difference.
The content subjects don’t have to be introduced or mastered in an exact order like skill subjects, which are the three Rs – reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.
For example, if you choose to cover the American Civil War in 4th grade or 7th grade, there will not be any big gaps in your teaching.
You obviously would expect more research, writing, and maybe map work from a middle schooler than an elementary-aged kid, but that is the only difference.
Tip 2: Field Trips, Living Books, and Projects.
The next thing I had to quickly learn was that tools matter. You can’t expect a talented artist to create masterpieces with lame tools.
Kids are the same; learning tools don’t have to be expensive, but kids need relaxed and unstructured time to use them.
Throwing in a field trip as a second thought instead of being the major learning experience does not stir passion or kindle in the slightest a love of learning.
Surrounding your kids with living books, which are books that explain topics in story form, taking regular meaningful field trips and pursuing projects your kids are passionate about stokes the creative juices.
Look at 5 Steps to Choosing Geography Living Books Your Children Will Love and 13 Living History Books about Ancient Greece.
Also grab some tips from 22 Awesome Homeschool History Field Trips.
Tip 3: EVERYONE is passionate about something.
I hear it all the time.
My kid is not interested in anything. He just wants to play games or ride his bike, or ___ (insert anything here other than “school”). Even games can have educational value.
Turn fun into learning. This is the hard part for personalities who want to stay structured, but I have many examples to show you how. Here is one. Look at my post Screen-Free Educational Activities for Kids Who Love Video Games.
If you fill up every bit of time with scheduled activities, a child has no time to linger. He needs time to investigate, explore, and discover.
Lingering can produce laziness, but it can also produce a lively, energetic kid IF you provide opportunities.
Between you and I, it can be easier for a structured personality to do this because you have a natural bent toward wanting to be organized.
Look at the list below to provide opportunities:
- introduce a totally different subject or course that your family doesn’t know much about like marine biology, interior design, or forensic science. What kid doesn’t want to learn about crime. Don’t focus on grading or completing, just introduce and whet your child’s appetite.
- trade reading for doing. This is not so easy for structured folks who feel that reading a book completely equates to learning sticking. Reading recipes does not make an elite chef. Trading reading for doing looks like this: Instead of reading books only about being interested in pets or animals, volunteer at an animal shelter. If a child is too young, start an easy pet sitting business. When a child wants to learn about music, he plays a piano or guitar. When a child wants to learn about math, he bakes cookies, plays board games, learns by dominoes, learns by a card game, learns by hopscotch and can still read a book. When a teen wants to learn about law, call a law office and have him volunteer for a day or two a week.
The Difference Between Lazy and Relaxed Homeschooler
- strew. Strewing is placing items, books, materials, supplies, games, or any other item in places around your home. It’s intentional. It’s hard to find passions unless a child is exposed to a variety of topics AND when he makes choices from the items instead of being told, it’s empowering. Children will have an insatiable appetite for a topic that aligns with their strengths or interests. Not being told every subject to cover breeds fierce independence in learning.
- reference books. Having more reference book in my home to use for research than textbooks was a game changer for me. Look at 100 BEST Books for Kids from all 50 States (Easy Geography), 5 BEST Books to Create an Around the World Unit Study (and Hands-on Activities), and 3 Less-Known and Irresistible Homeschool Hands-on Science Books to spark a few ideas of what to stockpile in your home.
Tip 4: Turn your weakness into a strength.
One fear of relaxed homeschoolers is not covering everything. It’s the same fear for home educators who have a more structured approach.
Turn your weakness into a strength by creating organizational systems which align with a more relaxed approach.
Hear my heart when I say to let go of all organization is not the answer. It never worked for me. Find your balance by using what your gifts are for your kids.
From my struggle, I created the wildly popular 7 Step Homeschool Planner. It’s a powerful tool for relaxed organization.
More Transitioning to a Relaxed Homeschool Lifestyle Tips
- Transitioning from Public School to Homeschool For a Relaxed Lifestyle
- When Homeschooling is Sucking the Life Out of You
- 26 of the BIGGEST Gripes about the Homeschooling Lifestyle!
- How to Mesh Your Personality With Homeschooling When They Collide
- What is REAL Homeschooling? Homebound, Co-op or Public School at Home
A few key points to take away about my planner is that it’s UNDATED. That is huge for folks who feel once they’ve planned they are behind when the first sick day comes.
Not so with my undated planner. You simply stop schooling and pick up on the next lesson number.
In addition, my drive to do worksheets only turned to creating lapbooks for our unit studies for my kids. I have dozens of them for you here on my site.
I took a strength of organization and aligned it with a hands-on tool like lapbooks.
Finding the Non-School Homeschool Teacher Within
Look at these other ways you can use your strengths:
- create a simple checklist of subjects for the day. Don’t tell the exacts if you want to add more delight-directed learning to your day. Simply put down your subjects like math, spelling, and vocabulary for the day. Challenge your kid to find a way to satisfy one of them with a non-traditional way to learn. Of course, don’t be like that lame artist or chef I mentioned earlier by not providing enough tools. Provide the tools and books and resources.
- alternate subjects that you want covered like science and history instead of covering both on one day. This gives your child more time to research and delve into a topic.
- provide visual communication of what you expect for the day. Visual communication like charts and calendars equals a powerful communicator.
One of the most important things to remember about relaxed or child-directed learning is that it looks different for each family.
One weave that is common among all families is that the parent is more of a facilitator. Tihs will help you to learn to blend your personality with homeschooling.
Think:
- of your role as guiding instead of dictating,
- how can you give more choices while still meeting your expectations for the day, and
- how can I add other tools in my home so that passions are fed or discovered.
Do not over complicate the process; use life happenings or natural things to be the teacher for you and your children.
Tip 5: Expand the definition of homeschool curriculum and use life happenings.
For example, use the seasons. Use springtime to make a garden, use winter to learn about winter birds or hibernation, use summer to learn about the ocean and ocean animals and used fall to learn about the cycles of life or the tides or moon.
Here are a few more of my units to help you get going and find the teacher within you and more important to mesh your personality with homeschooling.
- How to Easily Garden Plan With Kids Using LEGO
- Colorful Winter Bird: Northern Cardinal Lapbook & Unit Study
- Ocean Lapbook Printables
- Fall Unit 1 {Pumpkins, Leaves, Corn, & More}
- Free Fall Unit Study Ideas– For Older Kids Too
The key to relaxed learning is use everything around you and everyday to teach.
The last important point to share is that you need to expand your definition of curriculum so your kids are not always sticking their nose in a book to learn something.
You know we love reading. A lot of homeschoolers are passionate about reading, but learning goes beyond that.
Look at 45 Ways to Define Homeschool Curriculum.
You’ve got this! Go now and conquer!♥
Hugs and love ya,
