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How to Homeschool If You Don’t Have Time

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How to Homeschool If You Don't Have Time @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusLiving 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,

Signature T

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:

4 Cures for the Afternoon Slumps When Homeschooling

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4 Cures for the Afternoon Slumps When Homeschooling @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

If you shine in the morning, then by the afternoon you may have a case of the DB (dropsy butt . . . okay, okay). It has happened in my house more times than I care to confess about. But out of that struggle, I have learned a few tips to help you squeeze out a bit more of homeschooling in the afternoon when everyone is ready to quit.

Look at these 4 cures for the afternoon slumps when homeschooling.

One| Take lunch earlier.

It’s a little insider tip about my family, but we eat lunch early more days than we do close to noon. Normally by about 11:00 a.m, we are ready for lunch.

How does this help with our afternoon slump?

It shifts our whole day because by the time we finish eating and rest up a bit, we are ready to get started back to school just past noon instead of closer to 1:30.

We are able to get another hour and half in the afternoon without feeling the afternoon blahs.

The Secret to Finding Peace

One unexpected advantage of eating lunch early is that you can have fast, but delicious meals like a fruit smoothie. I have shared more than one picture with you of us drinking our smoothing in one hand while doing school with the other.



Knowing we are going to eat lunch within a few short hours, our breakfast can be simple. Check out my tips at my article, 5 Easy and Quick Breakfasts Kids Will Eat (Grab the Egg McMuffin Recipe).

I like having the flexibility of starting our day right away, eating lunch early and adding in another hour or two of school after lunch.

Two|Break down hands-on activities into manageable parts.

Then, many years I wouldn’t even have the energy needed to push myself to do hands-on activities in the afternoon because my day was so busy. Science and history is what my boys looked forward to most in the day and I was exhausted by the afternoon.

I regret many times not doing hands-on because I didn’t plan my day for those slumps in the afternoon.

One tip that did help me was to break hands-on activities into two afternoons. I would take just one corner of the house if we didn’t have a school room and leave all our supplies out instead of putting them away.

Putting them away to only get the right back out the next day exhausted me too. If we could, we would just leave half-baked projects on the table because it made easier to sit back down the next afternoon.

Also, I learned that be doing history and science on back to back days, we could slow down and savor our afternoon.

Three|Tackle important stuff first in the morning.

I know my kids have their favorite subjects they want to work on first thing in the morning, but I made sure they worked first on things that took the most mental energy (for me). When my kids needed help, I am my freshest in the morning.

When we got behind on hands-on activities, I make sure we start off the day with a hands-on project and save the afternoon for a family read aloud.

Four| Move.

I have read that exercising is usually done best in the morning, but I am stingy with my morning time because it has always been the best time of the day for me.

That is the time my thoughts flow, I read and otherwise enjoy the slow quiet time to rejuvenate. Making time to put valuable things that I put into my mind is just as important to me as the time I try to find for my physical health too.

I have found that moving when I am mentally tired has been of way more benefit for me and my family.

I have a walking trail within walking distance of where we live and just getting out the house in the afternoon helps me to get my energy level back up. It has made our time for afternoons something that we look forward too.

There are many ways to break up the afternoon slumps when homeschooling but these basic 4 cures have been tried and trued for us.

How do you get past the afternoon slumps?

Check out these other go to tips!

Homeschool Quitters, Dropouts and Wimps (Want to Join Me?)
How to Make Yourself a Morning Person When Homeschooling (Do You Really Need to Wait until the Afternoon to Homeschool?)
How to Create a Homeschool Schedule that You Can Stick To

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.

 

How to Make Yourself a Morning Person When Homeschooling (Do You Really Need to Wait until the Afternoon to Homeschool?)

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How to Make Yourself a Morning Person When Homeschooling (Do You Really Need to Wait until the Afternoon to Homeschool) Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Homeschool families have varying circumstances and waiting to the afternoon to homeschool works for some families.

However, instead of adding one more thing to your added responsibilities by telling you that mornings are best, I want to show you how to seize your day by being sure you are getting the best start.

How to Avoid the Stress of Running and Rushing

So today, I want to share how to make yourself a morning person when homeschooling.

I hope too that just because I do my best work at 5:00 a.m. that you won’t hold that against me because my perfect homeschool morning routine bombed when Mr. Awesome 2015, my night owl was added to my day.

So if you’re like me and absolutely love the mornings, but have children who do not share your same “radiance” in the morning, then maybe a tip or two will help them too.

Forget the Complete Breakfast.

Though I am ready to rumble and that means a pretty hardy breakfast right when I get up, my run from the morning son is almost sick to his stomach when he wakes up.

Did I mention that is not the time for explanations about low blood sugar or needing to be refueled?

I learned that while he was hungry, a big breakfast early only seemed to slow him down.

Instead, a light meal like a yogurt, banana and blueberry smoothie (his favorite) was just enough to help him get past the morning sickness.

Because he didn’t want me asking him questions in the morning, I suggested that he dump the ingredients in the blender the night before.

All he had to do was push a button in the morning and he had it ready. No conversation with me was needed.

10:00 or 10:30 a.m. is STILL Morning Time.

Another thing I had to accept was that it was okay for him to start later after I did with the other boys.

Some days we are ready to start by 8:00 a.m., but Mr. Awesome 2015 did not do his best work at that time.

Instead of fighting his natural design to a slower start to the day (wouldn’t want it done to me), I realized that starting even at 10:00 to 10:30 a.m. is still a great start to the day.



So if you have several children that require more time in the morning and your household runs better by a later start, 10:30 a.m. is still a morning routine.

If your child is real young and needs you to start his day, but you know that he is absolutely not a morning person, then plan for a read aloud.

As he grows older, he will appreciate the fact that you allowed learning at his peak time.

Subject Matters.

Another thing I learned about helping homeschoolers who fought to focus in the mornings was to start with lighter homeschooling subjects.

Normally, I suggest tackling the hardest subjects first in the morning when you’re fresh and motivated.

That same advice does not work for night owls.

Even meaningful conversations with your children while you sip your brew, which morning people normally do after school or in the evenings can fill your morning and it still counts as homeschooling.

Too, instead of assigning harder subjects first, which most morning people tackle first, assign subjects that your children can do independently.

This gives you more time to wake up and for the morning time to pass peaceably while your children start their day slowly.

If your child is not a morning person, support them by helping them to organize their subjects by getting a slower start too.

Save the hard subjects to tackle when they come alive like later in the afternoon.

Do You Homeschool When the Sun Rises Sets?

If you do have children that are morning people and can work independently of you, let them start their day. Morning people need their time to start when it’s best for them too.

However, just make a simple rule for you, which is that all questions will have to wait until after lunch or later in the morning.

Find the Sweet Spot – Compromise.

Just be sure to answer the questions of your child that is a early riser right away, like early afternoon. Don’t wait to the evening to help a child who thrives with the morning time because that is akin to you feeling absolutely sick in the morning and not wanting a person to say a peep to you.

Early afternoon to mid-afternoon is the perfect compromise time for both morning and night owl folks to meet half-way.

Homeschoolers homeschool for all sorts of reasons from health related problems, gifted learners, secular homeschoolers to faith based homeschooling. And sometimes that means starting later in the day.

It’s hard to set up hard and fast rules for all circumstances, but you do want to set up a measuring standard for what your family is accomplishing for the day.

How Do You Measure Success?

For example, I encourage you to homeschool as early as you can and make it first in your day, whatever that time is for your family.

Interruptions can happen the longer the day goes on and by starting as soon as you can, distractions can be minimized and time learning maximized.

Many homeschoolers struggle with getting in the basics for the day because they didn’t gauge how much time they actually need in the morning.

Finding the time for your family and sticking to it is key to having a fuller day.

What time do you start your homeschool day?

Hugs and love ya,

Should You Switch to a 4 Day Homeschool Schedule?
How to Create a Homeschool Schedule that You Can Stick To
The Sticking Power of a Homeschool Schedule

Don’t Forget to Follow My Keep You Homeschooling Board

Follow Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s board Keeps you homeschooling on Pinterest.

 

Why the Hectic Pace in Homeschool? What’s the Rush Girl?

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Why the Hectic Pace in Homeschooling @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

What’s the rush? Why the hectic pace in homeschool?

Homeschool curriculum options have literally exploded in the market.  Instead of simplifying homeschool it seems like the huge amount of curriculum choices have complicated homeschooling.

We are constantly bombarded with more deadlines, stress and a growing list of of homeschool subjects.

Pressure to perform has mounted. Constantly expecting too much from our children and ourselves is not good.

We can’t slow down the hectic pace of this world when it comes to educating our children, but we can make changes in our everyday journey.

Is Your Homeschool Teaching a Trickle or Torrential flood?

One thing we have control over is the pace we set each day for our school.

The pace we set in teaching our children made me think about a point we learned in science.

When there is a quick down pour, rain runs off  the ground because it’s too fast and the ground doesn’t have time to soak it up.  Digging down the surface a bit, you can see that the ground is still dry.

However, when there is a soft, gentle, rain that trickles slowly throughout the day, the ground soaks up the water and nourishes the plants.  The slow trickle saturates the ground.

Do you tend to flood your children with lots of information and busy work or is your day of teaching more like a soft gentle trickle so that your children can soak up what you are teaching?

 Realistic Tips that Work

Besides understanding that a constant hurried pace is not good for you physically, here are some doable tips that will help to reduce the stress in your day.

Routine is vital.

Routine is a habit and instead of stressing each day about how to start the day, there is no pausing for thought, we just do it.

Progress and routine are inextricably linked.

Progress reduces stress and helps to slow pace down but it only comes if a routine is formed.  Routine can be  anything but hum drum if we allow a gentle unfolding of our day that suits our family.

Organization (the realistic kind) is a must.

I have said it many times throughout the years and that is as homeschoolers the way we organize has to be different.

We can’t follow the organizational tips given by many well-meaning books and blogs of stay at home moms who do not wear the teacher hat or who don’t share learning and living spaces.  Those kinds of tips makes  the already overwhelmed unorganized homeschooler run the other way from organizational tips that will breathe calm into her day.

Organization takes on a different meaning as homeschoolers.

When time is wasted fumbling for lesson plans, kids don’t have a place to put away their papers or books or when kids don’t understand their morning routine, this starts our day off at a hurried pace.  We seem to spend the whole  day trying to catch up.

Equally important to choosing curriculum is choosing a plan of action.  Take as much time writing down how you want your day to flow and where to put away your homeschool things as you do mulling over curriculum choices.

Homeschooling and life blend together the longer you homeschool.

When you have a plan for cooking and laundry as much as you do for chemistry and language arts, then you have balance in your day.  Tension starts to subside.

Breaks should be meaningful.

I love walking and physical exercise has always been a time for me to rejuvenate and be re-energized for the day.

Stepping away from the chaos and doing something physical always has helped me to put things back in the right priority.

If I am stressing that I am not doing enough, then I ask myself why? Is it because life happened like a sickness in our family that went through all five of us or was it because I was helping one of the boys deal with a lot of hormones?  Then we need to bless and release it because that is part of school.

If I am stressing because I planned too lightly then learn from that lesson and move on.

Dwelling on things that we can’t control brings stress.  Stress breeds chaos and an inability to cope.  It’s a vicious cycle and will consume our time if we don’t break it.

Constant reminders are needed about why we are homeschooling and how an unhurried pace year after year infuses our children with a massive amount of knowledge that has time to saturate not only their minds, but their hearts.

Too, plan for the unexpected by preparing your mind for things that will come up and cause stress.

There is a cost for trying to do too much.

Take a look at your pace. Does it need to change before you hit burnout?

Also, look at these helpful tips:

Hugs and love ya,

Should You Switch to a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule?

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

Switching to a 4-day homeschool schedule for a majority of my journey is not only one of the best homeschooling tips I can share, but it saved my sanity when many things about home and school collided. Addressing some of your concerns first and then sharing the numerous reasons why the advantages of homeschooling a 4-day week outweighed a 5 day schedule, I hope these tidbits will help you too.

One of the greatest factors for those hesitant to switch to a 4-day homeschool schedule has to do with the amount of weeks or hours needed to meet state requirements.

4-Day Homeschool Schedule

While it’s true that you need 45 weeks instead of 36 weeks, you can still homeschool a 4-day schedule if you stretched out your homeschool year.

It doesn’t even mean you have to school year round, though I am here to tell you flat out that the advantages of homeschooling year round blew away an abrupt stop and start each year.

Should You Switch to a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule?

Schooling year round doesn’t mean all work and no play, but that is another topic. You can check out How to Plan for & Homeschool Year Round here.

Also, be sure you look at my YouTube video How to Create a Homeschool Schedule You Can Stick to

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The second concern I have seen is a mindset that unless we school 5 days we are not really schooling or that we could get behind.  Maybe this idea stems from the fact that we are pressured to conform to the schedule the workforce is keeping.

Clearing my mind of how I thought school was suppose to happen, I set out to do what was best for my family.I do want to mention too that the ages of your children makes a difference in shaping your viewpoint on adopting a homeschool schedule. Having homeschooled from the beginning when all of my kids were little and having no help with the housework gave me the power to move against the norm.

Balancing the weeks we needed to school with the needs of my family took priority.

Advantage of 4-day Homeschool Schedule

Look at some of the advantages of a 4-day homeschool schedule.

When I switched, I maintained more consistency.

Nothing sets back a homeschool year more or builds resistance quickly in a child then to constantly start and stop because you get behind on housework or are just worn out from the constant grind.

When we started a 4-day homeschool schedule, the days were more full and my weeks more consistent because I didn’t start my week depleted of physical energy.

The quality of my teaching went up.

If you are the kind of person that can proceed forward with the house somewhat messed up (I promise I tried hard to do this year after year), I am still learning to follow your relaxed manner.

This is something that can’t be ignored when you are homeschooling.

Either you are more relaxed about your surroundings not as tidy or you are not as forgiving about a messy atmosphere. There is no right or wrong on this because as moms we are wired differently. It is just what is right for your personality.

I realized right away that I could not function when I felt chaos existed in my home. The measuring point is if it hampers and paralyzes you from giving your children 100 percent for the day then it needs to be addressed.

When my mind was heavy with thinking about things I have to still do in the house, it did not make me the kind of teacher I wanted to be.

Instead of thinking it wasn’t important to have my mind relatively free of stress, I embraced my need to have things organized before I started my day.

I used Mondays for cleaning, to have a slower start to my week, to get some of my cooking done, and to look over my lesson plans for the week.

Your week ends or begins on a positive note each month and that triggers a sticking power to homeschooling.

Homeschooling Tuesday through Friday like I did for many, many years or homeschooling Monday through Thursday gave me more control over my time.

It propelled me through each year because I took time on the front end of the week to prepare for school. It ended up being a power booster to keep on homeschooling.

There was a plan for the unexpected.

Another surprising advantage was that I planned for the unexpected.

I find this ironic because I love to plan, but I never gave myself an option for the unexpected in my life.

If I was running a public school classroom this would make no difference, but I am not.

Being at home where life happens, I was more organized because I didn’t have every moment of my life planned.

Feelings of being behind and stressed out that we were not covering what we needed to started to fade.

The bottom line was I had wiggle room in my schedule each week.

Dad’s schedule and support is important.

Though a majority of the teaching was always done by me, it was important to me that when my husband’s scheduled changed that we could spend more time together.

For a good part of our homeschooling journey, he had a set work schedule.  But there were many times during the years that our business was slow and he took advantage of spending that time with us.

Having a 4-day week lesson plan always ready, it didn’t matter which day we took off.  We always had a day to spend with dad because our week did not have every day planned.

Dos and Don’ts of a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule

Look at some of these dos and don’ts when switching to a 4-day homeschool schedule.

Don’t cram 5 days into 4 days. 

Avoiding stress is my goal and so cramming 5 days of lessons into 4 days of school is not a doable plan to keep you homeschooling for years.

This may be good for one or two years if you need it, but it is a recipe for exhaustion if you implement it for many years.

Schooling year round made my 4-day homeschool schedule doable.

Just relax and plod along and remember that schooling year round doesn’t mean you can’t have off weeks or months. They are just spread out during the year so that the time off fits your family.

Do decide how to use the day off.

Deciding to switch to a 4-day homeschool schedule only works if you value the reason you are switching.

For me, because all the children were little and I had very little help with the housework and in running our business, I knew I needed a day at the beginning of the work week to unwind when the Mr. was back at work.

I wanted a slower start to the week and doing that gave me momentum for during the week.

Though I say it was a day off, it ended up turning into a day of relaxed housework and savoring my lesson planning time.

As the kids grew and got older, I had them cleaning the house after school.  We still kept a 4-day schedule but started taking off Fridays.

We used that day for field trips, shopping, swimming or just enjoying the slow days of summer or beautiful weather in fall.

Again, I find it amusing how life and homeschool has turned out now as I look back.

Though I say I followed a 4-day homeschool schedule, my kids still did many educational activities, though unplanned by me on our day off.

They ended up watching educational movies, doing a project, or even if it was just playing outside and in the dirt, they were still investigating, exploring and learning.

A lot of weeks, I counted our day off as homeschooling because of some of the projects the kids would find to do.

Do write our your schedule and study it.

I am a huge advocate of writing it all out because seeing where your homeschool year starts and ends keeps your goals clear in mind.

Too, you are not bothered with the hype of homeschool schedules because you have set a pace that works for your family.

Don’t worry that your stress free schedule seems effortless. Do you really need complicated homeschooling?

Homeschooling is complicated enough. There is no need to constantly question ourselves because we don’t have all the struggles everybody else is having.

Finding your groove to homeschooling can be not only fulfilling, but painless.

Managing your time means to make your time more meaningful while maintaining spontaneity.

A 4-day homeschool schedule was key to not only maintaining my house suitable for us to live in, but advancing to more rigorous academics.

Sitting down to begin our week, we were armed with a full day of activities, rested, and ready to learn!

What about you? Are you still struggling with a schedule that works for your family?

Should You Switch to a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule?

You also love these other tips:

Hugs and love ya,

Should You Switch to a 4-day Homeschool Schedule @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus