Hope For Homeschoolers

School teachers are in the classroom to teach.  They have other jobs to do that go along with their job of teaching, but their main focus for the better part of their day is teaching.  Auto mechanics spend their days fixing cars, nurses take care of sick people, and so on.  However, when you are a home schooling parent, your day does not consist of a primary focus.  Therefore, you have to take care of yourself, your children, and your husband.  There are meals to cook, dishes to wash, floors to sweep, babies crying, after school activities, your job (if you have one), parties to plan and much, much, more.  You only have two hands, and 24 hours to do all of your regular duties, and now you have added home schooling to the list.  Contrary to what your situation might look like at the onset, you can home school even with all of the chaos going on around you.

The first thing that you should do is give yourself permission to be lazy.  In fact, putting the children first is not being lazy, it’s being responsible.  What can you do to incorporate home schooling into your already hectic schedule?  I can’t tell you exactly how to do this, because each mother has different priorities, but I can impart to you a few of the tricks that I have learned over the years.

• When I am working on the computer such as when I am on ChaCha.com, I can havethe girls work on things like math, reading, and copywork.  They do this at a table very near the computer.  Therefore, I can work and home school at the same time.
• When I have to wash dishes or do other chores that take me away from my job, this is an opportunity for the kids to do their computer work.
• Instead of having a formal music appreciation lesson, my teen finds opera and classical selections to play while they do their school work or chores.  She even plays the same selections over and over again, over a period of several days so that they can remember and learn as much as possible from each piece.  We also listen  to music when we go out in the car.
• We do art studies by choosing a composer to study for a particular period of time, and then I find pictures of that composer’s paintings, save the images to my computer, then set them as my desktop background for the kids to study for a few days or even a week.  I make sure that the children know that I have posted a new painting, tell them who painted it, and then to be sure that they have studied the painting, I ask them to redraw it for me on paper before I put up a new one.  This is a way of “narrating” or retelling the painting.
• If you have children in different grades, let the older ones help the younger ones.  This helps all of the children, because not only do the younger ones get their work done, but the older ones get a review that sticks.  Isn’t it true that if you have to teach something to someone else,  you will most likely remember it yourself?
• Toys and games are chosen with education in mind.  For example, Monopoly could be an entire home school program in itself.
• Movies are chosen with education in mind.  Therefore, family fun is really “school” in disguise.  For example, at Christmas time, we watched lots of Classic Christmas movies.
• Reading and Literature are taught simply by allowing the children to read books of their choosing.  I have set a few limits on the types of books that they can read to make sure that they only read good, living books rather than things like trashy romance novels.  Therefore, they are able to read what they want, when they want, and are more well read than their peers who are forced to read what the teacher puts in front of them.
• After school activities are analyzed so that each individual activity counts as credit toward some portion of school.  For instance, Girl Scouts in itself covers the Texas state required civics course, but we can also categorize special projects and badge work.  This means that when the girls go work on a badge about weather, they also get credit for learning about weather in their learning journals.  If they participate in a reading club such as the one that the library hosts every year, their reading club list of books read also goes into their list of books read for school.  By literally giving credit where credit is due, we don’t feel like we are wearing ourselves out trying to keep up with each activity in addition to school.  In fact, my teen is on a Girl Scout trip right now, where she will not only spend some time in nature, but she will learn about careers, resume writing, and job interviews.  Therefore, she is socializing, as well as getting science, physical activity (hiking), social studies, and composition.

As you can see, there is no need to grow extra hands and arms to be able to home school.  By giving the children credit for everything that they do, and by encouraging them to do everything that they do to the best of their abilities, you will be able to tend to the family, keep house, work, home school, and be the encouraging scout or soccer mom all at the same time.

Keep checking back, because I have an exciting ebook in progress, and I would love to have you be the among the first to get your hands on it!

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

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