Homeschooling can be all encompassing. If you are feeling like a hamster in a wheel just chasing tasks, activities, and your children’s studies only to leave you exhausted at the end of each day, these tips will help you find balance.
1. Plan goals for your month
Not many women know to plan out their months, but it is of vital importance! Planning your month in advance gives you a target your working toward in every area of your life. How do you see your month as a whole? What would you like to accomplish for your homeschooling? Your home? Your family? And YOU! Yes. What would you like to do for yourself? All areas in our lives deserves thought and planning. To be more, to be organized, to live at our potential, our lives need to be thought-out and planned with goals set to accomplish them. Goals give us motivation. We can’t just think about our goals; goals should be written statements of intent.
2. Don’t just chase tasks
This is the hamster in the wheel analogy. We’re chasing endless tasks and activities and our focus is on the wrong thing, leaving us exhausted and unfulfilled. When we are task chasers with a pen and notebook on hand at all times marking off tasks after completion we are literally winging the rest of our lives. You don’t want this to happen. You are only living a small percentage of your potential. We can be mothers and actually have a dream; a talent we use for God’s glory and our sheer joy, and we can have personal goals! Imagine being a mom that homeschools her children AND is invigorated by her goals and dreams. You can be this woman!
3. Life planning is a whole new way of life and is a skill worth learning
When you are a life planner, you are looking beyond the tasks and all you have to do as a mother. Those are noted, those are important, but when you’re a life planner you are always looking at your life as a whole, only doing things in your life that make sense, create purpose, and doing what you enjoy! If life planning is new to you, start with baby steps until you’ve got it mastered. Say no to task chasing and yes to being a woman living on purpose continually setting dreams and goals for herself and her family.
4. Purge the life drainers
Looking at your life as a whole helps you see the day-to-day life drainers you need to eliminate to create the life you want. When we are living in the moment without future goals and aims we can’t see the waste of time and energies we are doing because we are in the thick of it. Step back, look at everything you and your family are doing and make sure that it is in alignment with your goals for you and your family. Don’t have time to fit in anything for you? Script your life in a way that makes the time for it. Period. Being a mother does not mean we are to make our lives take a backseat. We will end up being unhappy and frustrated. We need to be all we can be to be the best mothers we can be. Eliminate some activities and other things that take up too much room, if even only for a season. A busy life is not a life. Life’s most intimate, most wonderful learning experiences comes from a life unhurried. Be brutal when it comes to clearing-up your calendar.
5. Children do not just learn in controlled environments
Homeschooling and its curriculum can suck you in and make you feel controlled by it, especially if you’re new to homeschooling. I was one of these women until my first child and I were so frustrated and butting heads about homeschooling that I sought out other methods of learning. I switched to more relaxed environment and took my hands off the control. We’ve been unschooling now since my first born was in kindergarten and have never looked back. But even if that learning method is not your style, understanding that you can learn anywhere and in your everyday activities will give you a learning freedom and love for living and learning together you never thought possible. Grocery stores, baking, museums, libraries, parks, camping, heck, just living- provides amazing, learning tools, that give our children a fun, learning experience. Learning is anywhere! Let curriculum be a springboard for ideas, allowing your child to develop at their own pace and creating their own learning goals to achieve. This will create a wonderful learning atmosphere and your homeschooling life, a rewarding one.
What are some ways you notice your children learning on their own and how can you take it a step further to broaden their control over their own learning?
OOOhhhhhh. Love it! Great reminders. Still trying to figure out Home School…relying on lots of grace.