As a full time working mom, I’m not going to lie, homeschooling has been tough and overwhelming for me. In addition to fulfilling household duties and work obligations, managing your child’s education requires a schedule, routine, and cooperation. But it absolutely can be done with the family. To be completely transparent, when I first started homeschooling, I wasn’t sure I’d survive the first month, let alone an entire year. With no teaching experience and only a vague idea of what my child was actually learning in traditional school, those first few months of homeschooling felt impossible. But with time, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way, I have adapted to homeschool life and truly enjoy the freedom to educate my child in a way that works with our family schedule and value system. Read on for my favorite tips.
Know your kids
My four kids aren’t created equal. I have strong learners that work well independently, butI also have learners that need more structure. If your child learns better in a group like my kids, we have been doing Zoom session classmates. My oldest who is 11, works the best on her own. And remember, check out resources online like Pinterest with schedule suggestions and parenting sites like Working Mother and Parenting Magazine.
Make passion projects a priority.
I am trying to so as many projects with my kids at this time. I personally love to show them how to cook and bake because they love to learn and this is a life skill for me. And of course we do other activities like painting, building, drawing and coding. Try out different things because you will see that if your kids are genuinely interested you won’t have to hound them to do it.
Free online resources
Free online resources are available literally everywhere now. We watch everything fro museum tours, aquarium tours, zoo tours and even browse Youtube for online story time — we like the Barnes and Noble virtual story times.
Set up designated space and time for learning.
What has been really helpful to me is that I have designated classroom for the kids. After our day, I remind the kids to clean their work area, sharpen all pencils and plug in their computers so everyone is ready to go in the morning. Yes we work at our primary “school table” but I do think it is important to have my kids move around thought the day and change their work area and go to a different room.
Be easy on yourself and your kid.
Look, this is a very stressful time fir not only me but all of us. If you need to put on a TV show to help you get thru the day that’s fine. I so make sure that what they watch on tv has some type of value. I put on the Food Network and HGTV to change it up. My kids don’t always watch kid shows. If they learn or get inspired to make dinner from watching tv for me, its just another way they learned that day and that’s ok with me. It takes the pressure off of both of us.
