Listen to “CHM097:Homeschool Planning When You're Behind Schedule” on Spreaker.
This week, my mornings are off to a much better start- but it’s only because I decided to put some priorities into place that will help me manage life a little easier. On this episode, I’ll be sharing with you about my homeschool planning days, and I hope this motivates you too.
Here are a few tips that have been helping me with my homeschool planning.
Prep for lessons ahead of time
I feel sometimes that I’m falling behind (don’t we all?). It feels like I have so much going on that I could never keep up with where I need to be in my homeschool planning
What I’ve found is that it takes just a few minutes (maybe up to an hour) per week to adequately plan for the entire upcoming week. And if I can look even further ahead in our planned studies for the school year, even better. For now, though, one step at a time- and one week at a time works for me.
Since we shop for groceries weekly, this is my one time to get all my grocery shopping done, plus pick up any needed school supplies for science activities, or grab the needed library books.
I like to sit down with my kids’ curriculum the weekend before just to check and make sure we have everything we need to successfully complete the following week’s lessons. Because, needless to say, it’s kind of hard to do a paint project without the paint or construction paper. Prep is everything.
Get into homeschool planning by set out materials in advance.
The night before I like to stack up all my kids’ materials in one nice pile. Then it’s an easy grab, and go down the hall or downstairs to start school.
If I think through my processes the night before, I can easily put aside the items we need so that next school day our routine goes a lot smoother.
Skip or combine lessons.
If you’ve got a “plan” you’d like to stick to, but you feel you’re running behind (because of life), you can always:
- Skip a lesson or two. Honestly, when I looked through our science curricula this year, I realized that we’d already covered a lot of the same material last year. So, instead of plucking through each one and feeling I”m behind on weeks when we don’t get around to science, easy solution. Skip.
- Combine lessons. Some lessons seem a bit redundant, especially when it’s broken down into bite-size pieces that your kids might be absorbing quickly. This is a great time to combine a few smaller lessons into a one big lesson- and voila, you’re no longer “behind”.
And just so you know- even on days when I feel like I’m behind, I have to remind myself that in homeschooling, there really is no such thing as behind.
Our homeschools are only what we make of it- and giving ourselves the freedom to move at a comfortable pace is healthy for our kids, and for ourselves. No need to suffer burnout.
So with that said, I hope this helps you feel better if you’re feeling like you are behind schedule.
What are some things you do in your homeschool planning to keep from falling behind?
