Getting Your Homeschooling Done Before Noon {Guest Post}

I am excited to share a post with you by my good friend, Kayla Howard. We live on opposite sides of the country but have become good friends through our work online.  We have lots in common and work together sharing essential oils. Enjoy!

by Kayla Howard

I never thought I would be writing this article.  It was not my plan to share insights into homeschooling.  — After all, my kids are only in elementary school.  There are definitely plenty of moms with 3 times as many children as I have, and there are multiple blogs on this subject already.  However, the question was planted like a seed in my mind, and it wouldn’t leave without sprouting into an article.

This article at it’s heart, is actually about time management.  It’s just time management for homeschooling moms… or dads.

As you probably already know, I have a small farm, 3 homeschooled kids and a super fun online business.  It takes a lot of time to operate each of these activities, — hence, the need for time management.

Homeschooling is extremely hard and very easy all in the same package.

Homeschooling parent, raise your hand if someone has ever said this to you, “Oh you home-school?  I could never do that. –I don’t have the patience.”

And you are thinking to yourself… “Yes of course, I’m an angel when it comes to patience.  It comes so naturally to me, heck! — I could home-school everyone’s children!”  Um, not.

I always have to chuckle when people say this because, to be honest, I really do not have any more patience than the next mom.  In fact, sometimes I have less.  I don’t home-school because I’ve been gifted with an extra measure of patience.  I do it for a whole lot of other reasons beyond my topic today — (and no, it’s not because I think everyone should home-school either).

As a home-school graduate myself, I have some insights from the student perspective as well as a parent’s view.  The first thing I want you to know is that when I was growing up and my mom would say, “Oh, this trip to the grocery store is school,” I would inwardly roll my eyes and think, “UGG! It IS NOT!”

Turns out, she was right.

Everything practical that we did then, is the main skill-set I actually use everyday, – and the Periodic Table of the Elements (which I made myself memorize so I could be “smart”) didn’t turn out to be as useful to me — at all!  Go figure.

So relax, your kids don’t have to memorize all the Presidents to be successful people.

In our home today, we are blending good education with great time management which allows everyone to avoid frustration.  So if getting school done before noon sounds like a good plan to you, read on.  These 3 tips are my main tools for keeping school with elementary school children under 3 hours per day.

#1 Find a curriculum that works for the child.  This is so critical to getting school done in a timely manner.  Changing math curriculum literally made a 4 hour difference in my daughter’s daily school life.  I’m totally serious. Saxon Math is what I did as a child.  I thought that you had to do Saxon.  One lesson, four hours, and countless tears day after day sent me on a search for something different.  This year we switched to Teaching Textbooks for her and we’ve reduced time spent on a math lesson to 20 minutes — tops.  She loves it.  We are all much happier.

The cool thing about homeschooling today vs. 25 years ago is that you have lots, and lots of options.  Talk to moms, read reviews.  If a subject is always a fight or is taking much longer than needed, I’m positive that you’ll be able to find curriculum that works by doing a little research.

#2 Don’t force everyone to do every subject everyday.  Whew!  That’s a whole lot of “everys”!  We’ve found that we really don’t have to teach science or history every day.  In fact, once a week for an hour or two (focused time) is enough on these subjects.  The kids are able to expand on these sessions as they are interested.  We have historical novels and science experiment books on the shelf for use at any time.  One child might read story after story while the other would rather go out and build an underground railroad “safe house”.  We also use dramatized stories to teach history while driving in the car.  Ha-ha!  Yes, tricky I know.  This makes for much better car rides.

#3 Consider a unit study approach where everyone learns together.  I know this will initially sound like the opposite of finding a curriculum that works for each child, but let me explain.  When we tried to keep everyone doing all their own thing, guess who went crazy?  Ya, it was me, — the mom.  Now we study history and science together offering extra reading and differing writing assignments based on ability level; not grade level, — but ability level.  It’s way more fun.

Each child still does their own math, reading, spelling and writing at their given ability.  By following these steps, we’ve been able to get all of our school work done before noon, — assuming we start by 9am.

Mostly importantly, teach your children to love learning.  I didn’t graduate with a head full of knowledge.  In fact, I took my GED when I was 16 and never fully grasped algebra.  It hasn’t hindered me at all.  I teach myself anything I want to know, and put into action everything I learn.  Teach your kids HOW to use what they learn and HOW to find out what they don’t yet know.  You will hear them thank you for that skill.

Kayla Howard is a stay at home wife and homeschooling mom who loves online business.  She is a Biblical Health Coach, ISSA Fitness Trainer, Master T-Tapp Trainer, and Young Living Essential Oil Lover . If you’d like to know more about becoming and staying fit and healthy, Kayla is happy to answer your questions! Visit her website: www.kaylahoward.com

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