My best homeschooling advice after 26 years!
I started homeschooling my oldest daughter in preschool. She will turn 31 this year, and I'll graduate my 6th child from high school next month. I've been at this a while and it's been an incredible journey. We've read dozens of books aloud, experienced amazing field trips and nature time, and bonded over projects and stories.
Here is some of my best advice after all these years.
- 🙌🏼Have a vision. Write down what you want your children to remember and what you want a typical day to be like. Don’t just do what everyone else is doing. Know what you want (my new book, Habits for a Sacred Home can help you define your family vision.)
- 🙌🏼Be consistent about basics. Do a little math and reading, phonics or writing every day. You don't need a lot of bells and whistles, but you do need consistent soaking in great literature. (see next point)
- 🙌🏼Spread a feast. Instead of bogging your life down with a bunch of textbooks, read beautiful books together and talk about them. This can cover art, history, science, and literature until high school. (The Peaceful Press resources offer a beautiful feast of living books)
- 🙌🏼 Batch grades. Instead of trying to keep each child at an arbitrary grade level, smoosh then together so you have more time for fun. For example, pick a level of Right Start Math that is in the middle of your two grade levels and then do the same resource with both students. Pick one level of Peaceful Press resources to do with the whole family and just add some extras for middle or high school students. You get less stress and deeper learning.
- 🙌🏼Fix your marriage. A tense home environment makes learning hard, and activates fight or flight, so work on good relationships.
- 🙌🏼Make time for personal interests. It can spark joy for all of you. Dabble in cooking, board games, art, gardening, nature time or whatever floats your boat. When you are excited to learn, your kids will be also.
- 🙌🏼Don’t compare. Every family is different so read a good book like Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto and then be confident about homeschooling your way.
- 🙌🏼Pray. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain, and prayer is a way of inviting the builder to help us with this sacred calling of educating our children.
What would you add to this list? Hit reply and share your best advice!