I hope your summer is going well so far! Summer is the perfect time to get ready for the next school year, so we are starting a series called Getting Ready for School 2015 in which we will run some oldies (the tried and true tips from thirty-plus years of homeschooling) as well as some fresh, new advice to make this school year great!
One of the best skills that you can acquire as a homeschooling parent is to become a 
problem-solver! See a problem—and meet it.
Ray and I worked hard throughout our thirty years of homeschooling in an effort to solve problems—and there were many of them with that many years of homeschooling seven children! We didn’t tackle all of our problems at once. We didn’t throw up our hands and say that we couldn’t solve them all, so let’s just forget it.
We picked the most troublesome problem in any given week and made a plan of attack. Then we stuck to our guns until that problem was solved—and didn’t try to solve a bunch of others at the same time. When that problem was solved, we were ready to solve another one. (Read more about this approach here).
Yes, it was slow going sometimes. Oftentimes, it would take more than one week to solve the problem at hand—and we couldn’t dig into another one right away. However, any sort of ongoing problem solving (even at the rate of one every other week or one a month) is far better than no problem solving at all!
So what are some ideas/changes that might make this school year a better one for you:
1. Get more efficient in the kitchen (whether that is freezer cooking, using more convenience foods, creating mixes, or simply delegating—I’ve got some ideas for you!)
2. Use independent work lists for kids!
3. Create chore sessions and do them every single day
4. Dedicate yourself to dailies—to becoming disciplined in the things that need done every single day instead of always trying to do the grandiose
5. Use shortcut teaching methods
6. Teach children how to learn so that they will become more independent
And much more! See you in a day or two! 🙂
