by Donna | Aug 16, 2012
Back to School for Homeschoolers—Tip VIII: Be Efficient in Your School Day
With six children in school different years (and a baby or toddler too!) , I have been on a personal quest for efficiency in my school day! I have learned so much about time management and efficiency through homeschooling. I will give four primary tips for efficiency in this article, but we have many, many ideas in our audio series, “Helps for Homeschooling Moms: Prioritizing, Organizing, and Scheduling Your Life, School, and Home.”
First of all, I used multi-level learning whenever possible. This included doing unit studies for content areas (history, science, health, etc.) using a bus stop approach to teaching. In the bus stop approach, I started out with all children present for our studies and began with the easiest materials I used. Then as the materials increased in difficulty or decreased in interest for the little ones, I would “drop them off at the bus stops” (i.e. release them to go play, have room time, do chores, etc.) and continue on with higher level material. As the session progressed, little ones would “get off the bus” and go to other things until at the end of the session, I was covering more challenging material that might only interest or pertain to older ones. (We always allowed littles to stay and learn with us while playing Legoes, etc., for the “trickle down effect,” if the child desired!)
Secondly, I grouped students together whenever possible. Our daughters all took high school biology, sewing, and Spanish together—even though they were in grades six, nine, and ten. It was efficient, and they enjoyed studying together.
Third, I always used grading time wisely. I would sit down with the child’s English or math and grade with him or her beside me. As I found an error, we could go over it right there. It was teaching time at its best—teaching directly from the student’s mistakes.
Lastly, we made our students as responsible for their education as they could possibly be at each age. We began early on using daily chore charts and independent school lists. The latter were lists of tasks that each child needed to do every day by himself in school. Thus, any silent reading, handwriting pages, cd roms, and other activities that the child could do without Mom were listed in the order that the student was to do it—and he could just go down the list and do it every day without needing any input or help. This gave me the chance to work with other kids—and I knew that every body was busy when they were not meeting with me.
by Donna | Aug 16, 2012
For Those Attending School (and homeschoolers!)–Tip VIII: Establish Good Morning Routines*
“Our children are not going to be just ‘our children’—they are going to be other people’s husbands and wives and the parents of our grandchildren.”
Mary Steichen Calderone
I think of the quote above often when I am working with my eight to eighteen year olds on “life skills.” All of the character, skills, routines, relationship abilities, work ethic, and education that they develop now will follow them all throughout their lives—and will have a profound influence on the kinds of spouses, parents, workers, citizens, and Christians that they will be as adults. Every life skill that we teach our children—and better yet, model for them—has the potential to help them be successful in many areas of life—even the morning routine.
If you find yourself chasing your preteen around with a toothbrush and hair brush or following your teen around, helping him find his shoes and stuffing things in his backpack every morning, I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way! Again, a huge part of successful parenting is being a problem solver. We can continue chasing every morning, or we can implement routines and schedules that help us “prevent” that morning chaos.
Here are some tips for developing morning routines with older children (beyond preschool):
1. If your family has been of the mindset that chasing, stuffing bags and backpacks, cajoling, etc. are part of Mom’s job description, you will want to change that way of thinking quickly! Allowing our children to be irresponsible because we feel guilty if we do not do everything for them is not going to help us parent our children to become independent.
2. Partner with your older child to decide what he needs to do each morning. Let him suggest a doable list with your input.
3. Make a chart or list on the computer—or have your older child do that, so he can monitor his own progress on accomplishing his morning goals.
4. If mornings are extremely hectic now—with older kids on the computer, rising late, etc. and part of the family waiting in the car beeping the horn, etc., you will want to be firmer about establishing the morning routine and what order things are done, etc. We have done this for so many years that our boys, for the most part, know that this is what you do in the morning. When these items are done, I can do something else I want to do, start my school, etc.
5. If your children go to school, I recommend just putting in the morning routine those chores that pertain to that child, such as making his bed, straightening his room, putting his pajamas away, cleaning up messes he made, etc. Save other family chores for after school or before bed. (More on chore charts, appropriate ages for various chores, etc. in upcoming posts!)
6. If your older kids are poor prioritizers, you will want to use this opportunity to help them learn the art of prioritizing. If they consistently make bad choices when it comes to getting things done, you might have to “bring in the boundaries” some and give them step-by-step instructions on what to do for now. Once they gain responsibility and diligence, you can broaden that and give them more leeway. For example, if they get on the computer, text friends, etc. instead of getting their routine done, you might have to institute a “no electronics” rule until they show themselves more faithful. Remember, this entire process is a teaching opportunity—and some of our older kids need more lessons than others!
*Re-print from 2010.
by Donna | Aug 16, 2012
Twelve Back to School Tips for Those Attending School!
Tip VII: Pray! (Back to School Prayer)
We should always pray for our kids—for our family. However, when we are going to be apart from each other, we should pray even more.
I love this “back to school prayer” at the link below!
by Donna | Aug 14, 2012
Tip VI: Prioritize Your Life, School, and Home
This point is a three hour mini-seminar and audio series, but I will try to summarize it in a couple of brief paragraphs! When we began homeschooling many years ago, even with only one little son, we found ourselves overwhelmed by activity. Ray and I were both working on our master’s degrees. We were active in church. We were homeschooling my sister and helping others homeschool. We lived close to extended family who needed and wanted our attention (including younger siblings at home).
One day we sat down to solve our time and activity dilemma, and we made a list of all of the things that could/did fill our evenings—things we needed to do (meetings, etc.), things we should do (visit elderly grandparents), things we wanted to do, and things that were automatically built in (overtime, church services, etc.). When we examined our list, the total evenings that could potentially be filled came to sixty—if we did everything we could/should/would!
Armed with that calendar and prioritizing help from marriage and family teaching we had received, we learned how to prioritize. We looked at the things that we wanted to say yes to—and said yes to them. We looked at the things that we could say no to—and said no to them. We applied the mantra that “when you say yes to something (or someone), you are saying no to something (or someone) else.” We asked ourselves who we truly wanted to say yes and no to—and determined early in our marriage that we did not want to say no to our immediate family (our children and each other) just because we were saying yes to someone else.
Specifically, in the area of prioritizing and time management with homeschooling, when we meet new homeschoolers, we often ask them what their days (especially mothers) are like (before beginning homeschooling), and when the mom tells us how busy she was with part time work, volunteering, and other obligations, we ask her what she will cut from her day to make time (three to six hours a day, depending on the ages and neediness of the students) to homeschool. Homeschooling is not something that you can add onto an already full day. It must be prioritized—and put into the schedule before other things of lesser importance. One of the reasons that I am thankful that we started “homeschooling” when Joshua was a toddler is that I never knew of life with daytime hours that were not already earmarked for school. In other words, my days have always been spent schooling. I didn’t have to add it onto other things that I did during the day. Prioritizing school—the hours that it truly takes to educate and oversee our kids’ education—makes a huge difference in the success of a person’s homeschool.
by Donna | Jan 31, 2012
Habit #9: Exercise a Little Every Day
If you have read Positive Parenting long, you have probably heard me say that I am an “all or nothing type of person.” This mindset can be either really great or absolutely horrible. It is really great when I have the time and energy to put “all” into something and come out with something wonderful because I gave it my all. It’s absolutely horrible when I can’t do “all” of something, so I do nothing. Exercise and I have definitely had that all or nothing relationship through the years.
I either power-walked 90-120 minutes a day, did “Abs With Denise” every night, and lost eighty pounds. Or I did nothing and gained eighty pounds. Definitely all or nothing.
As I have found with most things in my life, the older I get, the more balance I achieve—and exercise is finally coming into balance for me. No more all or nothing. If I can do ten minutes of arms and stomach a day, I do that. If I can ballroom dance for two hours one day, I do that. If I can take a long walk with one of the kids, I go for it. If we can play basketball in the driveway for thirty minutes, pass me the ball.
With this “new” approach to exercise, I will probably never be a size six again…but I will never be a size twenty-four again either! I am healthier than I have been since my “exercise mania days” (which turned out to be not so healthy when coupled with starvation diets!). And definitely healthier than my size twenty-four days.
So…do you want to join me in the coming year? Exercise a little everyday—ten, twenty, thirty, sixty, or 120 minutes. Because a little bit all the time is better than a lot very infrequently.
