Since becoming a homeschooling mom I have certainly learned a lot of things! Here are some things I have learned to help you if you decide to homeschool!
I had spent just as much time doing homework with my child each day after public school as I do homeschooling him. The benefit is that he isn’t stressed out from being in school all day, and then having to do more schoolwork with me. When he was in school I got the stressed out leftover version of him. Now, I get the ready-to-go version of him. It’s not rainbows and butterflies, but it is 10x better than what it used to be.
Don’t buy all the curriculums before you start. I had over-researched and over-prepared as any normal mother would. I bought a couple of curriculums and thought I was ready to go Day 1. When I started it, my son was miserable. I had accidentally created a public school environment in our home. I was definitely pushing what I wanted onto him. When I finally let go a little bit, I was able to learn what my child was into (it wasn’t Teaching Textbooks online like I thought! And he hated the Brave Writer Arrow book supplements!).
If you are teaching with small children, just go with it. We have a 2-year old wild child that joins us for schooling during the day. We try to get done as much school as possible at 7:00am while the little one sleeps until about 8:00AM. We then wait for nap time to keep going, or my 3rd grader will do activities that my 2 year old can be around for. My 3rd grader does Reflex math, which my 2 year old LOVES to watch over his shoulder. When my 3rd grader is doing table work, we pull out some dollar store activities for the 2 year old to do. He loves thinking he is doing “school” too. Plus, he is learning to love learning through this process! Sometimes my 3rd grader will make a fort and they will both be in it doing school-type stuff and it makes my 2 year old feel completely included. This works for us. You may think to yourself, “7:00AM?! My child wouldn’t function!” And thats OK. Do what is best for your family. That is one major benefit of homeschooling- you do it when it’s best for you and your children.
If he is miserable, something has to change. There is this process called deschooling (different from unschooling), where you take one month for every year they were in public school to get the public schooling culture out of their system, as well as out of the parents’ system. You don’t focus on curriculums, but instead you go to the library, parks, outdoor walks, etc. and learn in your environment without structure. I highly recommend this. We definitely did not do it for months. My anxiety would not allow that. We did it for maybe 3 weeks. That seemed to be enough for my little guy. During the 3 weeks, I let him test out some samples of curriculums here and there but I would ask him first what he wanted to try. If one thing didn’t work, we went to a different thing. One time we tried something and it flopped, then we ended up going back to it later after we had deschooled and all of a sudden he loved it!
Example of deschooling for us: As I said before, I read “The Cay” aloud to him. From there, he asked me questions like, “Where is that island?” and “Why was that country trying to bomb their boats?” As well as “Why can’t people just drink salt water?” All of those questions led us down rabbit holes of geography, WW2 youtube videos, and eventually learning how to make a salt water distillery. There is no curriculum attached, but just because we were reading a book we ended up learning geography, history, science, and not to mention reading comprehension as well.
It’s OK to read to them, and let them read what they want. My sweet 3rd grader HATED reading. In public school, he was required to come home and read 30 minutes. He fought me so much on this. He couldn’t stand the requirement. When we started homeschooling, I still wanted him to read. I started at 10 minutes then gradually went to 30 per day. I let him read WHATEVER HE WANTED (age appropriate of course). He gravitated towards graphic novels and I am totally fine with that because for the first time, he was picking up a book and enjoying it without a fight. What I am trying to teach him here is to learn to love learning. It appears to be working. I also read out loud to him. Follow what your kid wants to do. He loves when I read out loud to him so I do so in addition to his self-reading. We read The Cay and he absolutely loved it. We cried together at the end of the book! I never thought that bonding and learning would happen while reading. I still did reading comprehension questions with him after each chapter, while he gained confidence in his abilities.
Let them lead. One of my biggest fears was my child falling behind compared to his public school classmates. My child was a fan of math, hated reading/writing, and loved art and science. I am not artistic and don’t have interest in artsy stuff. I absolutely love reading, so it was hard for me to understand why he didn’t. When I let him lead, my fears were still there (What if he never wants to read or write?!), but he surprised me! I listened to him and found out a few things about my son. He hates handwriting, but loves cursive! He doesn’t mind doing reading comprehension in small doses. He loves when I read to him instead of him reading to himself. He loves computer game math, but not instructional lessons on the computer for math. My fears have been able to subside a little bit! My child will read and write- in his own way.
Make resources available. We definitely had to cut the video games out during set times of the week. We also had to make resources available for him, like modeling clay from the dollar store. He loves that stuff. Library books he chose are all around the house. Paint and brushes are on the table. I can not handle clutter, but I have found way to lay out these resources so that if he chooses to, he can use them. It definitely helps his ability to be creative when he sees a pack of clay out in the open, as opposed to in a drawer tucked neatly somewhere. He ends up taking the initiative to grab the items himself and use them! I also like to bring books in the car. We accidentally did that once and he was reading! My kid that hates reading was reading! Just make sure it’s something the child would be interested in or chose themselves.
