“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
— Steve Jobs
What does a simpler day look like?
You may look at this list and think I’m not helping you to simplify but to complicate your homeschool day. But I beg to differ. Sometimes it takes a little more work and preparation to clear your thoughts and simplify your homeschool day.
Let’s face it, there are a lot of things to do in your day and while doing them, you can easily become overwhelmed by it all. So here are a few simple strategies that once implemented and maintained, will help you gain more clarity, focus, and maybe even time in your homeschool days!
You CAN Do This. And I’m Here to Help
My Top 8 Tips
I’m super excited to share the top 8 secrets I discovered on my OWN path to achieving homeschool planning success.
Let’s start with #1!
Tip #1: Plan in advance
I will assume, since you came to this site, that you feel the need for some sort of homeschool plan. So I won’t harp on this one too long, but I will say there truly is value in planning in advance. It can greatly help to simplify your homeschool days.
Even if you unschool and are guided by the whim of interest in your days or like to plan to the minute, I guarantee you there are some parts of your days or weeks where a plan could help. This plan could be as general as setting goals for your year or month, or more specifically looking at your week and blocking times for certain activities. It may be helpful to create a routine for working through your history resources or to schedule every math page you will work through. You can be as thorough as you find helpful.
Planning in advance will give you the ability to focus less on what you are doing next or have done, and more on enjoying the moments with your children. Really dive into those novels and work through the science projects. Your ducks, no matter how spastic, are lined up in some sort of row. You can relax.
Try this: Get started now with a plan for your homeschool year. Follow my 7 simple steps here or a more detailed homeschool plan here.
Tip #2: Pre-buy supplies
I’m talking mostly science here, but you also may have other resources that require having certain materials on hand. Maybe you’re doing a lap book and just realized you are out of file folders. Or you were planning on a watercolor day and your toddler has destroyed the paints over the weekend. Perhaps you want to make a new recipe with your daughter but forgot to check on your supply of baking powder.
I’m sure every homeschooler has run into issues with not having the right supplies on hand at one time or another. Many times these things will sneak up on us, especially if we aren’t planning our projects too far in advance.
For those situations that are preventable, I encourage you to gather these supplies in advance. This will greatly help to simplify your homeschool days.
Most curricula come with a materials list. There are even homeschool science shops online where you can order the harder to find things you need, often already boxed into a toolkit for you. Take advantage of the back to school sales in august and buy the basics of things you may need. Paper, notebooks, pencils, paints, sheet protectors, erasers, and glue sticks. And while we’re talking glue sticks, get the big box. You’ll thank me later.
Try this: Take a few minutes and look over the supply lists in your resources and make a shopping list. Buy them now.
Tip #3: Prep the night before
Have you ever woken up, gotten ready for your day and pulled out the teacher book for science only to realize you were supposed to soak a cork two days ago for the experiment? Sounds odd, but yep it’s happened to me. Have you woken up, gotten ready for your day, pulled out the reading lesson and realized you never cut out activities for today? I sure have.
Sometimes things like this can cause such delays and frustration in your homeschool days. You either have to scrap the lesson for the day – like that science experiment – or you end up chasing a child. He was was sitting next to you ready to learn and now is running around the house being crazy again because you are working on getting the lesson set up for him. These delays aren’t always a big deal and many moms are creative, finding ways their child can help with these little tasks for later.
I challenge you to spend just a small amount of time the night before, or at the beginning of the week and just glance over all the things you have planned. Double check you have all the needed supplies in house, the books checked out, and the activities prepped. You may even want to fill out checklists for your kids or refill their notebooks with daily work. This often will only take a few minutes, but will save you a good bit of sanity, helping to simplify your homeschool days.
Try this: Do a quick check-in with your next day’s plans each evening.
Tip #4: Have a Group Time
Have you ever heard of morning time? Or maybe you call it something else like circle time. I like to call it group time since ours doesn’t always happen in the morning. There are many things you can call it, but generally this is a time where you and your kids all do things together. Read books to all your kids at once instead of separate times with each. Include shorter activities that bring you together. This time often includes lots of read-alouds, but can really include whatever you want to do together. Devotions, picture or art study, prayer, verbal writing prompts, singing, poetry, you could even do some grammar or memory work. One of my kids’ favorite things we occasionally do in morning time are mad libs. It’s always a great time to start our day laughing.
Group time is a great way to include all those little things you want to do with your kids but you aren’t sure how to include them into your day. All the enriching things that bring out the beauty and magic in life. The arts and good books. This can be a great time to connect with your kids every day, even teens who may be going many directions at once may sit and enjoy this time with you.
One problem though – It’s really so easy to try to do all the things in group time! The goal here is to simplify so if you’re new to this, I suggest start with one good book and go from there. And keep in mind group time can be done at any time of day.
Try this: Choose a great read-aloud book and enjoy a chapter together each day.
Tip #5: Use audiobooks
Reading all the books to your kids can be a lot of work for you, especially when you have little kids who can’t read themselves or if you have chosen a literature-heavy resource. Also, if you have auditory learners like I do, it can be hard for them to comprehend as well when reading to themselves even when they’re older. Cue audiobooks. Of course I’m not suggesting you only use audiobooks and don’t have your children work on their own reading skills. What I am suggesting, though, is to consider them as an option, especially to free up some of your valuable time and simplify your homeschool days.
Not all the read-aloud books have to be read by you. The history lesson doesn’t always have to be read by you. If you find yourself struggling to make some of the reading happen, or you just would like to get more books into your lives, I highly suggest audiobooks! My family drives a good bit to activities throughout the week, so we often listen to audiobooks in the car.
Many libraries now have online libraries with audiobooks you can check out with your library card. There are also many audiobook subscription services you could consider. Some will let you check out books for a lower fee, and some you buy and keep. There are even many curriculum options that have audiobooks you can use!
Try this: See if your library card gives you access to audiobooks then check one out for your kids – or yourself!
Tip #6: Use multi-level curriculum
If you’re homeschooling multiple kids at once at many different ages and levels, you may often feel pulled a lot of directions at once, struggling to stay afloat. It may take you all day to get all the school accomplished with all the children, because you have to do so much with each of them. But maybe you aren’t willing to sacrifice the interaction with them for a curriculum that has them learning more independently. So perhaps consider using a curriculum that adapts to multiple age levels to simplify your homeschool days.
Many homeschoolers often teach their kids together like this for subjects like Science and History. But there are also many literature-based resources where you can combine several ages in other subjects as well, especially if the kids are within 2-3 years of each other. And still more, I have seen some one-room-schoolhouse type curriculums where all ages can be taught together with several age-appropriate activity options. Of course there is no one saying you can’t figure out ways to design your own resource or adapt a resource you already have for teaching a subject to all your kids.
Try this: Take a look over your resources and see if there are ways you could change or adapt them to combine your multi-level children for a subject or two.
Tip #7: Integrate Subjects
Similar to the last tip, you may want to find ways to combine things in your day so you personally aren’t stretched so thin and your family is together more. But in this tip, we will talk about resources for integrating multiple subjects rather than multiple children. Though sometimes you may end up doing both. This is another time and sanity-saving strategy for your homeschool. It can also give a good way to apply knowledge for some subjects.
One of the main ways that homeschooling families integrate subjects is to use unit studies. These are often interest-led by a general topic and will usually include activities in several subjects. Here are some other ways you could integrate subjects: Combine typing and English by typing up final drafts, study the constitution and use it for copywork and handwriting practice, have your kids journal after an activity or science experiment, use the writing prompts in your history curriculum for composition. You get the idea.
I will caution you that when choosing resources you should be specific to use only what you feel is needed. There is no need to be redundant or add a completely separate subject or workbook because you feel you have to for it to be “complete”. There may be some resources that are more than adequate for multiple subjects. With that said, you may find that some years you may separate subjects for more depth and other years you may be comfortable with incorporating multiple subjects.
Try this: Look over your current resources and see if there is any redundancy or ways you could combine multiple subjects with more ease.
Tip #8: Encourage responsibility
As our kids get older, they can slowly take over some of the responsibility of their own school day. This not only will free up some of your time and simplify your homeschool days, but will also build in some great skills and character in your child. One of the goals of school is to help kids eventually be productive adults, so this is a great way to work on executive functioning skills over time.
Encouraging responsibility in our children is a necessary task that needs to be done with care. Just like in any other part of life, responsibility with school work will be done one small step at a time over many years. It often can be difficult helping your child without doing too much. But it can also be tempting to give over all the schoolwork to your child and have them do it on their own before they’re ready.
So it’s good to look at this as a gradual handing-over of responsibility. Take small steps toward your goal each year. Some days you’ll go too far. It’s alright to take a step back. Build in accountability. Look over every page, but at some point you won’t have to watch them do it. Challenging your child is good just as long as it’s not too overwhelming. Trust your instincts on this and maybe involve your husband or a friend for input. But there really is no ‘right’ way to do things.
Try this: Think about your child and the resources you use and decide if you could encourage a little more responsibility for the school day in your child.
Wrap it up
There are many ways you can re-work your days to make things a little more simple. It often involves some prep work and planning. Combining subjects or children of multiple levels can also be helpful to not have so much on your mom plate. I hope these tips have given you some good ideas to get started to simplify your homeschool days.
What other ways have you found to simplify your homeschool days? Let me know in the comments below!
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