CHM097:Homeschool Planning When You're Behind Schedule

Hi, and welcome to the Christian Homeschool Moms Podcast.

I'm Demetria, your host.

Today we're talking about homeschool planning.

When you're behind schedule, how many of you feel that sometimes you get a little bit behind on your planning on your homeschooling?

So I think a lot of us feel that way.

And today I want to give you some tips and encouragement.

I've been homeschooling for over 10 years, and I have found a couple of tips and tricks and techniques that have allowed me to continue this journey so far.

And some of those tips and advice that I'm about to give you are things that are really useful for me, that have helped me to get through homeschooling on those days when I just feel like I'm totally behind or I feel like I haven't really done proper planning.

So I'll give you some advice on that.

So I have three tips for you, and the first is to prep for lessons ahead of time.

And many of us do like to plan ahead.

I think a lot of homeschool moms are avid planners, and so it just kind of comes with the territory.

But sometimes I feel that I am falling behind, and I feel like I have so much going on that I can never keep up with where I need to be in my planning and making sure that things are going to be rolling well for the week.

So if you can prepare ahead of time, it helps.

If not, then my second tip for you is to set out your materials.

And that has been a huge factor in being able to keep up, so to speak.

Just every week, having a stack of materials that I know we're going to need for the upcoming week and just keeping that in the corner of my.

Of my table or my counter, and I use it.

I use the same stack of materials every day.

So as we've come into our simple homeschooling routine, and if you watch my YouTube video, you'll see what I mean about simple homeschool.

My.

My philosophy now for this, for the rest of this school year, my daughters and I are doing things as simply as possible.

Part of the reason is that I am working on business, building a business.

And it can be a lot of work combining running a business and homeschooling my children.

So I try to streamline things as much as possible for business as well as for homeschooling so that I'm not completely overwhelmed.

So setting out materials has been something that has contributed to our simple homeschool.

I set out all of the Workbooks.

And we do a lot of workbooks now.

I set out any materials that we're going to need for our science projects and I just try to keep that in one spot.

I do have a nice little shelving space that I use to keep things on as well.

I have one of those rolling carts that I just purchased over the Christmas holidays.

And that's been helpful in keeping my materials.

But we haven't really utilized that for the.

The storage box system that I thought we were going to do, or workboxes I think is what it's called.

I forgot to really implement that.

So I haven't really been able to implement that as a work box system.

But we are using it for storage.

And the kids know, or at least my youngest daughter who's using it more, knows where her materials are.

So if she ever needs to go find them, she knows exactly where her math drawer is, her language arts drawer, and that kind of thing.

But in order to make things more streamlined for myself, I usually go ahead and just kind of take out the one workbook we need and set it out on the counter.

So that's what's been working the past couple of weeks for us.

And it just makes things so much simpler when I can just take the whole stack, grab everything in one fell swoop and take it downstairs and we start our school day.

So setting out materials has been awesome.

And thirdly, and lastly is to skip or combine lessons.

Now, if you've got a plan you'd like to stick to, but you feel like you're running behind because of life, you can always skip a lesson or two.

Because honestly, when I look through our science curricula and our different curriculum this year, I realized that we have covered a lot of the same material last year.

Or maybe we covered something in mathematics that she already understands.

And so there are some lessons that can be skipped.

And because it's review as far as mathematics, we know that we're going to get that review in the next lesson.

So we don't have to spend the entire day or school day on that one lesson when we already have it mastered.

So we just skip the lesson.

Secondly, we like to combine lessons.

Some lessons seem a bit redundant, especially when it's broken down into little bite sized pieces that your kids might be absorbing really quickly.

So this is a great time to combine a few smaller lessons into one big lesson.

And then once you start combining lessons and skipping lessons, you'll find yourself kind of catching up.

If you feel like you need to be on track or if you feel like there you want to get through a complete curriculum throughout the year, you can sort of put these ideas into place and find that it's possible to complete maybe the entire curriculum that year.

I don't recommend doing a lot of skipping because I think sometimes it's important to just go through the material and allow your kids the time to absorb it all and not skip around.

But when you find that it is very redundant, as some curricula are, then it's good to see what you could possibly just get away with not doing the lesson and not do it.

And that's completely your choice and your kids preference and your preference.

So that's all I have for you on this podcast.

I hope this has been helpful to you, and I'll be back on another one soon to give you more homeschool encouragement.

Thanks for listening.

Bye Bye.