Recently I was asked to speak in an event and share some things I wish I could go back and tell myself in the beginning year of our homeschool journey. When I was first asked what I would share I wasn’t sure if I could come up with much, but after some thought I sat down and started writing. Before I knew it I had over 25 Powerful How To Homeschool Tips I Would Tell Myself If I Could Go Back.
Before I jump in, I would like to say that both my husband and I are homeschool graduates and have been homeschooling our brood for nearly 12 years-we have kids in every level right now, high, middle, elementary and preschool. Our first years were rocky for a variety of reasons! Some of the things I am sharing today are personal and may only resonate with a few out there, but I do believe there is a little something for everyone here!
25 Powerful How To Homeschool Tips I Would Tell Myself If I Could Go Back
- The first thing I really wish I could go back to tell myself is that I wasn’t going to be able to do everything myself-AND THAT THIS WOULD BE OKAY. I wish I would have known from the start that it was OKAY to ask people for help, including my husband. Instead, I felt like I needed to do it all and figure everything out myself. Even recently I got to a point in our journey where I felt like a failure because I need some help-it took me two days to stop crying and feeling like a failure! Finally I realized “I’ve been doing this successfully for 12 years in a few months! Needing help sometimes doesn’t mean failure, it mean’s we are human.
- The second thing I would go back and tell myself is that I was going to need support-and to keep looking until I found the right support groups. Part of the reason I felt like I needed to do it all myself is because very early on I did ask two people for help but they said no, and so I gave up. I should have gotten a little more assertive at and finding the support I needed and building a support team.
- I would go back and tell myself to write down the list of reasons we chose homeschool for our family. And instead of stuffing it in a binder where I forgot about it I would tell myself to put it up where I could see it and memorize it, lol!
- I wish I could say I found a formula one could follow that would assure zero hard days, but if there is I haven’t found it, so….I would like to go back and tell myself not to spend energy looking for that formula, and instead refer to my aforementioned list of reasons for doing this on those hard days.
- I would tell myself about Cathy Duffy Reviews. I didn’t know about them until I was a few years into homeschooling. For years I tried this and that and spent money on things that didn’t work, but once I found that website it saved me 100’s of dollars! A couple quick tips for using the site, if you see an apple at the top is one of Cathy’s top picks which means it’s super amazing. Just because it’s super amazing doesn’t mean it will meet your needs though-so be sure to check out this little box for a quick glance to quickly decipher if it’s what you are looking for before you read the whole review.
- I would go back and tell myself that for the first month (or more if needed) with each child that I began homeschooling, to consider just sticking with the basics, phonics, reading and math for pre-K through 1st, and to try the other subjects but not to sweat if my younger children didn’t seem to grasp what I was teaching.
- I would love to go back and tell myself that I didn’t need to start so soon just because quizzing family members were raising eyebrows. I would tell myself to go with my gut and to take the time to research instead of jumping in before I or my child was ready and did more damage than good. I wish I would have take the time and found Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, delight directed learning and Charlotte Mason philosophies for my small children right away.
- I would tell myself that at the start of the school year to have freezer meals prepared and stocked for the first month starting a curriculum each year because the first month was always going to be a doozy!
- I wish I could go back and tell myself the organizing tips and tricks I know now and that I included in THIS VIDEO ON MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Trying to stay organized early on was so hard! I remember that I so badly wanted someone to come to my home and show me how to organize all the homeschool stuff. I would also tell myself to be prepared-that I would need to deep clean and organize my school spaces often and that this is normal (it’s call teacher planning and organizing days).
- For years we never finished on time-and so I wish I could go back and tell myself two things regarding this. The first one is that we didn’t need to finish every page in every book, or study for the excellence to the degree we did. The second thing I would tell myself is how to create and block off planned school days and no school days at the beginning of the year, then add buffer days for sickness and unplanned interruptions, and that I needed to be more vocal with friends and family about how our schedule was just as important as theirs and that we needed to work together (instead of me always accommodating my schedule for them).
- I wish I could go back and tell myself how to create a rhythm instead of a schedule with set times and that this would work better in a homeschool setting with babies and toddlers in the mix-and that a schedule with set times wasn’t necessary until the kids were older and ready+needing to learn some time management skills. It took me a lot of years to figure this out and it would have been so nice to know in the beginning!
- I would go back and tell myself to keep one light day a week, and one light week every couple months for whatever didn’t get done, and for delight directed learning time or whatever there was that needed attention.
- I would tell myself not to always rush and skip the curriculum intro’s, and to take time a month in advance to browse through them. Most curriculums have such helpful teaching tips and information on how to use the books and curriculum-but like a lot of homeschool mom’s in the first years I didn’t schedule in time for myself to do this!
- I would love to tell myself that I would save a lot of money and frustration if instead of laminating the daily schedules and plans if I would instead take them on test runs so I could make adjustments during the first weeks, and that they were one thing I actually shouldn’t laminate at all, lol! I’ve since found to just put them in paper protectors so I can adjust them as needed!
- I would tell my past self that there would be times I wasn’t going to be able to homeschool, maintain the whole house, laundry, meal plan and prep, homeschool and be a parent. I’d tell myself I was going to need some help and I would need to start teaching my children at very early ages good habits (instead of constantly finding granola bar wrappers in every room on the floors for months thinking they must have been falling out of an overflowing trash, lol).
- I would tell myself that I was going to want to be very intentional with my time and I’d have created more boundaries. I’d warn myself that in the first years as a homeschool parent many people were going assume I wasn’t doing much since I was “not working” and since my kids weren’t tied by “real school” schedules. They would assume that my schedule could and should flex around them and I would have told myself that if I didn’t create boundaries early that it would be harder later. I would have told myself kids brains work best in the mornings- and that I would need to guard that time to spend with them and that this was okay-no need to feel guilty for putting my kids first!
- I would love to go back and tell myself that asking what curriculum I should use was the WRONG question that would get me a lot of peoples opinions but only ever ended up COSTING us time and money. I wish I could go back and tell myself that the first question I should have been asking and researching was educational philosophies and the different homeschool styles-because each curriculum catered to one of the several homeschool styles. Essentially I wish I would have seen THIS VIDEO (it’s been remade and republished since I first saw it) at the beginning of my homeschool journey instead of several years into it!
- I would like to go back and tell myself that although I had the freedom to DUMP curriculum that wasn’t working, and that jumping curriculum takes time out of the school year (since they take time to learn and get used to). It would have been nice to have been a little more prepared for this wrench!
- I would love to go back and tell myself to remember that TESTS MEAN VERY LITTLE and are not 100% accurate representations of what my child truly knows!
- I would love to go back and tell myself that everything was going to be okay-that the 1000’s tears I was going to cry weren’t going to be necessary. Instead I cried them because I was so sure I wasn’t doing enough, that I wasn’t doing things right, that I was messing up.
- I wish I could tell myself would be that it’s okay and essential to take time for self care, that it was not a waste of time. It would be more like a lifeline to clarity that would be necessary to do this homeschool marathon. I’d love to go back and tell myself, “Shayla, it’s okay to fill your cup, take time off to research teaching methods, to prepare yourself and that yeah….it may feel like a waste of time (and it did when I first started doing it 10 YEARS into my homeschool journey) but it’s NOT a waste of time, it will make you more efficient and productive!”
- Another thing I had wish I’d known in the beginning that surprised me and surprises all the new mom’s getting started is that so much in elementary school is repeated in middle school and again in high school. I wish I knew I didn’t need to feel like such a failure when it didn’t appear my elementary kids didn’t grasp every jot in detail. I wish I realized the elementary years are supposed gentle years where you foster a love of learning and plant seeds that sprout later.
- I would go back and tell myself this is a marathon. At times it can be beautiful and other times so difficult that I’d have to be really strong to not let the hard overshadow the beauty. If I had known this I would have not have been so blind sighted when hard times came. So many times I felt T boned and confused, I kept thinking I was doing something wrong I didn’t realize that the hard was normal and didn’t mean I was doing something wrong. So I wasted a lot of tears and a lot of time looking for what I was doing wrong when I wasn’t doing anything wrong at all. Hard is just hard sometimes!
- I would tell myself something I didn’t discover until after 9 years of homeschooling, that on my worst home school days that I was still acing it, and I wish I knew that on my best home school days that I was doing as much or more than what was being done in a public school over a two or three day time period. So many times we think that we are not doing enough when yeah sometimes we might not be, but the thing is that a lot of times we are doing a really good job and I know that for myself when I know that I’m doing a good job I can do even better. But when I’m feeling like I’m messing everything up and failing, my mental clarity, my energy, my will power, everything just drains from me and I feel like giving up. There were so many days I was disarmed simply because I didn’t believe I was doing things right, that I was doing enough, or that I was doing any good and getting through to my kids! If I had just realized that I was doing a really good job and that I was getting through- I would have been able to do better.
- Last thing I wish I knew is that God makes all things work for good, just like he promises. Even if you do mess some area’s up, God can and does make it right. As long as you are doing your best and trying he will make something of it. In this line of work every drop you put in that educational bucket counts for something… You are investing in your children and it may seem like you are not getting anywhere so often but you are. The hard work pays off. You just show up and be willing to do the work and you’ll see! In the meantime focus on relationships, good healthy relationships, because when you choose homeschooling you are building your tribe and it’s a tribe that has potential of being the best tribe for you imaginable on earth.
If you enjoyed 25 Powerful How To Homeschool Tips I Would Tell Myself If I Could Go Back you might enjoy my other BROWSING MY OTHER HOMESCHOOL RELATED POSTS HERE.
