Putting the Peace Back in Your Homeschool
Although spring has officially arrived, a few days ago proved to be a day of hectic weather. It started off with peaceful rain, then it hailed, then it snowed, then the sun came out and melted off the snow, the wind picked up, and by nightfall the rain had returned. What a chaotic day of weather! The children commented on how "crazy" the weather was, but I noted that how the day began is how it ended, with peaceful rain.
Our homeschool days can often be like a "crazy weather day." The trick for a happy homeschool is to keep the peace of the day at all costs. By peace I mean, keeping the Lord at the centre of our lives. It is not enough for us to know our faith but we must live it too. To successfully perform our calling as homeschooling parents, we need to be healthy, well rested, and organized. Beginning the day with the Lord and ending the day with the Lord is one way to keep our spiritual self healthy and happy. The Lord is really the source of all peace in our lives. If we keep Him at the centre of our family and especially our homeschool, peace can easily be maintained. This of course can be easier said then done with all the many tasks we need to fulfill daily. Or is it?
Many times the whirlwind feeling of “busy-ness” that is often felt on a day-to-day basis is created by our own doing. Left unchecked this feeling can lead to fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout. My pastor, a young and vibrant priest from Poland, shared with me a step-by-step method for keeping peace in my household. This exercise that I am going to share with you needs to be done as a family. Involve your spouse and children from the get-go. You will not be able to do this activity without their input and support.
Step: 1 Make a list of what you do on a regular basis.
Divide a sheet of paper into two columns. In one column make a list of all the activities that you and your family do on a REGULAR basis. List everything!! List your children's activities, regular meetings and appointments, learning co-ops, committees you serve on, e-mails you send regularly, tea with the in-laws, choir practice, snack provider for an event, weekly call to your aunt, various ministries of which you are a part, regular tasks you or someone in the family must accomplish, science experiments that must be planned, learning portfolios, weekly educational updates if you are registered with an institutional program, and so on.
If you are like me you came out with a list of some thirty-five plus tasks that you accomplish on a regular basis. Did you include homeschooling your children as a task? Did you include attending church in your list? How about daily prayer time? If you have a large family, did you include meal preparation and shopping time? By looking through this list together as a family you can easily see why you are so tired all the time. If you are well rested, organized, and healthy the day is great, of course. But if somebody has a meltdown over math, the littlest one is sick, and you have a headache from lack of sleep, you can see how the day would be like a hail storm instead of peaceful rain shower.
Your goal with this activity is to reduce the list to about 10-15 things you can do happily and regularly. I can hear you gasping, but hear me out. It can be done. And more importantly, it will bring peace to your homeschool.
Step: 2 Ask each person in the family to list their five favourite and five least favourite activities.
By seeing what people really like and dislike, you can immediately adjust your activities to bring about more happiness and peace in your household and homeschool. You may find that your child really hates reading aloud but likes to read by himself before bed. You may find that your child is a budding chef instead of a burnt out musician. What you think is important to the family may not be and vice-versa. This may prove very helpful in helping your child find the learning style that works the best for them (and you too). You may find that being enrolled in a learning program just might not be worth the headache, stress or monetary compensation, or you may find the accountability comforting. You'll be surprised at what you learn.
Step: 3 Divide activities into Must Do, Can Do, and Want To Do.
Now for the hard part. What can you remove from the long list that you just made? The first to go should be all the things that family members don't like. I simply asked my children what five things they disliked the most and what five things they couldn't live without. We found that many of the things we didn't like actually ran across the board with two or three members of the family. Once we identified the "chaos-causers", they were easy to remove from our lives.
What things MUST be done? These would include things like attended church regularly and homeschool the children daily. Providing meals should be acknowledged and listed here too if you have a larger family. Daily exercise should be in this category as well. [This doesn't mean soccer lessons, dance team, and structured "drive them to" sports lessons and meetings. This means exercise to keep you healthy daily. That could be a family walk, playing twenty minutes of hoops with the kids in the driveway, or letting them jump-rope on the back porch until they can't jump anymore.] There is not much more that should be in this category for the most part. Your spouse's job should not be listed here unless you have to participate in it somehow, i.e. you own a family business. You can easily see that there is much that MUST BE DONE on a daily basis. Don't fool yourself. What we do daily as homeschool parents requires so much energy that we almost don't need any other lists...lol.
Things we CAN DO will be a longer list. This list will include the methods we choose to homeschool our children with, house cleaning, activity style lessons, outings, meetings and such. I include homeschooling method in this list because if you are using a high prep style of teaching or are enrolled with a formal learning program, you really must put that in as an extra in this category above and beyond regular homeschooling time. Why, because it requires more time and energy. Someone who is registered rather than enrolled doesn't have the burden of checking in weekly with a teacher, tracking learning time or progress, or creating a learning portfolio above and beyond what they think they will want to keep as mementos. This same person WILL, however, have to take the time to individually plan their learning year without support because they do not have to follow the standard PLO's and learning outcomes that non-registered families must follow nor do they receive the same financial support. Someone who follows a low prep course, (pre-made or boxed curriculum,) doesn't require the extra time needed for planning other more time intensive type styles of teaching. Keep in mind that creating unit studies and lapbooks, planning science experiments, organizing co-ops and fieldtrips, etc. all take good amounts of time and energy to create, organize and carryout. Remember that just because we can do something, doesn't mean that we should.
Next, create a list of things that you and your family WANT TO DO. This is pretty self explanatory, eh? The trick is not to overdo the quantity in this category. Many times at the beginning of a learning year this category is very long. We then start moving things from the Want To Do to the Can Do and then the Must Do. Next thing you know we are burnout feeling like we HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING. This is just not the truth. The object is to have a limited number of activities that you can do and want to do at the same time.
Step: 4 Create a final list of family activities.
Create a final list of family activities and then post them up for all to see. The list should be no more then ten to fifteen things. Fifteen if you have a larger family and ten if you have a smaller one. List your MUST DOs first then add a combination of items from the CAN DO and WANT TO DO lists. Everybody should participate in the MUST DO category. If planned correctly and honestly, you should find that many of the Cans and Wants will overlap. Homeschooling your children should span across all the columns. You "must do" it. You should "want to" do it. You "can do" it - with the Lord's help of course.
I know you are thinking, "This lady is crazy! How many years has she been homeschooling to give out advice like this? I can't cut all those things out! How can we homeschool this way?"
Well, after homeschooling a gifted and spirited child for almost ten years now, using many different methods, having been both registered and enrolled at different times, I can tell you that it can, should, and must be done. The ultimate goal is the avoidance of burnout and the institution of PEACE in the homeschool (and the homeschooling mom's heart.) With peace, we are all able to stay closer to the Lord in our journeys as spouses, parents and teachers. My pastor told me, "If you allow yourself to become physically and mentally burnt out, you'll be of no use to anyone . . . not even the Lord."
-That Resource Site Team