How to Evaluate What is Working in Your Homeschool
Learn How to Evaluate What is Working in Your Homeschool! What happens after you’ve gone through all this planning and you find it isn’t working with your kids? We’ve made a monthly to daily homeschool schedule but what do you do if it just doesn’t work for you?
Let me tell you, however, you imagined your kids and your homeschool at the start of this journey, it’s not going to look like that. You know that image that you have of reading to your child as your snuggled up on the couch with them hanging onto your every word. That doesn’t happen here. Once child is doodling, the other one wants to chew on the book, and the other child is trying to read another book because your book is not interesting enough. That is my house.
Things will not be perfect, you will not be able to check off everything on your to do list, every single day. There will be good days and there will be bad ones.
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How to Evaluate What is Working in Your Homeschool
Taking a step back and asking yourself if what you’re doing daily is working is key. This can help you to better yourself and to better the learning aspect for your children as well.
Even though homeschooling is started off with the best of intentions, that doesn’t mean that there may be areas that need to be changed or improved later on down the road. For this time happen, you have to ask questions and look at what you’re currently doing to see if there are ways that you can do it better or differently movign forward.
I also think that it’s important to look and evaluate every quarter to be certain that the learning path that you’re on is still the best one for everyone in the family.
Some of the ways to evaluate what is going on can be to ask these questions about your homeschooling plans and days.
Are there tears?
If there are tears about homeschooling there are issues that will need to be addressed first. I think particularly when you are bringing home a child from public school, there’s a resistance to seeing you as a teacher. This means you get more defiant behaviour towards school and not wanting to do the work or being argumentative. Homeschooling is a lifestyle and it will need a period of adjustment.
This is a great chance to sit down and talk about the plan and how everything is going or how things are going to be adjusted moving forward. I’m a big believer in communication being the key when it comes to making homeschooling work for everyone in the family.
Have you found your groove?
Have you found your homeschooling groove where things are for the most part sailing smoothly. If there are hiccups in your schedule, don’t be afraid to move things around. I found that when my son was taking judo, then that day was dedicated to running errands, and the library.
Once we returned home, there wasn’t a lot of school work being done. I decided that that day would be delegated to art and science projects. We were still getting school done but no one was in the mood for seat work which was fine with me.
The only way that you’re going to find this out is by trial and error. That might sound daunting but it’s the absolute truth. What starts out as a good idea may not work with the flow of the days or the mentaility of everyone involved. Instead of looking at it as a negative, turn it into a positive and adjust accordingly.
Understand That Change is good
Things are not set in stone, you have the freedom to change things up as needed. You don’t have to school from Monday to Friday, 9am to 3pm. When my hubby worked weekends, we did school from Wednesday to Sunday and in the afternoons. That’s just what worked for us. You’re not doing school at home, but you are implementing learning into your regular routine. Make it fun and do what works for you.
This is really what homeschooling is all about. It’s your choice. You can keep it the traditional school hours or you can vary it up to be different. Some families just are not morning families so that means that they start at a point in time later on during the day. Other families get more motivated earlier and want schooling done and out of the day so they rise early and start.
It really comes down to what you’re wanting to do. Take the time to adjust to your homeschooling schedule that you set and then give it a month or so to look at again and find out if it’s working great for you. This is a simple way to try out something and then adjust it as needed.
Follow along in my 31 Days to a Better Planned Homeschool series.
You’ll also want to check out the other 26 bloggers in this series as well and join our Homeschool Tips 4 Moms Facebook group if you’d like to connect with other homechooling mothers.
More Homeschooling Resources
Don’t forget that when it comes to homeschooling, having options and choices is great. The best part is that you’re the one that is setting up the curriculum and choices for your family so you’ll be able to adjust and do what you think works best. More times than not, having a great curriculum is part of the equation and to complete it, you’ll want to pair it up with how your family functions best. You have the ability to change and made any type of adjustments that you need to.
