If you’ve been overwhelmed by winter, you probably can’t wait for spring. Personally, I’m desperate for it! No matter how excited we are about spring, if we don’t plan for it, we’ll find ourselves disappointed that we didn’t do many of our favorite things. We can change that with just an hour of our time this week. (Note that we will plan for Easter later this month.)
#1 Research ideas
Google, Pinterest, and your homeschool support group are great places to look for spring activity ideas. Discuss your must-do activities with your family. Is it time to plant a garden? Take a long-distance field trip? Make mud pies?
You can create your own printed list using this subscriber freebie (the link to all freebies is sent in subscribers’ first email). Keep your list short so you can check them all off and so kids can help make your list. Use a laminating machine and you can reuse your list every year.
#3 Add ideas to the calendar
Cute bucket lists do us no good if we don’t make time in our schedules for these activities. That’s especially true for events that are more fun with friends. Sign up for support group field trips or plan a day out with other families. You might want to have a rain-out date ready. Add them to your calendar or to-do list and treat them like any other important date.
#4 Gather supplies
If you’re finally going to plant a garden, fly kites, or go for a walk in the rain, you may need to gather the materials to make it happen. Today’s the day to shop or to add needed items to your list. Let the kids think of what you need and even make your shopping list. Have a preschooler? Make a picture shopping list using sales flyers or the internet.
Are you like me and often find that spring is over before you’ve had a chance to do these things?
If you have a functional extended family, connecting with them as part of your homeschooling can be a positive experience for you and your children. If you have family members who aren’t sold on homeschooling, some of this week’s ideas could help change that. We will get organized by including aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents in our homeschooling and family activities. Family can not only share the workload, but can also encourage us when the going gets tough.
#1 Discuss Potential Roles of Extended Family in School
HSLDA provides a variety of ways grandparents can be involved in homeschooling — from corresponding with grandkids via letter to taking over the some of the homeschooling responsibilities. One of the suggestions I love is to take grandparents to a homeschooling conference. Extended family can have a new appreciation for the choice you’ve made and the choices you still have to make (can you say curriculum overload?).
Many grandparents would be thrilled to be asked to teach a special skill or attend a child’s event. My father-in-law did a presentation on being a small business owner for our homeschool co-op. I have his talk recorded and now that he has gone to heaven, I treasure it. But don’t forget aunts, uncles, and cousins! Extended family offers a pool of knowledge and love that can enrich your children’s lives and vice versa. We invited extended family to an Africa night that concluded our unit study and had a blast. The kids’ uncle (a zoo curator) shared his slides on Africa and my kids gave presentations while in costume. Including family doesn’t have to be that elaborate, however.
#2 Discuss Ideas for Serving Extended Family
If you have extended family living with you, serving them will be second nature to your children. But if not, spend some time today thinking about what you could do to bless them. Could you send them a letter (snail mail is a special treat these days), do some spring cleaning, or bake them a special treat? How about organizing their photos or videos? We have our extended family on a prayer calendar which is a fantastic way to bless them. If you aren’t sure what to do, ask family members what they would appreciate.
#3 Discuss Ideas for Connecting with Family
Grandparents.com reports that 45% of grandparents live more than 200 miles away from their grandchildren. Distance can definitely interfere with relationships, but we are blessed that technology can bridge the divide. We gave my mom (who lives away) an iPad so we can use FaceTime and get as close as possible to an in-person visit, for example.
Plan regular a regular get-together with extended family, even if they live far away. You’ll create family traditions and build a wider safety net for your children. We treasured our weekly dinners with grandpa and our yearly lake trip with aunts, uncles, and cousins. What tradition could you begin?
#4 Put One of Your Ideas Into Practice
Once you’ve spent time discussing how to include your extended family in your homeschooling, put one of those great ideas into practice. Ask your kids what they’d like to do first and they’ll help hold you accountable.
How do you already get extended family involved in your homeschooling?
Most of the interpersonal problems I have seen professionally and personally could have been avoided with good communication. This week we will focus on improving our parenting communication skills. Here’s how:
#1 Have the kids evaluate you
We are going to start with a task that most parents never do: ask their children to tell them how they’re doing. We may imagine that having our children evaluate us encourages them to be disrespectful. On the contrary, this kind of open communication promotes respect. Children who feel they have no voice in their relationship with you are most likely to rebel.
We may also fear hearing about our flaws. Yet, it’s better to be told now than to hear when our children are adults that they were unhappy with our parenting or teaching. With our humility comes the opportunity for God to change us and our families for the better.
I have created a form that your children can use to evaluate both parents. It may not be appropriate for younger students. Make sure your children know that you want their honest opinions and that you won’t be angry or sad if they give them.
It seems like an oxymoron, but parent-teacher conferences are very important for married homeschooling families. We can be so busy that we don’t make time to discuss each of our children’s academic and personal progress as a couple. A child may continue to struggle unnecessarily because one parent isn’t aware of the need. When we don’t know what to do, our spouse may.
Schedule a time with your spouse for conferences (you may have to schedule one child at a time) and then complete these Homeschool Conference Evaluation Forms from FiveJs.com. The forms provide an opportunity for the primary teacher to evaluate students and for the students to evaluate themselves.
Using these forms and the parent evaluation forms, prayerfully discuss each child. Agree on when to meet with your child, what you want to praise each child for, and what you’d like the child to work on. Use this time to pray together about a personal goal in your parenting for the rest of the school year as well. Ask your spouse to help hold you accountable with regular progress updates.
#3 Have a conference with each child
When both parents meet with a child, he learns that he is valued. You could meet with him at home or take him somewhere special where you will have the opportunity to talk. Keep your conversation positive. Affirm your love for him and your confidence that he can keep growing. You may wish to present your child with a Scripture that you believe will help him understand your heart for him.
#4 Plan special time for each child
You don’t want to a conference to be the only special time you have with each child. Parents of many children will find daily time with individual kids a challenge. Doorposts sells a Family Time Circle that will help you remember who’s supposed to spend time with whom. Some families like to be less structured with individual time and choose to take the opportunities that present themselves (i.e., take one child to the grocery store, another on a different errand, and so on).
Come Together Kids shares a very clever idea for planning monthly special time. Although the idea is used as a valentine’s gift, these scratch-off cards would be well-received any time.
Which of these tasks do you think will give you more confidence as a parent?
The homeschool lifestyle can leave marriage at the bottom of the priority list. That’s a dangerous pattern because nothing will threaten a happy, organized homeschool like a troubled marriage. This week we will take some simple steps that go beyond relationship maintenance to laying the foundation for the marriage you’ve always dreamed of.
#1 Evaluate Your Marriage
Most couples avoid marriage counseling until the problems are serious. You can take the first step that a professional would take: assess where your marriage is today.
For many couples, the prospect of taking an honest look at the health of their relationship is a frightening one. But failing to take stock is the biggest threat. You and your spouse should answer these 7 questions (include the two questions about your relationship with Christ that a commenter added). If you’re anxious about this, agree with your spouse that if this honest discussion creates conflict you can’t resolve, that you’ll see your pastor or a counselor for help with communication and conflict resolution skills.
When we think of the marriage of our dreams, many of us picture romantic dates and vacations. The truth is that dream marriages are grounded in the everyday experience of communication, recreation, and intimacy. If we don’t have enough ordinary time together, expensive dates and vacations won’t be enough to get us by.
Hopefully, you and your spouse have agreed on a regular time to pray together. If not, do that today. Then decide together when is the best time for the two of you to talk, have fun, and make love on a regular basis. Depending on the season of life you are in, you may have to schedule time. While scheduled time isn’t traditionally romantic, it is very effective in strengthening a marriage. The best time to devote to your relationship will likely change as your family changes.
#3 Plan Special Time Together
Date nights away from home, couples retreats, and vacations are the icing on the cake. Dates don’t have to be expensive. Tip Junkie has dozens of cheap and creative date ideas for parents. Some of them are perfect for Valentine’s Day this week. If you need child care, consider exchanging care with friends who would also like to have a date night.
Consider attending a marriage retreat. I recommend a Family Life Marriage Conference. Also, see if your church offers a marriage retreat or Bible study. We organized a Love and Respect study with other couples and loved it.
Even getting away for a night (or having the kids out of the house for a night) can be renewing for your relationship. Pray about it and let your friends and family know you’d like to have a vacation with your spouse. God may provide for this in unexpected ways.
#4 Speak Your Spouse’s Love Language
Have you asked your spouse what would make for an ideal Valentine’s Day (or other occasion)? You may be surprised by the answer. Not everyone is entranced by roses and expensive dinners out. If your spouse’s love language is words of affirmation, a hand-written love letter may be a treasure. If your spouse’s love language is acts of service, a favorite meal prepared at home may be just the thing. If your spouse prefers physical touch, you’ll know what to do. 🙂 If your spouse’s love language is quality time, step away from the digital devices and act like you have all the time in the world to do what your spouse wants. If your spouse enjoys gifts, ask the kind of gifts they prefer (something they request, gift cards, or surprises). Consider reading and discussing The 5 Love Languages with your spouse.
If your spouse doesn’t ask what would make for an ideal Valentine’s Day for you, share anyway! If you love surprises, clarify the kinds of surprises you’d love.
Most homeschoolers rely on their computers. We use them for:
curriculum
research
creating
communicating
worship (I play a family worship CD on our computer)
and much more…
The problem is neglecting our computers until they give us fits.
This week’s challenge is all about making sure they work for our homeschools and not against them.
#1 Create a Safety Plan
We took steps to keep our photos and videos safe during the Memory Keeping Challenge. This week, we will take steps to protect our other valuable files: documents, records, music, contacts, and more.
Fortunately, most computer programs have automatic backups these days. Unfortunately, some programs require you to indicate that you want automatic backup ON in your settings. Never assume that your files are being backed up — that goes for your mobile devices as well. Take a few minutes to make sure they will be there if your computer isn’t.
Determine how to back up files. I prefer to have files backed up online. I use Dropbox for many different kinds of files. If you’re comfortable with your files being backed up online, add at least one more level of safety. My huge list of Gmail contacts became corrupted. I hadn’t made a backup of them. Never trust an online account to be your only backup of vital information. You may want to consider an external hard drive (or two) as a backup.
Make sure your security software is up to date. Anyone who’s had a computer completely destroyed by viruses (me!) will tell you that it pays to download the latest version of your software program of choice.
Create a safety plan for your kids. There are many excellent methods of limiting kids’ exposure to online predators and pornography. I’ve reviewed many of them. But I believe the most effective method is educating our children.
Explain to kids that there are unscrupulous people who would like to exploit their natural curiosity and desire for relationships. Clicking on an ad or sharing personal information can lead to unintended problems. It’s really important to tell children that if they do come across pornographic material or give personal information to a stranger, that you will NOT be angry with them. Instead, you want them to tell you, so you can prevent the incident from becoming a serious problem.
Of course, this kind of education should be ongoing with information and discussions taking place when children reach a new stage of development. This video addresses internet safety in general.
#2 Maximize Performance
You need all your patience to teach and parent; you can’t afford to deal with a slow computer, too.
If you have a slow internet connection, spend some time researching an economical option. And don’t be afraid to pray! We had problems with our network for months until a friend at church, who works for our internet company, saw my Facebook update about it. He sent someone out who finally determined and fixed the problem.
Educate the kids not to agree to download extra adware when getting games or software online. This has been a primary cause of slowness on our PCs.
A messy computer desktop can be just as overwhelming as a cluttered work space. If you’re using a PC, you don’t really need those program icons. Deleting them shouldn’t delete your programs, which can be run from the task bar or start menu. Everything in its place applies to computers, too.
The quickest way to clean your desktop is to create a folder and label it archive. Drag everything into it that you think you may need and go through it later when you have a folder system set up. Mark Hurst describes this approach in his free Kindle book, Bit Literacy .
Use a desktop wallpaper. IHeartOrganizing shares a file-naming strategy and pretty desktop wallpaper (just a photo that you set as your desktop) that you can use for organizing files you’re actively working with.
#4 Declutter Unneeded Files
Take 15 minutes and delete files you don’t need. To make this practice easier in the future, consider having a “To Delete” file. I often download files I know I won’t need later to this folder.
As homeschoolers, we can find it difficult to minimize the collection of stuff. Here are a few reasons why:
Books are often our greatest treasure; we can’t imagine giving them away
We may have more than one child or might have, so we figure we will need the toys, the clothing, and the curriculum again soon
We need to save two-liter bottles, empty milk containers, and toilet paper rolls for those experiments and crafts that use “what you have on hand”
We may do unit studies and could use just about anything as a prop or costume
We don’t want to waste money living on a single income or just to be good stewards
Although we can come up with good reasons to keep our stuff, there are also good reasons to get rid of it:
If we keep buying bookshelves, we will have to buy a larger house
Organizing hand-me-downs can be very time-consuming
If we save too many recyclables, we might start thinking that having 20 cats is normal, too
It’s no use saving so many things to use for unit studies if we can’t find them
Clutter can cost us emotionally, socially, financially, and spiritually
We can’t clear years’ worth of clutter in a week, but we can get a good start on it. This week:
#1 Make a List of All Gifts Received for Christmas
I receive a few gifts for Christmas, but I buy most of my clothing and other items I need at the end of the year because of sales. If I don’t declutter as much as I take in, it won’t take long for me to look like a hoarder. The same goes for the kids.
Enough time has gone by that it will be an interesting exercise to have your children make a list of everything they’ve gotten during the Christmas season. I’m providing a form for subscribers for this purpose. If they can’t remember, what does that tell them about the real value of things?
#2 Collect Items to Declutter Based on Your Gifts Received List
The idea is to do a one-in, one-out exchange. If you got a new sweater, an old one is decluttered. If the kids got a new game, an old one is given away. If you can’t do that for some reason, just declutter any item in exchange for the new one received.
I had a very difficult time with this where the kids were concerned for many years. One child would get a toy as a gift and everyone played with it. This is great until it comes time to declutter. The teen no longer cared about the younger kids’ stuff, so he would want to declutter it, much to his siblings’ dismay.
I now lay two blankets on the floor when we are decluttering kid stuff. One blanket is for anything any child wants to give away. The other is for trash. The kids enjoy going through their stash of toys and games and putting items on the blankets. As a child sees something on the blanket he wants to keep, he rescues it and returns it to storage. As the process continues, he may change his mind and return it to the giveaway pile, however. Sometimes kids are ready to release things when they feel free to choose. I may also rescue items from the blanket that I want to sell or keep for grandchildren (I’ve changed my mind about many of these latter items with my husband’s encouragement.)
#3 Put Unwanted Books/Curriculum Aside or List for Sale
Once, when I had more books than bookcases, I went through boxes of books while on the phone with a friend. I would explain to her why I was keeping each book. It wasn’t long before I realized that I didn’t need to be everyone’s library. So much of the time I was keeping books in case someone wanted to borrow them. I encourage you to ask yourself why you’re keeping books and release those that hold no interest, no sentimental value, or will not be read again.
Can we talk about releasing curriculum now? It’s tough to admit you spent hundreds on something you hate or that your kids will never be cute little kindergartners again, but you’ll have so much more peace in your homeschool when it’s out of sight. If you declutter something you end up wanting again, you can always buy it (or borrow it) again.
At this point in the school year, you know which materials you purchased that just aren’t working. Box them up to sell at spring or summer used book sales or list them for sale now. Check out my post on the best places to sell used curriculum.
#4 Deliver Unwanted Items to Charity, Consignment, or the Post Office
Unless you’ve determined that later in the year is a better time to offload your unwanted items, do yourself a favor and send them to a new home as soon as possible.
In our area, many charities will pick up donations. I usually prefer to free up space by sending my husband to the drop-off location (which he gladly does).
My favorite resource for decluttering inspiration is FLYLady.net or her book, Sink Reflections. My one claim to fame is that I have a blurb on the back.
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
