I was sure my kids would be speaking a foreign language at early ages, but it didn’t happen. I learned German in school but wanted my kids to learn Spanish. I was thrilled when I met Anne Guarnera of Language Learning at Home, who not only has a Ph.D. in Spanish, but homeschools and helps homeschoolers teach their kids foreign language.
Anne graciously agreed to an interview for The Homeschool Sanity show and answered these questions.
Why teach your kids a foreign language?
It allows us to serve others. A huge 75% of people in the world do not speak or understand English. We can serve people internationally or the large number of non-English speakers in our own communities.
Maximizes verbal skills. Learning a second language doesn’t impede the development of your child’s first language. The more languages you speak, the faster your brain functions. Kids who study foreign language improves processing speed for all subjects.
Teaches the importance of habits. Regular practice is the foundation of language learning, just as practice of a musical instrument is to music learning. Habit formation serves our students well in the study of all subjects.
What age do you recommend starting the study of foreign language?
As soon as possible. This isn’t to discourage students who haven’t started until middle or high school. I learned foreign languages when I was older. Older students have the advantage of understanding grammar and can learn more quickly.
Starting early is a real advantage for homeschoolers. You can make the decision to incorporate foreign language into preschooling. Formal study isn’t required, however. Picture books, CDs, and apps are a great place to start.
What are some tools parents can use to support their language learners even if they don’t speak the language their children are studying?
There are three types of resources I recommend. There are language learning apps. For younger students, the Little Pim app. For older students, I recommend Duolingo and Mango Languages that is often available through your public library.
A second type of resource I recommend is audiobooks in foreign language. The audiobooks teach accents. They can be paused and words looked up or used along with a print book.
A third type of resource is other people. I encourage parents to be creative about finding real-life opportunities to connect with foreign language speakers. That might be something like volunteering places where there are foreign languages spoken. Your child might join a Skype group to speak with native speakers with your supervision.
How can parents help motivate their kids who might not see the point of language learning?
Know your child. Help your child make the connection between what they’re doing and a larger goal. Because it requires so much deliberate practice, it can be hard to see the end goal. Introduce real-life scenarios in which they can use the language. Again, interacting in a community activity where the language is useful can be motivating. Or connect language learning to a future career plan or mission trip.
Even parents who are raising their children bilingually struggle with motivation. My own son recently told me he wanted to be a normal kid who just “talked English.”
Getting organized is one of the most popular goals for the new year. I’ve met many wannabe organized homeschoolers at conferences. Yet I suspect that no matter how great my intentions, many of the homeschoolers who have heard me speak or own my book, The Organized Homeschool Life, still aren’t organized. I’d like to discuss six reasons I think that’s the case.
The first reason you’re still not organized is you’ve decided to get organized. What? You might think it’s true what they say about psychologists — that we’re all a bit crazy. But I mean it. Sometimes deciding to get organized destroys your motivation. Psychological research has demonstrated that the anxiety we feel about goals like getting organized dissipates as soon as we decide to do something about it. So, buying an organizing book, joining an organizing Facebook group, or even setting a goal of getting organized can make you feel like the battle is half won. You can relax because you’ve already started getting organized.
I’m not suggesting that you don’t decide to get organized. I’m saying that you can’t stop there. You’ll understand what I mean as I share more reasons you’re still not organized.
#2 You haven’t made organization a habit
We think organizing is an event — that weekend in August when we may or may not get our school room set up, the day when our husband has all the kids out of the house and we’re going to set up our shiny new record keeping system, the spring day dedicated to cleaning out the garage. There are so many problems with an event approach to organization. First, we’re always running behind. If you’ve waited until August to set up your school space and that’s when you’re starting school, you feel behind. You feel like a failure. You’re understandably stressed.
If we count on the golden time when all the kids are out of the house, you just know something is going to happen to prevent that from happening. Your husband will have another commitment, one of the kids will be sick, or something urgent will come up. Even if your day goes as planned, you’ll discover that there is more to do in your space than you thought or you’ll be frustrated that you can’t do more. When my husband has had the kids out of the house for a period of time, it always, always seems too short.
Organization is not an event, but a habit. If you read my article on mini habits, you know that habits are best established with daily practice. It’s what you do every day that determines how organized you are. If you’re still pinning your hopes on an organizing event, you’re going to remain disorganized.
#3 You’re taking on too much
Those of you who are event organizers are also taking on too much. You want to organize your whole school space, including lesson plans in a weekend, a day, or an hour. But even those of you who are trying to organize on a daily basis are also likely taking on too much. Our eyes are almost always bigger than our schedules. We can’t accomplish what we imagine we can in our fantasy world. So here’s what happens. We don’t do what we planned and we feel like failures. We give up. The organizing book goes back on the shelf or more likely in a messy pile. Another thing that didn’t work. We imagine that we are a hopeless case. Strategies that work for other people won’t work for us. I have been there. The truth is we are taking on too much and no normal homeschool mom can accomplish what we dreamed we could.
#4 You lose track of your why
About the time you give up because it’s all too much, you’ve also forgotten why it was so important to get organized in the first place. Maybe you’re fine just the way you are! You’re certainly better than that disastrous homeschool mom you know. You’re not that bad, so maybe you should just relax. If you kept feeling good about your homeschool life after giving up the quest for organization, I would tell you that was a good decision. There are a number of you who are organized enough to do all that God has called you to do. Hyper-focus on organization isn’t good for you.
But the rest of you? You know you’ll be right back in that place of rushing, being crabby at the kids, embarrassed by your home or your lateness, and wishing things were different. You need to reconnect with your why. Why DO you want to get organized? Think about your worst recent organizational day — the day where you got up late, forgot something important, had nothing planned for dinner, got next to no school finished, didn’t do chores, and wasted too much time online, and stayed up late trying to finish something you should have done a long time ago. Really picture it in your mind. How do you feel? Do you want to continue to feel this way in the future? How does your lack of organization affect your spouse? Your kids? Your finances? Your friends? Your witness? Be honest. Now imagine that you are as organized as you need to be to accomplish all God has planned for you. How does that feel? How does that affect your spouse? Your kids? Your finances? Your friends? Your witness? Now you should have your why. You need to hold onto it in order to finally get organized.
#5 You aren’t considering your time
I have shared why the most important area of your homeschool life to organize is your time. Unfortunately, we tend to focus our organizing efforts on our physical space. We want our books, art supplies, and science materials to look good. We want beautiful bookshelves, smart-looking bins, and creative spaces. I do think that an attractive, organized space is important. But organizing and planning time to maintain an organized space is even more important.
The primary way we fail to properly organize time is not anticipating the obstacles that may get in our way each day. The obstacles include our own temptations and struggles, like the hard time we have not answering the phone or responding to text messages. We ignore the likelihood that our child will be crabby, resistant, or slow to learn. We forget about the possibility of surprises — the guest who drops by, the furnace that konks out, the neighbor’s emergency. We can’t exactly plan for these, but neither should we expect the ideal. What we can do is ask ourselves what may get in the way of our week. And we can plan plenty of margin to accommodate the unexpected.
#6 You don’t have help
About the time we decide that we’re going to get organized, we also decide that WE are going to get organized. On top of everything else we are doing, we imagine that through our own strength, or force of will, we’re going to tackle the organizing problem. Take it from someone whose god has been her own strength for many, many years. That endeavor is destined to fail for a believer. God is not going to let you succeed in your own strength. Not only will you move further from Him and become convinced you can make it on your own, but your pride will grow. You’ll be telling everyone how you did it — how YOU did it with your organizing genius or your superior willpower or this program you found with your keen research skills. Why would God let us do this? He won’t. If you hear nothing else in this episode, I hope you’ll hear this: you can’t get organized if organizing is a struggle without God. You shouldn’t even try. I wrote about homeschooling without striving and I highly recommend that article to you.
The other way we try to get organized without help is creating our own approach. I believe in tailoring every approach or system to your personal needs, but reinventing the wheel isn’t a wise use of our time. Organizing books used to be written by born-organized people. They weren’t very useful for born-messy people like you and me. It isn’t that we’ve never heard of everything in its place. It’s that we need that broken down for us. Fortunately, there are people like FLYLady who have made organizing simple. We can adopt others’ grace-based approaches that recognize our natural tendencies — like if we have the opportunity to avoid putting something away, we’ll take it if we haven’t created habits for that.
Finally, we don’t get help getting organized by going through the process alone. It’s embarrassing to be disorganized. You feel foolish and weak. It feels so good to imagine getting your act together on your own and then pretending as though you’ve always been the same as your born-organized friends. I’ve had born-organized people who haven’t known me long tell me that I’m just like them. I laugh out loud. I’m not. Born-organized people have struggles that aren’t necessarily as visible as messies’ are. As I’ve shared the truth about me with other messies, I find myself loving them to pieces. There’s something so moving about being able to be real with people and their honesty in return. It isn’t that I don’t think it’s possible to get organized alone. God can get our lives in order, now matter how isolated we are. It’s that it’s not nearly as fun.
The tool that can help you finally organize your homeschool
There are people who have bought my book, The Organized Homeschool Life, who still aren’t organized. I can’t make people read the book or do the missions, even though some women wish I could. But I realized I could do something that would address these reasons some still aren’t organized. I’ve created a tool that will take my own organization to the next level. I used everything I’ve learned in years of experimenting with my productivity. I created a complete toolkit for Christian homeschool moms who want to organize their homeschool lives. It’s the Organized Homeschool Life Planner.
It allows homeschool moms to not just decide to get organized, but to take action daily. It allows them to create and track habits as well as each step of the challenges included in The Organized Homeschool Life. The planner encourages moms to choose one focus for the day by naming their day. Huge task lists are reduced to three priorities for the day and just a few others. You can finally finish your list and feel in control. The Organized Homeschool Life planner also has moms schedule their time — something that has been demonstrated to produce results. The weekly planning page prompts moms to write their why and anticipate obstacles to their goals. Finally, the planner prompts homeschooling moms to focus on where their help comes from. The daily page begins with a gratitude list, a place for a Scripture that spoke to you in your quiet time, and your response to God. I like to give any worries I have to God in this space. You could write a short prayer as well. Each month, there is also a devotion that will help focus your organizing efforts on what really matters. To encourage you to connect with other homeschool moms becoming organized, I’ve created The Organized Homeschool Life Facebook group.
The planner I’ve created addresses the major reasons homeschool moms struggle to get organized. It comes in two formats for your preference — a full-year, undated, digital planner or a two-book, undated, printed, spiral-bound planner set. The digital version has daily, weekly, and monthly pages that can be edited on your computer and kept there or printed out. It’s the most economical by far because you can use it year after year. If you’d like to print some or all of the 8.5×11 pages, you can.
The print version comes in a January to June version and a July to December version. Print orders will be shipped free in the US and when ordered direct, include stickers designed exclusively for The Organized Homeschool Life planner. At the time of this podcast, for a very limited time, take advantage of discounted launch pricing that also includes discounts on the book, The Organized Homeschool Life. To learn more and finally get your homeschool life organized, grab your copy today!
You’ll be able to download sample pages in the product notes or join me on Facebook Live for an inside look and coaching on how to organize your time and your homeschool life.
How are you supposed to do it all and stay sane in the process?
You do everything that moms with kids in school do, plus you have the responsibilities of a teacher, lunch lady, janitor, field trip monitor, and guidance counselor too.
To do it all, you have to be organized. But where do you start?
I was a born-messy mom. I was so disorganized with my ADD brain when I started homeschooling my oldest for preschool, that I was convinced I had to quit. I was buried in laundry, toys, diapers, and books. I had no idea what was for dinner and that was after getting no school done.
I was desperate when I found a woman named FLYLady online. She taught me that I needed routines and an approach to getting organized just 15 minutes at a time. Until I figured out what I was doing, I copied FLYLady’s routines.
I eventually found my groove and gained the confidence to have three more children, for a total of six. I longed for 15-minute missions that would not just organize my home, but my homeschool. I wanted to be ready for holidays in advance. I wanted to be organized in my marriage, parenting, and even my hobbies. I created The Organized Homeschool Life book to give homeschool moms like me easy missions for organizing these areas and more. Those who have taken on the weekly challenges tell me it’s made a big difference in their homeschool sanity.
But I needed something more in my quest for an organized homeschool life. I wanted a system for organizing my time and my homeschool.
“I needed a tool to simplify my life — not add to the overwhelm.”
Can you relate? I had used many task and goal-based planners and I wanted a planner that incorporated everything I loved about them in one place.
Monthly calendars, weekly, and daily pages in the digital version can be easily edited on your computer or digital devices. Other forms can be edited using Adobe Reader on your mobile device, Preview on a Mac, or a PDF app on your PC.
Create reusable meal plans with shopping lists that you can save to your phone or print as needed. Save time and your sanity!
Undated pages allow you to start using the print planner any time!
Nearly 300 high quality, planner-weight interior pages in each planner
Beautiful laminated color covers
Thick monthly dividers in color
Lay-flat spiral binding
Open and go — no searching for files or printing time required
Two planners (Jan-June and July-December) so they’re not too thick to tuck in your tote
The Organized Homeschool Life Planner is designed to be used with The Organized Homeschool Life book. The book explains weekly challenges in detail, while the weekly page lists each step of the challenge.
Join our Facebook community (open to anyone who wants to organize their homeschooling life) for support and inspiration. We’ll have daily check-ins and extra tips for success in your organizing journey.
You might expect a complete system that can organize your entire homeschool life to cost a lot. But my desire is for every homeschool mom to be able to afford homeschool sanity.
Download a free, complete, two-week sample (Daily Devotions and Curriculum Challenges) for subscribers by clicking the image below. (You’ll also receive the Sanity Saturday newsletter.) Use it for two weeks and love it! Then order your system so you can have the most organized year ever.
Would you like to get more organized in your homeschooling this year? Many homeschoolers would. But where should you start? Should you start with your bookshelves? The schoolroom? Maybe the kitchen because you spend so much time there?
Organizing these spaces is a good idea. But the most important area in your homeschool to organize isn’t a space at all; it’s your time. I’ve written before about the importance of your calendar in organizing, but now I want to take a closer look at why organizing time usage should be a top priority for you this year.
#1 Organizing takes time
How many times have you said (or at least thought), I need time to get organized? However often you’ve had the thought, you were right. Organizing anything does indeed take time. Of course, we all have the same 24 hours in a day, so what we really mean when we say this is we need to take time for organizing tasks.The key is how much time and can we afford to dedicate it to organizing? We may also ask if we can afford not to take time for organizing.
#2 Homeschooling is time
In my state, I’m required to keep track of hours spent homeschooling. Transcripts for high school and college are an accounting of credit hours. And while we can accomplish more educationally in less time than traditional schools, homeschooling is still about time spent. Success in most subjects for most students will correlate with how much time has been devoted to it. Statistics comparing students who read 20 minutes a day to students who read just 5 or 1 minute a day is astounding. When it comes to homeschooling success, organizing your homeschool time will be far more important than how you organize your art supplies. We know this, yet the results of organizing our homeschool spaces are more Instagram-worthy, so we can get off track.
#3 Our time is our life
My kids don’t remember my system for organizing their toys and frankly, neither do I. (I just remember a lot of weeping when small pieces to things were strewn everywhere). My children didn’t even express awe over the binders and bins I used to keep their school materials organized. But they remember the medieval feast, the states and regions field trips, and the holiday parties. They remember time well spent. And so do we.
How to Organize Time
If we recognize that time is the most important area of our homeschool lives to organize, how do we go about it? Frankly, it can be challenging. I have spent years studying time-management approaches (better known as productivity these days). I can’t distill what I’ve learned into one blog post, but I can give you strategies that have made a huge difference in how I organize my time.
#1 Start with God
I think we have heard this so often, that it begins to be an obligation. “Oh, I have to begin my day with God because that’s the right thing. I won’t be a good Christian mom if I don’t do that. God will be mad at me if I don’t.” That sense of obligation and guilt actually works against us having time with the Lord.
Instead, time with God is for us. Time in the Word and in prayer encourages, reduces anxiety, gives wisdom, and saves time. I have had many days that were headed for disaster before my time with the Lord. I was anxious, despairing, and ready to give up teaching for the day. Then I read God’s Word and He spoke to my heart through it. Some days I found what I needed through my regular reading. Other days it came from looking for specific verses. In praying with thankfulness, in humility, and for the needs of others, I found that whatever was troubling me was small in His eyes. In praying about my overwhelm, I found God using my husband to help, tasks taking less time, and scheduled events being canceled. Beginning the day with God isn’t an obligation, but an honor and a privilege. I couldn’t organize my time without Him. For some homeschool moms, beginning the day with God means the night before or even afternoon. Early morning is not an obligation.
#2 Keep a short list
Have you ever noticed that God’s to-do lists were always short? Even in creation (an undertaking so enormous, we can’t fathom it), God’s task list was short for each day. The list of commandments is just 10 items and Jesus simplified them to just two. Jesus never gave His disciples a list of 30 things they had to do. And believers’ action list is just one item long: “Go and make disciples.” We are the ones who complicate matters. And believe me, I understand why. The Bible was written before email, Pinterest, and blogs like this one. You can come away with a list of to-do’s from everything you read or see. But here’s the thing. God hasn’t asked us to do all these things. When we’re overwhelmed, it’s so often because we’re taking on a load He hasn’t given us. Keeping a short list each day requires us to trim those unnecessary tasks, leaving just the essentials.
But I can hear you now. “That’s all I can do? Just the essentials?” Or maybe that’s my voice I hear in my head. I want to do more than the essentials. When we limit our list to essentials, we prevent overwhelm, and are likely to get these tasks done faster than if we were working from a list of 100 things. With the time left over, we can choose to do any nonessential tasks we’d like. And if we have no extra time? We have the satisfaction of knowing we finished everything that had to be done, without the guilt of frittering time away on nonessentials.
#3 Schedule time
Francis Wade’s guest post is one of the most popular on this blog. He argues for the power of scheduling when organizing our time. He won me over. I didn’t like schedules at all. They felt too restrictive. I’m a homeschooler after all! I shouldn’t have to be on a schedule (It was like a dirty word to me at one time). But scheduling allows us to make time for God, for homeschooling, and for that short list of essentials. A schedule is like a budget for your time.
I used to spend money until I got an overdraft notice. I didn’t have a budget because it was too depressing. I would see that I couldn’t get fast food because I couldn’t afford it and my rent too. We can be like that with our time. We don’t want a schedule because then we will see that we can’t sign up for ten field trips next month plus have our kids in the musical and start a podcast, while still homeschooling our kids. So we just do it all and complain that we’re overwhelmed, as though some maniac is in charge of our time. I know a maniac has been in charge of my time!
The solution is to schedule our time — not to the minute, but loosely. We must include not just time for God and homeschooling, but our relationships, homemaking, organizing, and time for things that renew us. Because I’m a rebel at heart, once I get my schedule written out, I find I don’t want to use it. I want to switch things up and I have to accommodate the unexpected. That’s fine. Simply the process of creating a schedule helps to limit our focus and serves as a reality check for our time.
The Easy Way to Organize Your Time
I’ve created a system that will help homeschool moms like you organize the most important area of their lives–their time. It will allow you to organize your time with God, develop a short list of what’s most important, and schedule time for everything God has called you to do — even the fun stuff!
This week I have a mishmash of sanity savers for home and homeschool. Remember that if you want all the time-sensitive sanity savers too, you’ll need to subscribe.
#1 Release of Skedpal
I’ve written about my enthusiasm for Skedpal, an automatic scheduler for busy people, before. But now it’s out of beta. It’s gone through significant changes and it is how I make sure none of my to-do’s fall through the cracks. I love it. Check it out here.
#2 Bible Project Videos
If you’re looking for a way to add multimedia to your Bible time, Bible Project videos are just the thing. They’re free!
#3 This Is My Home, This Is My School
It can be disappointing when you’re a homeschooled child not to see your lifestyle depicted in books. This book title comes to the rescue and helps preschoolers to first graders identify with another homeschooler.
#4 Reusable Wrap
I find the old-fashioned cling-type wraps fairly useless, but somehow that’s all I can find when I want to put something away. I found this reusable wrap (it can last a year) very intriguing. It can be used on anything and reduces waste.
#5 Amazon Echo
I resisted the urge to buy an Amazon Echo because I have bluetooth speakers and Siri on my iPhone. I didn’t need it, I thought. I bought one for my husband and a Dot for my mother for Christmas and they have turned out to be real sanity savers. My husband struggles to get the music he likes to play in the mornings. Now he can request any music he likes — no computer wrestling required. When the music is on and the phone rings or a visitor arrives, it’s fast to ask Alexa to reduce the volume.
My mother has found her Dot to be a fun device that can give her the weather, leave messages for her granddaughter (my daughter also received a Dot), and even play interactive games. If you haven’t seen this Saturday Night Live spoof of the Echo for seniors, you’ll get a kick out of it.
#6 Waveapp
I believe I have mentioned this free accounting software before, but because I have recently recommended it to friends, I’m naming it a sanity saver again. Instead of entering expenses and income by hand, Waveapp is connected to your PayPal, checking, or credit card accounts to tabulate this info for you automatically. You only have to tweak the categories for each expense. This Excel novice is a happy camper!
Which of these sanity savers are you most interested in?
What didn’t get done in your homeschool this year? What things do you routinely put off? What things do your children put off? The solution to accomplishing important tasks or projects in your homeschool is to make them a habit. I’m excited to tell you how.
Our tendency is to want to develop habits by sheer force of will, whether that’s our own or our children’s habits. This method is exhausting and is destined to fail with time.
How Mini Habits Can Change Your Homeschool
I recently read the book Mini Habits by Stephen Guise and rediscovered a powerful tool for accomplishing important things. I chose three mini habits to develop.
The wonderful thing about mini habits is they are so small, and require so little effort, that you can work on developing more than one.
In the past when I have accomplished big things, I have done so by having a singular focus. But as homeschoolers we have many changes we want to make, even if that means having more than one child who needs to make a change. My three mini habits are to write 50 words of Grammar Galaxy curriculum, to declutter one item, and to read one page of a paper book.
The exciting thing about these three mini habits for me is that I have done them every day for more than three weeks. Many times I have gotten to the end of the day and realized I had to do them before I went to bed. These habits are so small that I can finish them in just a few minutes, even at bedtime.
To be successful, your mini habits should take a minute or less.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, shall we? These mini habits are so small that they don’t seem to matter. Fifty words, one item, and one page aren’t much. Yet over the course of a year those 50 words add up to more than 18,000. A total of 365 items would have been decluttered and 365 pages would be read. I realize those numbers aren’t likely to motivate you. That isn’t the real gold behind mini habits. The value in establishing mini habits in yourself and your kids is that often we and up doing more than the minimum we have established as our mini habit. I have written curriculum for two hours, have decluttered entire closets, and have read 20 pages in a sitting. So why not make the daily habits bigger, you may ask? To require myself and require yourself to do more on a daily basis will mean we develop resistance. Psychologically, we don’t want to spend two hours writing, cleaning, or even reading. So the big expectation, even if it’s unstated, can interfere with motivation.
Mini Habits to Adopt to Change Your Homeschool
Now that you understand a bit about why we need to make habits that are so small that we feel no resistance, let’s talk about the kinds of habits we can develop to change our homeschools.
Exercise. If you don’t exercise, I believe that a mini exercise habit can change your homeschool. You and your children can develop an exercise habit that will increase your energy, improve attention, and your health. The author of Mini Habits started by doing one push-up a day. Alternatively, you and the kids could use the Move app which provides one small exercise for you to complete. It can be set for the timeframe you prefer (like once an hour), but you would only be requiring yourself to do one exercise per day. If you want to exercise longer, you can. I have used this approach to exercise for many years. On the days when I haven’t wanted to exercise, I only require myself to start.
Is there a subject that your child resists? It’s perfect for mini habits. You may understandably balk at asking your child to do one math problem per day. Math requires more time. But if your child is math phobic, requiring just one problem a day would be a good place to start. You could also establish a mini habit of your child practicing math facts via flashcards or a game for one minute a day. Anything that your child resists and has not developed a habit for is fair game for mini habits. Your child could practice foreign language using the DuoLingo app or could practice a musical instrument for one minute. Some other ideas for your child include reading for pleasure, handwriting, writing 50 words, typing, studying for tests like the ACT with the Magoosh app, and picking up.
It’s important to explain to your child that the only requirement in those instances is the one-minute practice. However, if they are enjoying themselves, they should feel free to spend as much time as they wish. Mini habits should not be used for behaviors that are already habitual. I do not have an exercise habit of doing one push-up a day because I already have the exercise habit. Anywhere you or your child struggles to establish a habit, however, is a great area to use mini habits.
What about mini homeschool habits for you? How about checking work, record keeping, and filing?
The key to making mini habits stick is to track them daily. Do them every day. I did mine over Christmas too. The traditional way of tracking habits is to mark them off on a paper calendar. You can mark off family mini habits on the calendar together. Be sure that your child marks off her own mini habits. The goal is not to break the chain. You want to do the mini habit every day for as many days in a row as possible. Creating a long chain is motivating in and of itself. No other rewards are required. However, depending on the age of your child, you may want to promise a reward like getting a frozen yogurt after a week of mini habits. The younger the child, the fewer mini habits should be established and the limit for everyone should be three. There is an app I love that is very useful for tracking mini habits called Productive. As I slide to mark my mini habit complete, I am given an encouraging statement and I’m told how many days in a row I’ve completed my habit.
Establishing mini habits changes our homeschools.
As we continue to record our mini habits, our way of thinking changes. For example, I constantly find myself looking for things to declutter. I have realized how easy it is to keep my home decluttered if I am always doing a little bit. I have come to appreciate my print books and how enjoyable reading them is. I have rediscovered the value of doing something like writing every single day. Resistance disappears.
As you work on habits in yourself and in your children, you will also discover the value of completing your habits early in the day. Even though it is possible for me to finish my three mini habits before I go to bed, it’s not optimal. Make it a game with you and your kids to finish your mini habits as early as possible to get to the reward of marking them off.
Eventually, you will have the habits established. You won’t even have to think about them and you can work on establishing new habits. But definitely don’t rush this process. If even doing your mini habits is a struggle, your habits are likely too big. They need to be incredibly simple. Doing even a 10-minute workout every day is too long. A better mini habit might be going outside to walk for one minute or driving to the gym. They sound ridiculously small, but they work to establish positive behaviors with our rebellious psyches. In the effort to establish mini habits in yourself, you’ll come to understand your children’s resistance to certain things much better. You will learn to keep requirements of less rewarding tasks small.
And remember: a mini habit completed is better than nothing.
The momentum and self-confidence you and the kids create by completing mini habits will pay dividends for life. You aren’t just teaching your child to complete tasks; you are teaching your child how to make life changes.
Conclusion
I’m excited to get my kids started on mini habits of musical practice, foreign language practice, and ACT study. I would love to hear what mini habits you choose and how it’s going for you.
You can change your homeschool one mini habit at a time!
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.
