The 52-Week Get Organized Homeschool Challenge

The 52-Week Get Organized Homeschool Challenge

organized homeschool, challenge, daily, calendar

If you’re anything like me, you find dozens of great ideas you could use to get and stay organized in your homeschooling and life. The problem is overwhelm! Where do you start? It often feels like you aren’t organized enough to get organized.

I’ve been there. In fact, when I gave homeschooling a try by teaching preschool 14 years ago, I was convinced I had to quit because I was so disorganized.

  • I was constantly forgetting appointments
  • I couldn’t find anything
  • The laundry piled up
  • I didn’t follow through with my curriculum
  • The stress made me short-tempered with the kids

Little did I know that homeschooling was the perfect remedy for a disorganized mom like me. I saw how incapable I was of doing what God had called me to do. It didn’t happen overnight, but today people consider me an organized person.

I’ve come a long way, but I still seek ways to make our homeschooling, home life, and work function as efficiently as possible. I’ve noticed that there aren’t a lot of organizing missions tailored to families who homeschool, and that’s too bad. We have specific organizing needs.

If you can relate, I invite you to join me for a year’s worth of challenges that will help us get organized enough to do all God has called us to do.

Find all the challenges at the Organize Your Homeschool page.

On Mondays, you can read the post, then do one 15-minute mission each remaining weekday, do an hour session over the weekend, or anything in between. One thing I forbid you to do is beat yourself up for not doing every mission. I’m telling you right now that I’m not going to do every single mission as scheduled! There are more important things in life than organization.

But if we do even a few of these missions this year, we will have a better homeschool than we had last year! That’s something to be excited about.

Please also follow the Organized Homeschool board on Pinterest for up-to-date great ideas for each challenge. Be sure to tell your friends about the challenge, too. Getting organized is always more fun with friends. If you haven’t already heard it, I invite you to listen to the Easy Way to Get Organized podcast on The Homeschool Sanity Show. I share ideas for how to get the most out of this challenge and share my fellow homeschoolers’ and podcasters’ best organizing tips.

I’m looking forward to getting organized with you this year! 

Please share your organizing progress, tips, or related blog posts in the comments or on Facebook.

Linked with Happy and Blessed Home

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The Trouble with Toddlers, Dealing with Doctors and More: What’s Hot in HomeschoolingThis Week

The Trouble with Toddlers, Dealing with Doctors and More: What’s Hot in HomeschoolingThis Week

Whats Hot in Homeschooling

This week, I have some great get-real articles for you and an opportunity for fellow homeschool bloggers to link up and share what’s hot on their own sites. I’ll highlight the best articles in next week’s issue. As always, click the article titles to read and if you love them, comment or share the hotness! God bless your homeschooling this week.

The Trouble with Toddlers

Elizabeth at the Hesitant Housewife offers no solutions. She admits, it’s just hard. Having homeschooled with five different toddlers around, I will tell you that’s the truth. Go ahead and try different approaches, but your best bet may be to hang on until the ride’s over.

Real Life Homeschooling in Photos

In the same vein, Elizabeth shares an unretouched view of homeschooling on Hip Homechool Moms. I know you don’t think so now, but those photos will become your prized possessions.

The 30 Day Mom Challenge

Raising Godly Children offers a printable for moms from IMOM that gives us teachers a bit of homework. I can’t wait to work on mine.

Stick Figuring Through the Bible

Stick figure art is all the rage, and as an art underachiever, I couldn’t be more thrilled. I love the idea of kids creating stick figures to help them remember Scripture. Check it out at The Curriculum Choice. It’s on my list of Bible curriculum to explore for next year.

The Hobbit: A Unit Study

Whether you’ve read the book, seen the movie, or just plan to, Homegrown Learners has a neat unit study for you, complete with picture of the smiling owner of a project prize for completing it.

Dealing with Doctors

Dealing with physicians and other health professionals poses a unique set of challenges to homeschoolers. In short, it can be scary! Heather Laurie offers us an empowering perspective in this The Old Schoolhouse article.

Link up!

Have a hot article, tip, or resource to share? Please enter it below and either include my blog button or the link to this post in your own post or website. Please also visit at least one other link and thank them for the hot idea!

God bless your homeschooling this week!

What's Hot in Homeschooling

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15 Minutes Outside: The Last Installment

15 Minutes Outside: The Last Installment

Caleb at the Garden of the Gods

Why Is This the Last Installment?

No, it wasn’t the heat that got to me, although 108 degrees Fahrenheit is enough to have anyone crying uncle. Instead, I realized that while being more mindful of spending time outside and playing with the kids is a great idea, feeling obligated to spend at least 15 minutes outside every single day isn’t a great idea.

Besides, I’ve realized that I do okay with spending time outside with the kids except when it’s cold. I don’t think that Rebecca Cohen’s recommendation in Fifteen Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Out of the House and Connect with Your Kids to make sure you have really warm clothes is going to get this cold-blooded woman out there every day.

I also had the notion that I could come up with new and fun things to do with the kids EVERY DAY. Not what I needed to add to an already crowded routine. The fact is we’re going to be doing a lot of the same-old, same-old and I’m okay with that. You might not be! So this is my last installment. Fortunately, it’s a good one.

Caleb with his aunt and uncle at the zoo

We enjoyed some time at the zoo with the kids’ aunt and uncle before the weather got hot. We’re looking forward to seeing the new sea lion exhibit that another uncle helped plan.

Caleb and I went to Colorado Springs for the national homeschool speech and debate tournament before the terrible forest fires ravaged the area. We enjoyed the Garden of the Gods, the Air Force Academy, and Pike’s Peak.

This shot of a little tree growing reminded me of this Scripture.

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. (Ezekiel 17:22)

View of the road on Pike’s Peak, Colorado

On the way down from Pike’s Peak, we had been advised to use 1st or 2nd gear. I am not a real brainiac when it comes to things like this, so when I saw that our car only had an L gear, I kept it in drive. About a quarter of the way down the mountain, a park ranger checked our brake temperature and found it was more than twice the acceptable limit. We had to pull over and let them cool for 45 minutes or risk having them go out on us.

This incident got me thinking. How many times have I ignored advice to shift into low gear and then I’m in danger of giving out? The last few months I’ve been riding my brakes down the mountain and got sick. I’m “cooling off” before I get back onto the road and when I do, I’ll be proceeding in low gear.

How about you? What gear are you in lately?

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15 Minutes Outside: Week 7

15 Minutes Outside: Week 7

Flowers
Don’t let this photo fool you. It’s from Week 8. Week 7? Officially a bust. I was so busy being INSIDE that I was too tired to go OUTSIDE. Remember that the challenge isn’t just to spend 15 minutes outside, but to spend 15 minutes outside playing with the kids. That’s the problem.

I feel sufficiently guilty, but I’m still tired enough from overdoing it for a month that I’ve been spotty this week, too. I wonder if I’m suffering from that obligation based procrastination I wrote about? I was at the park playing tennis with a friend yesterday. The kids were with me, but I wasn’t playing with them. I spent tons of time discussing how hot, exhausted, and bored they were though. Does that count? We’ve had mid-summer temps here lately.

Anyway, there are still several days left of week 8, right? 🙂

Is anyone else out outsiding me?

P.S. Aren’t those flowers gorgeous? My husband is trying to take credit for them, but I give all the glory to God.

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15 Minutes Outside: Week 7

15 Minutes Outside: Week 6

Elaina baby
This week is evidence that the whole 21-days-to-make-a-habit thing is bunk. On Monday, I played tennis outside with Caleb, but forgot to take a picture. I went for a walk with my daughter using her new doll stroller (and for some reason got a blurry picture) on Tuesday. That was it!

I was indoors all day Wednesday through Saturday helping with a speech tournament and spent Sunday indoors recovering. I am glad for blogging my challenge, though, as it is reminding me that it’s important. Next week isn’t going to be much better though. Lots of all-day, indoor obligations! I’ll make up for it when we go on our family beach vacation.

Did anyone else get outside with their kids this week?

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