The first is: don't keep pushing something that isn't working. If the space isn't right, change it. If the schedule doesn't work, mix it up. If the curriculum is a huge chore, turf it-- or try doing less of it. This may seem pretty obvious, but when you're juggling as much as you are at home, change often seems like it will be a bigger chore than just slogging through. I didn't realize how important it was to have lots of extra space in the school room. I thought separating the school kids form the babies would be easiest for them, but as it happened it was better to have us all in one room near the kitchen so we moved school into our dining room and it made a world of difference for all of us. The same is true of the curriculum and the schedule.
The second is: send them outside!!! This came naturally in the first few years because I regularly took them through the big park to the mall a couple of times a week and out to the library and grocery store regularly as well. Surrey was a lot easier to manage on foot and we didn't have as much work to cover at home before we could go out for the day on long walks. But with four kids in a small town and two kids doing school work, getting out and running errands and walking as much as we used to is just not possible. And it was driving me crazy as well as them. To cope I have started making them run laps before school in the morning and instituted an outside time regularly every afternoon-- rain or shine. Errands are a nightmare on foot with 4 kids, but they needed the exercise and I needed the space. It's been an invaluable way for me to press the reset button on any angst happening. The kids get PE at their Orthodox program, but I need more exercise myself and for that reason, we will be starting an after-lunch run and hopefully getting them into swimming again.
The third is: have a meeting. I don't know about other homeschoolers, but I find the hardest part of the day is getting them to all be in one spot so we can start. Either physically or mentally, they are all over the place and I feel like we spend an hour or more every morning just trying to get them all together so I can explain their lessons. Adding the morning run and prayers to our daily homeschool schedule was definitely a help, but I also added a morning and afternoon meeting so that we could discuss what we were doing for school work and then what worked and what didn't. It's still a bit of a struggle, but it definitely helps them focus. and gives us an opportunity to work together on changes to curriculum or workload if needed.
The fourth is ROUTINE. I swear I must have talked about the importance of this in every single post, but it's definitely the hardest part of homeschooling for me. On the one hand, we partly homeschool because we enjoy the flexibility of being able to ditch school when we want to. On the other hand, having no routine, or in my case, not sticking to it as much as I should, sets us up for constant battle. And unlike public schoolers, homeschoolers have to invent their own schedules and then have the discipline to stick to it. Which is hard when you have other demands at home.
One thing we have found immensely helpful is to have a daily homeschool schedule, to write it down on the board, and to discuss it with the kids so they know how homeschool days are supposed to go. This is especially important if you don't have them at home for 5 days a week. I've also discovered that we need to be consistent with the daily homeschool schedule at least 3 out of 5 days a week. 2 days isn't enough to reinforce the expectation for the kids, which is why the routine gets derailed every time there's a stat holiday. For that reason we have decided to be proactive about it and take a whole week off the regular school routine whenever there is a stat. The next stat is right before Elsie's birthday and it's therefore perfect for scheduling family days out and visits with grandparents without disrupting the school work. Planning for days and weeks off regularly makes it so much easier for me to say no to blowing off work on other days. It is a lot easier to stay consistent with the kids.
Finally, and speaking of planning, there's prep. I used to just prep school work on the fly-- or not at all. I would simply turn to the next page of whichever book and tell Theo what to do. But I have found that prepping the lessons-- even if it's just looking over them for a few seconds and making a list of lessons and page numbers for each kid's reference--is such a big help. If I'm not sure of what we are doing, the kids instantly pick up on that and treat it as an opportunity to negotiate-- which never ends well. If I have a plan and a list and I approach the day with confidence in what we will be doing, there is a lot less resistance.
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