Sonlight Homeschooling Blog

Feb. 8, 2019

Why You Probably Won't Do Every Sonlight Level & Why That's Okay

Sonlight offers a whole array of curriculum from preschool through graduation. There are so many options that many families aren’t able to use each and every program even if they are committed to using Sonlight for K-12.

When I began homeschooling, the thought of my children not doing every level terrified me. My mind insisted that skipping a level was equivalent to skipping a grade. Now I know that isn’t true.

There are a variety of reasons children might not use or finish all Sonlight levels:

combining two or more children into one level for family-style learning
slowing the pace due to content issues
life interference

Out of my seven students, three of them are in or finished with high school, and my plan for each child looks totally different. Only one child will do all the Sonlight levels. The other two are in college already, and it hasn’t hurt them to have skipped a level here or there.

Sheep Shearing in College

One thing that helped me realize it’s okay every child doesn’t take the same classes was remembering college. My first degree was a two-year LPN (licensed practical nurse) degree at a small-town college in Minnesota. In the heart of farm country, the college offered a surplus of agricultural courses.

Reading obsessively through the course catalog on a quest for interesting courses, Sheep Shearing caught my eye. Located between Lamb and Wool Management and Equine Production (neither sounding interesting), Sheep Shearing beckoned to me. Although I had no interest in shearing sheep, I suddenly wanted to know how such a specific topic was worth 3 credit hours! I was tempted take the class to find out.

Of course, that would mean paying for a class I didn’t need and touching a sheep. I never found out the secrets, but it made the list of classes I wanted to take some day along with Metalworking, Wind Band Conducting ( I’ve never played a wind instrument), and Egyptology.

Thinking back, I realize somewhere out there is a student who did take sheep shearing that year and found it very useful. Like me, this unknown, imaginary student, could not take every class offered by the college. Thousands of students passed through that college while I was there, and only 32 of them were in my classes, taking the same courses I did. Everyone else was doing something different. Of course, I never thought my education might be inferior because I didn’t take every single class offered at the college. The principle applies to Sonlight, too!

The Flexibility of Sonlight Programs

Sonlight offers more courses than your child needs. This abundance means you have flexibility!

Your child, like my 14-year-old, might take and enjoy them all. He’s done everything from Preschool to currently 200, and is likely to finish every single program offered.
Or you have a child like my 18-year-old senior who will take most of the courses, but might miss a couple along the way. She got a little behind when dyslexia made it hard for her to finish a History / Bible / Literature (HBL) program in a single year.
Perhaps you might find, like my 19-year-old former foster daughter, that life interferes and you simply don’t have the time or the opportunity to do them all.

All three of these children are doing well in life. They all have their own goals, and their futures don’t all look the same. And that’s okay. They are all thriving.

If your child doesn’t get to every HBL, if you skip books, or if you simply choose to not do every level, you are no different from the student who took Sheep Shearing. Your child’s path might not include every level, but it is no less wonderful for that.

Sonlight Offers More Levels than You Need

Sonlight has so many enticing courses, especially in the upper grades!

History of God’s Kingdom (200) tempted me for years before I had a child ready for it.
History of Science (HBL J) hooked me before I even peeked at the book list.
20th Century World History (300) is a topic I feel is very important.

But, none of these are required for high school graduation or college admission. They can be used for high school credits, certainly, but if teens don’t take any of these, they will still graduate and can still get into a good college.

Not Every Child Has the Same Interests

Children tend to throw our best-laid plans into turmoil. A friend of mine took her child out of public school in fifth grade and promptly planned out his curriculum through graduation. She carefully researched her options and painstakingly choose each course with great care. Last year, as a junior, he looked over her plan, and decided to skip everything except one more level of math in his senior year, giving him just enough credits to graduate. Then he got a job and is saving money for college next year.

Another friend has a child who simply didn’t want college. He graduated, got a job in his desired field, and quickly worked his way up the ranks to a medium-level position within a year.

Children rarely follow the plan as written. You might decide to do all the Sonlight courses with your child, but your child might not want to do them all or might wish to do them in a different order. Go ahead and plan if you enjoy that! But don't get too comfortable with your plan. Be willing to change it.

Learning Doesn’t End at Graduation

It’s so easy to focus in on that end goal of high school graduation. However, that’s not the end of your child's education! One of my children took the next HBL with her to college to have good books to read in her free time. Another one of my children has taken an extra year for high school, taking part time dual enrollment courses and doing an extra HBL at home as well. I enjoy reading Sonlight books for myself at home as an adult.

You can also complete the levels non-traditionally. You might add in books over the summer or have an older child read material they skipped a few years ago. Learning doesn’t need to stop just because school does. No matter what that final transcript looks like, your child will have a high-quality, solid, Biblical education with Sonlight.

Don’t let the drive to do it all cause you to forget why you’re homeschooling in the first place. In the words of Dorothy Canfield Fisher, in Understood Betsy,

“[Elizabeth Ann] had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn’t really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the way you do when you're learning to skate and somebody pulls away the chair you've been leaning on and says, 'Now, go it alone!'"
Understood Betsy

TALK TO AN ADVISOR

If you need help mapping out a plan for your child's curriculum choices, Sonlight has homeschool consultants available to help. Click here to schedule an appointment.

Tagged curriculum, homeschool planning, Sonlight | Leave a comment

Feb. 4, 2019

The 3 Things You Need for Teaching Critical Thinking

By Sarita

The 3 Things Needed for Teaching Critical Thinking in the Homeschool

If you have a baby and would like her to learn to speak English as she grows, what would you do? Would you go out and buy a vocabulary curriculum for her, start it at 6 months old, and trust that would be sufficient?

Of course not! We teach babies to speak by speaking to them, speaking around them, and simply exposing them to language in context every day.

Vocabulary is far too complex to be taught in isolation with a single curriculum.

Critical thinking is another such complex skill. It's nearly impossible to teach critical thinking quickly, in isolation, and without much real-life exposure. It requires a holistic and long-term approach to education and parenting to successfully impart!

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking has become a litmus test of a good education. We all want our graduates to demonstrate this skill, which according to one helpful article includes "seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth."

Yet many educators approach this complex skill as if students can learn it with a few hours of critical thinking workbooks each week.

I think vocabulary curriculum and critical thinking workbooks definitely have their place. But, just as vocabulary curriculum won't do much good if your child isn't also hearing the language in everyday contexts, a critical thinking program won't do much good unless the main thrust of your homeschool also helps your child learn to think critically. If your child isn't learning to reason, to consider another's viewpoint, in their daily school and life, it's going to be very hard for them to translate the skills they learn from a workbook into any other situation.

How to Teach Critical Thinking in the Homeschool

According to this scholarly article on why you can't teach critical thinking, most attempts to teach critical thinking don't do much good. And that may be because there are three aspects to thinking critically that are very hard to teach.

But here's the good news: Sonlight deliberately addresses all three aspects of teaching critical thinking. Maybe this is why customers rave about how Sonlight has helped them raise critical thinkers over the long haul—even without a workbook labeled Critical Thinking. Here are the three areas essential to developing critical thinking and how Sonlight naturally incorporates each:

1. Background Knowledge

It's hard to make connections between ideas, evaluate opposing views and reason logically if you don't know many ideas in the first place. If you're trying to give an unbiased critique of colonialism in Africa, but don't know anything about colonialism and its effects, you'll have a hard time coming up with valuable contributions.

Since Sonlight students learn history in a way they enjoy and remember, they develop a vast reservoir of background knowledge and cultural literacy to help them along the way. They understand the big picture of how history has unfolded, so they have a firm foundation from which to make connections and consider new ideas.

2. Specific Skills and Steps

Students need to know what to do when they set out to analyze an argument or consider a different viewpoint. Sonlight provides this naturally. If the author of a book has a clear bias, we'll point that out in the Instructor's Guide and offer counter arguments and other viewpoints. As you discuss with your children, students learn the steps of identifying a bias, considering another point of view, looking for reasons to support both sides, and deciding which (if either) creates a better argument.

Students will read one perspective in one book, another perspective in another book, counter-balancing notes in the Instructor's Guide, and then learn to compare and evaluate those differing thoughts. That's what I call a well-rounded education!

3. Abundant Practice

You wouldn't expect children to use a new word naturally in conversation just because they saw it once on a vocabulary sheet. And it turns out that critical thinking skills are even harder to translate from one context to another. (That's why word problems can be so tricky in math–students don't recognize that they already have the skills they need to solve a problem when it's presented in new and different real-life contexts.)

So in order to make progress, children need lots of practice applying the steps of critical thinking. And with Sonlight, your children will get practice in this every day. It starts off very gently when they're young, and by the time they graduate high school they've done it hundreds (thousands?) of times.

Reading and Discussing Literature Builds Critical Thinking

Simply reading lots of literature does wonders to help children consider another's point of view. When you walk a mile in a character's shoes through reading a compelling story about them, you come to understand how they see life, even if that's very different from your own experience. This ability is invaluable when it comes to listening to both sides of an issue.

And with Sonlight, we help students go beyond a light reading of most of the books they read. Discussion questions push students to consider deeper issues and make connections with historical events of the time. And this critical thinking doesn't just happen with one book, but with hundreds of books over the years. With so much practice, it becomes second nature to think and see beyond the surface.

Perhaps critical thinking is like a muscle. If you never work out that muscle, it's weak and you have trouble relying on it. If kids practice using it regularly, they naturally begin to apply what worked and what didn't work in previous experiences. They become adventurous enough to try something new or use what they learned in a previous or similar situation to solve a new problem.

Yes, you have to know something about the problem already in order to solve it (background knowledge). But it also helps if kids have solved other challenging problems previously. Aside from the skills they practiced in solving other challenging problems, they have learned at a very basic level that they can solve such problems. And so they have the confidence to try again.

Sonlight's Natural Approach to Critical Thinking

Sonlight's teaching method is all about natural learning:

conversations with your children about what they're learning
discussion questions that challenge kids to think more deeply about topics
answering why something happened and not just what happened

This method is a combination of both acquiring knowledge and gaining daily practice in thinking critically about that knowledge.

When comparing Sonlight to another curriculum, one mom posted on the (now defunct) forums:

"There truly will be zero comparison in critical thinking skills. I found [the other curriculum] to be more retelling than thinking about the reading, the comparing of views, the whys. [The other curriculum] just doesn't hold a candle to [Sonlight in] this line of thought."

And that is my prayer—that Sonlight students will learn to carefully weigh what they hear so that they can confidently pursue Truth and live the life that God has for them.

Curious to see what an education infused with critical thinking might look like for your family? Go to SmoothCourse to explore your options.

SMOOTHCOURSE

Tagged critical thinking, discussion, Homeschooling, literature, practice, Sonlight | Leave a comment

Feb. 1, 2019

Meet Your Sonlight Advisors: Your Personal Cheering Team

By Sonlight

Sonlight Advisors are your advocates! Whether you are considering homeschooling or have been using Sonlight for years, Sonlight Advisors are here to help you homeschool successfully.

These ladies are accessible in several ways so you can find the avenue that's most convenient for you! Reach out via chat, phone call, email, or in the Facebook group for help with a variety of Sonlight and homeschool needs:

choosing the best curriculum fit for your family
addressing specific learning issues
answering questions about Sonlight
offering encouragement through conversation or prayer

Because it's always nice to get to know the people behind the direct message, email, or phone call, here's a brief introduction to the Sonlight Advisors.

Margaret

I'm Margaret, a homeschooling mom of 9 children. The oldest three have completed college and are working as a gaming engineer, a software developer, and an industrial engineer, respectively. Two are still in college - one studying electrical engineering and the other mechanical engineering. My high school senior intends to study computer engineering, and I still have an 11th, 8th, and 5th grader at home.

I first found Sonlight over 15 years ago and fell in love with the scheduling and content. Our favorite part of the day is reading aloud—everyone seems to gather no matter whose read aloud it is.

My favorite thing about homeschooling is being able to watch my kids expand their knowledge and grow in their relationships with each other.

In our spare time, my family enjoys looking after the farm life on our small Texas homestead. I love being a Sonlight Advisor because I want to encourage and support families who are homeschooling, particularly through the high school years. With homeschooling, sometimes the days seem long or unproductive but it is so worth the sacrifice to make this immeasurable impact in a child's life.

Debbie

My name is Debbie, and I homeschooled using Sonlight for 19 years - beginning when my oldest was in 2nd grade. I have three boys who graduated high school using Sonlight in 2010, 2014, and 2016. My daughter graduated in 2019.

We are definitely not the perfect homeschooling family! I am a single mom. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs along the way. One child is profoundly gifted in math but who failed out of college. Another one has a learning challenge that we didn’t identify or remedy until his senior year of high school and which made reading, writing, and doing math very difficult. I have kids who enjoyed learning and kids who dug their heels in and refused to work. I’ve had kids cheat and lie about the work they completed (or didn’t). I have also had kids far exceed my expectations.

None of my kids would choose reading as a pastime. But Sonlight has worked so well through it all. Sonlight’s literature-based approach works no matter who you are teaching. My very math/science oriented boys actually score better on the language portions of the ACT (or other standardized testing) than the math portion!

My kids have done many things since graduating high school including trade school, college/university, the military (Navy and Air Force), owning a business, working for a major tech company, working in the holistic medical field, and working in areas such as welding, robotics, engineering, manufacturing, design, electrical and structural systems, mathematics, statistics, and programming.

I love helping families choose and use Sonlight Curriculum. I have a passion for homeschooling high school and helping parents realize that not only can they do it successfully, but that their children have limitless possibilities when they homeschool high school. Math is also a passion! I have been helping and encouraging Sonlighters for 25 years!

When I have the chance, I love camping—preferably by a mountain stream. I use the time to read, sleep, and draw close to the Lord.

Barbara

Homeschooling was never something my husband and I thought about for our family, but God had other ideas. The private school my oldest was to attend closed unexpectedly just before he entered kindergarten. I attended a homeschool conference only to meet my sister for lunch, but glancing at the sea of curriculum options, I was immediately drawn to the books and Instructor’s Guides (IGs) at the Sonlight booth. My parents never read to us growing up and if I was to homeschool, I knew I wanted something different for our children.

So, our Sonlight adventures began in 1995 with a kindergartener and an 8-month-old son. Once we started, I found my favorite part of our day was reading out loud to my boys. Thankfully, the IGs prompted our family to discuss many different topics and worldviews through a Christian viewpoint before they left for college.

Both sons used Sonlight exclusively from PreK through twelfth grade. Sonlight has truly developed lifelong learners in our family. In 2013, both of my sons took significant steps toward their futures. Our oldest son graduated from a 4-year university and later earned his MBA. That same month, our youngest son graduated from high school, earned his bachelor’s degree, and is now working his dream job in cybersecurity. Both of them got married just a few months apart in 2017. I will be forever grateful to have spent so much time with our sons for the first 18 years of their life!

After my youngest graduated from homeschool, I decided to return to college where I earned my bachelor’s degree. I have been working for Sonlight as an Advisor for many years!

Sonlight deepened our family connections. It is my desire to help you choose the best Sonlight programs for your family. I’d love to share our experiences—the good, the not so good, and the challenging—and be your cheerleader on the sidelines all year long!!

Emme

Before homeschooling my three children, I was previously a Montessori teacher. My oldest attends Baylor University, and we are so excited for what God has in store for her.

I’ve been blessed to serve many years in ministry, work with autistic children, and tutor all ages of students.

My favorite things to do are kayaking, biking, hiking, cooking, reading, and spending quality time with family and friends.

SCHEDULE TIME WITH AN ADVISOR

Tagged advice, advisors, Encouragement, help, Homeschooling, Sonlight, sonlightstories, tips | 2 Comments

Jan. 30, 2019

5 Homeschool Organization Questions That Make a Big Impact

By Sarita

Running a household is a big task. You have so many things to keep track of and do each day. Running a household and homeschooling? That can mean even more to handle. It is a big calling, but you also gain a lot of flexibility when the kids are home with you for school. You have more freedom to shape your family’s days. So to help you think through how to set up your homeschool days, consider these five key questions.

Continue reading →

Tagged homeschool, Housekeeping, housework, organization, tips | Leave a comment

Jan. 28, 2019

Why You'll Never Find Balance (But What to Seek Instead)

By Heather Mills Schwarzen

Balance is a homeschool buzzword. You’ve surely heard it many times. The implication is that, with a little creativity and prioritizing, you’ll step into the center of your own life’s Venn Diagram, finally finding peace.

It’s a beautiful concept, but to be honest, I’m not sure it actually exists. The idea of finding the precise symmetry point in the spectrum of needs and obligations is alluring, to be sure. Who doesn’t want to be all things, to all people… and still have energy left over to carve out time to refill your own tank? But can you possibly find that perfect place of balance? And, if you can, does that mean you should?

The Song (Never) Remains the Same

If balance is your goal, you’re in for a tense ride.

Why? Because achieving balance implies that you find a spot and stay there. Think of how much effort it takes to find the precise point of leverage to keep a fork balanced on the tip of your finger. Move just a little to the left, and it falls. To the right… and the same effect.

To maintain balance, you have to remain perfectly still—and so does the load you’re carrying. How is that possible in the life of a homeschooling mother?

Balance the housework and school?

The minute you’ve got it figured out, soccer season rolls around. Then, not only do you have less time in your evenings, but your laundry has just doubled.
Child number one can manage Readers alone now? Great! Time to teach child number two the ropes of phonics.

To borrow a metaphor, the homeschooling mom is a mouse and guess what? The cheese is always on the move.

Finding Freedom From Guilt

I've found freedom from the stress of chasing balance by instead stepping into a homeschooling vision of seasons. Some seasons will find you needing to focus more on home projects or a new baby—meaning there’s less attention given towards formal academics. Rather than feeling the weight of not being able to bear it all in equal parts, seeing the time as one where the bulk of energy is spent in one place for a time sets you free from worrying or feeling less than.

And when you emerge from a season of intense learning to find that you need to invest in an elderly loved one with failing health, you can rest that God’s purpose for this season is not balance, either… but moving into a new phase where He has ordained a different curriculum for you all to learn from.

Embracing Your Season

So if balance isn’t the end all be all, how do you go about finding joy in this ebb and flow of a seasonal life? The answer is to shift your perspective. See homeschooling as a long-term lifestyle, rather than a project to be managed minute-by-minute.

Instead of seeking balance, seek to embrace the season you are in!

If you’re pursuing balance, you’ve taken stock of the to-do list and doled out bits of your attention in an effort to keep the scales from swinging too far in either direction. When you strive for balance, happiness is only possible at the fulcrum:

when the boxes are checked
when skills are mastered
when progress is demonstrated

When you’re allowing for seasons, you’re letting the larger needs rise to the top, allowing them to be addressed as deeply and for as long as needed before they fully resolve. Your joy isn’t in filling the role of “doer,” but in understanding that you’re right where you’re supposed to be—an instrument of God’s provision in this time, in this place.

Maybe the math isn’t getting done, but the heart issue is being attended to. Maybe the house is a wreck, but you’re head over heels in love with your husband and can’t wait for your next in-home date night.

It’s an overall paradigm shift, but one that can help a homeschooling mother release voices of internal condemnation ("Why can’t you manage all of this?!") and grab hold of the peace that I believe God desires for all of His children.

DISCOVER SONLIGHT

Imagine a curriculum that flexes to your seasons of life, even with multiple children. Learn more about Sonlight here.

Tagged balance, Homeschooling, routines, schedules, tips, working | Leave a comment

Jan. 25, 2019

A Typical Day in the Life of a Large Family Homeschool

By Heather Mills Schwarzen

Two chickens are roasting on the counter in the biggest slow cooker you’ve ever seen. A lanky teenage boy is sprawled on the couch reading Willa Cather’s My Antonia. A blond preschooler is clambering over the end of the couch with several sections of the letter “A” he just built on the Handwriting Without Tears mat that’s now abandoned on the floor. A mother is in a chair reading aloud Daughter of the Mountains above the sound of a dishwasher that’s on its second load of the day and a kindergartner who is recreating the battle for the Alamo with plastic army men. In various spots around the room there are children building with blocks, finger knitting, drawing, and finishing a late snack of popcorn under the kitchen table.

It’s anything but quiet, but it’s everything I’ve come to expect from my days. Welcome to my large family homeschool.

The Latest Model in Large Family Homeschooling

As the mother of a large family, I’ve recreated the one room schoolhouse multiple ways over the past 18 years. Today, our homeschool consists of

a high schooler
4 elementary students
a preschooler

One of those students has profound special needs. The children I’m teaching are 16, 12, 10, 8, 6, and 3. Like every year previous, it’s been unique, with its own challenges and joys.

I don’t expect any school year to look the same as the one before it; we’ve had

years where the bulk of our work was done in a room earmarked just for that purpose
years where we couch-schooled almost exclusively
years when we were routinely hitting the books by 8:30 each morning
years where we were done each day by noon

What follows is just one day in what Mr. Gilbreth from Cheaper By The Dozen would call, “the latest model.”

The Morning Check-In and The Morning Basket

I have only one high schooler this year, and his need for direction is fairly low. He’s learning with Sonlight’s HBL 400, which allows for zero planning on my part and a great deal of latitude for his weekly schedule. Through years of being accountable for his work and showing initiative, he’s gained the privilege of taking the Student Guide as a weekly to-do sheet. As long as it’s all done by Friday, I don’t care in what order he chooses to do the work.

Each morning, I flip open the Instructor’s Guide to the appropriate week and we go over his intended game plan. This allows me to make sure he has access to what he needs and gives me an idea of how he’s proceeding. If he’s turned in an essay or current event the afternoon before, this is also when I return it and we discuss his work. From there, he heads into the trenches, and I assemble the (younger) troops for our Morning Basket.

The youngest five children and I spend the next hour and a half to two hours in our Morning Basket time. There’s no actual basket involved, but that sounds so much sweeter than just saying that this is when I sit in my favorite red reading chair and we work through Read-Alouds, History, Life of Fred, Bible memorizing, poetry, art study, geography, Science, composer studies, and singing hymns.

Three of my children take music lessons, and they’ve already logged their daily practice time, so Morning Basket time is just for focusing on the subjects we all enjoy together. We’re using a modified HBL F Eastern Hemisphere for this group, taking into account our special family circumstances.

Rest & Running and Another Check-in

We are a home-based missionary family which means that my husband and older children frequently travel internationally throughout the year. When my husband is home however, we try to have lunch on his schedule. This is a good break time for my social teenager, who after two hours working on the couch or at the kitchen table is ready to talk with a fellow human. My younger kids, too, who haven’t been still for the entire morning time (far from it) get a chance for a change of pace.

Lunch is usually leftovers. As things are heating in the oven, the younger kids clean up their handiwork items and LEGO, help me move laundry, join in emptying the dishwasher, and find excuses to run outside and stretch their legs. We eat and talk with Daddy before he heads back upstairs to keep working.

Post-lunch, the younger kids take a short rest time. My independent readers take their current books to their beds for half an hour, and those who can’t yet read are allowed to listen to audio books. At the end of this window, they burst from the house as if they haven’t seen daylight in years. Unless it’s inclement weather, I expect them outside, roaming the farm for 45 minutes or so.

I take this opportunity to do more general housekeeping and check in again with my high schooler. Now’s the time for those deeper discussions on questions raised from his morning readings. If at all possible, he’ll head to the computer to work on math at this point, but if he’s working on chemistry, that's usually the first thing he’ll tackle in the afternoon.

The Whack-A-Mole Hour, Or How We Manage Four Different Maths

I’ve learned that the easiest way to reassemble my large family for an afternoon of seatwork is to ring the dinner bell out front and lay out tea. Someone is charged with getting a cup up to Daddy, but my teenager rarely joins us. Instead, this is when I focus with the younger kids on the more concrete 3 Rs. My preschooler finishes his tea and either grabs a tray from our selection of Montessori-based table activities, sits on my lap with picture books, finds someone willing to be distracted with a toy, or turns the entire living room floor into a carpet of puzzles.

I sit at one end of our 10-foot table or in my beloved red reading chair. Then the four elementary-aged children rotate through math, language arts, and any other individual work that needs doing. I won’t be coy: this is the craziest part of my day. Without my absolute attention (no texting allowed!) this window could easily devolve into chaos. We have an understanding that only one person can have Momma’s attention at a time, and if it’s not your turn, you grab the book (for reading, stickers, or coloring, depending on skill) under your chair and entertain yourself until it is.

Does that work perfectly? Not on your life. But it make me feel a little less like I’m playing whack-a-mole for an hour and a half.

We save science experiments and art projects for the end of the day, both because they’re good motivation and because they require the most clean up. We end every day with a general house tidy-up. We’re finished by 4 p.m., which is also when my husband ends his work day. My high schooler and I have a final, quick check-in where he updates me on his daily progress and turns in any work that needs grading before walking to the YMCA for his daily workout.

The younger children usually spill back outside, although sometimes they will scatter; some are fond of afternoon chess matches, and others have the habit of racing scooters down our gravel drive. Before they go to bed, my husband will finish off their school day, though they don’t suspect it. He will read a chapter to us all from one of the books in their History / Bible / Literature program, making the load of this homeschooling mom’s day that much lighter in the long run.

HOMESCHOOLING MULTIPLE CHILDREN

Tagged daily routine, Homeschooling, large family, lifestyle, routines, schedule | 2 Comments

Jan. 23, 2019

How To Be a Non-Anxious Homeschool Mom for Your Kids

By Erika Evans

As parents who homeschool, we are deeply invested in our children. We long for our kids to be happy, to succeed, and to benefit from our life lessons. Yet, sometimes our desires for our children are so intense that we are overcome with angst. Our efforts to help our kids may feel overbearing or controlling.

We may focus so much on the future, we fail to connect with the family we have in front of us now. We spend more time worrying about our kids' reading level or how well they know world geography than we do enjoying the process of learning alongside them.

Too narrow a focus—aimed at academic achievement and impending adulthood—can mute the joy of day-to-day homeschooling.

In The Self-Driven Child, authors William Stixrud and Ned Johnson offer five keys to maintaining a non-anxious presence for our kids. I am striving to apply these parenting principles to my role as a Christian homeschool mom so I can live more fully in the moment. I'm learning to relinquish some control to my children and even more to my heavenly Father as I learn to be a non-anxious homeschool mom for my children.

1. Prioritize Enjoying Our Kids

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.” Psalm 127:3, NLT

The benefit our kids receive when we are genuinely happy to spend time with them is huge! We are conveying to them that we find them valuable and that we like them. This assurance builds resilience and confidence that they are lovable.

Not every moment of homeschooling is fun, but our kids need to know that we enjoy their company. This may be as small as making sure we smile when they enter a room.

Faking it won’t work. If enjoying our kids is truly a struggle, it’s time to devote energy to identifying and removing barriers such as anger, depression, discipline issues, or lack of social support so we are free to enjoy our kids.

2. Do Not Fear the Future

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.” Philippians 4:6, NLT

We have very little control over the future; furthermore, worry has never solved anything. If we spend resources worrying about possibilities, we miss the enjoyment of the present day.

Eventually, most children will overcome their struggles.

An angry adolescent is very likely to become a contented and successful adult.
A struggling, emergent reader will learn to read in time.
A scatterbrained child will grow to be responsible.

Give your kids love and support. Pray for guidance and do your best. Let the fear go; it’s contagious.

3. Commit to Stress Management

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?" 1 Corinthians 3:16, ESV

What children want most is happy parents. A happy parent is one who feels healthy and at peace. As homeschooling parents, it can be easy to overlook our own needs and focus solely on the needs of our young charges. We must devote time and energy to ourselves if we are to take care of others.

Get enough sleep
Exercise
Eat well
Pray
Meditate or practice mindfulness
Spend time with friends
Enjoy hobbies

4. Acknowledge Our Worst Fears

“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4, NIV

We can’t protect our children from all pain and suffering. Doing so would preclude their being able to live their own lives. Challenges and roadblocks are what shape us. In fact, our children need opportunities for struggle and growth.

Managing risk and dealing with disappointments is part of building resilience. Give your children responsibility over their own choices. Let them pursue a seemingly impossible goal. Their own successes and failures will teach them more than your verbal lessons ever could.

5. Love the Child We Have

“And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Matthew 18:5, NIV

By accepting our children—with all of their gifts and imperfections alike—we are offering unconditional love. We do not need to condone bad behavior or approve mediocre efforts to be accepting. We simply need to respect our children by acknowledging where they are in their life’s path.

By accepting that our child struggles with fractions or is uncomfortable with public speaking, we can choose to maintain a supportive and honest relationship. We can take action by focusing on strengths, offering assistance, or setting limits. Loving them as they are models acceptance and sends the message that they are worth more than an algebraic fraction, a test score, or a diploma.