It’s time to change the way you think about homemaking and homeschooling tips. Tired of spending hours on unimportant details that take away from your family time? No more cookie-cutter household tips and inspiration, please! With Boys and a Dog homemaking homeschooling tips for busy folks, you’ll discover practical ways to live a happy and healthy life at home while teaching your children the things they need to succeed in life.
The Benefits of Homeschooling
Both boys, one girl, no school = perfect recipe for homeschooling. But why would you? To answer that question, we first have to understand what homeschooling is all about. Sure it’s easy to say that it means schooling your children at home (in reality homeschooling has a more precise legal definition), but beyond that, there are many potential benefits. When deciding whether or not to take advantage of these benefits, it’s important to consider how much time and energy you want to invest in teaching your children as well as how comfortable you are with working one-on-one with them.
Time Management Is Important
The more time you have, generally, the more tasks you can take on. If you’re pressed for time, it might be difficult to get everything done. A great way to save time is to outsource tasks that don’t require your personal touch or attention. For example, paying others to complete specific jobs on your behalf gives you more free time to take care of things you need personally—or simply enjoy life. You could hire someone else to do household chores or even help teach your children while they’re in school! Having other people around takes pressure off of parents and educators alike and ensures quality work gets done efficiently by trained professionals who know how to handle kids without having them learn bad habits along with their lessons.
Minimize Chores
It may sound counterintuitive, but getting chores done can sometimes take away from time with your kids. Breaking up tasks into smaller chunks is an easy way to make chores more manageable, says Ron Buford, author of Organizing Solutions. Buford has come up with more than 100 home-organization ideas in his book, including one that involves breaking up long lists of chore assignments among several family members. For example, you might ask each family member to be responsible for washing two dishes per day or setting out one outfit per week. Another option? Have your kids help out by making their own lunches instead of relying on you to pack them every day.
Stay Organized
The most important thing you can do is to stay organized. It doesn’t matter if you are planning on raising your kids yourself or sending them to school, some type of organization will help you immensely in your journey as a homeschooler. At first, I kept everything we used in one place (maybe just keeping it in an area that was easily accessible). Over time, my home has become very well organized.
Avoid Consequences
The best way to teach your children responsibility is by giving them chores they can actually do. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean weeding out all of their impossible tasks. You also want to teach them how to avoid any consequences that might arise from certain tasks not being done. It’s not realistic to assume they will always complete their work in time, but you should help them understand what happens when it doesn’t get done on time (or at all). For example, if your son misses his homework deadline, what steps are taken? Is he given an opportunity to make up his work? A detention? Points off? A call home? An incomplete grade or dropped class?
Learn as You Go
Trying to do everything at once can be overwhelming, but if you’re careful about planning, execution, scheduling, and some easy division of labor with your spouse or partner/child (if applicable), you’ll manage fine. Instead of letting projects—or your children—strain your schedule or budget, consider limiting yourself to three tasks per day; they don’t have to be huge. For example, make breakfast each morning while listening to an educational podcast. During naptime make lunch. After pickup from school get started on dinner. And so on! The most important thing is that you keep things manageable in manageable chunks so you can learn as you go without becoming overwhelmed by a never-ending list of things left undone.