Our year is wrapping up here, and I started making this list for myself. I decided to share it with you all. Maybe you have made some of these same mistakes, or maybe you will at least be encouraged that you are not as bad as I am! Here goes…
Things NOT to do next year!
Sit the kids down on the first day of school and give them a syllabus for every subject. I will also not tell them what they will be doing for the entire year, all of the wonderful projects and notebooks I have planned since I will probably only get to half of them. I will also not go on and on…and on, about my ideas, calendar, scheduling, etc. Go with the flow is my new motto.
Cry, “We’re so far behind!” It is my job as mom to motivate the girls a little if we need to move forward. I shouldn’t be adding to their stress by reminding them of how “behind” we might be.
Text Eric during spelling tests. Apparently, “Teachers just don’t do that!” (Something else I’ve been told teachers don’t do: Say What the heck? really loudly while grading their student’s papers. I really am going to stop doing that.)
Give Chloe a “freebie” in her science crossword worksheet, spell it wrong, and wind up with her spending an hour trying to find words that don’t exist. Oops.
Plan a unit study for every subject. In fact, I will try to erase the words Unit Study from my brain. I will, I will I will. Okay, I probably won’t. But I will rein in the ideas, and instead of feeling I have to use every idea that pops into my brain, I will just post them here for others to use!
Behavior modification tricks like tickets, marble jars, etc. This was cute when I was teaching preschool, but it just really doesn’t fit into our life naturally. And that’s what I’d like our homeschool to grow to be, a natural part of our everyday life. Besides, I’m one of those moms that thinks my kids should listen to me “just because.” So all that stuff was just a distraction anyway.
Sign up for every class, lesson, meeting, and group that has the word homeschool attached to it. Really.
Feel guilty for taking Chloe out of a school she loved and compensate for this by planning fun, fun, fun all the time, time, time. The real world has downtime. And I need mine.
Schedule our day in 20 minute increments. All this does is make me feel guilty. And I am done with guilt!
Spend my free time reading curriculum catalogs for even more great ideas to heap on my kids. In fact, I vow to go six whole months without even giving a thought to what we’ll use and do the next year. Okay, maybe vow is too strong a word…
So there they are, all my embarrassing mistakes for all to see. Most of them anyway. My girls would probably have many more ideas, but I’m not asking them.
Angela can be found writing at Angela Mills: Ideas, Inspiration, and One Mama’s Musings
photo by Quasimondo
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I love this!
That was very funny! Although I am a huge planner!! my new motto this year is going to be "Go with the flow". I hope I can do it! I usually make the mistake of overwhemling my children with the year's syllabus too! Maybe I will just show them the first month! :)
Thanks for the laugh!
Very Funny and true list! Loved your spelling comments. . . Made me spew coffee. . . . I'll have to put you on my favs to read list. :)
Great advice! We are about to start our first year of homeschooling so this is helpful!
Oh! That's so funny. And teachers do text/email from work–all the time–if they didn't, my inbox wouldn't be so full!
But we've become really relaxed homeschoolers and that change created a pleasant learning atmosphere :)
Ok… this is exactly what I needed as I being to plan out my 1st "scheduled" homeschool year!!!
Thanks!!
Very encouraging list! Being this is our first year (starting in Aug.), I needed to read this list! Thanks SO much for sharing!!!
Thank you so much for sharing these. I am riddled with fears about our first year, and this really helped (with a little humor, too!)
Oh, my. I hope *some* teachers say, "What the heck?" really loudly while checking their students' work…or some version thereof, such as, "What were you thinking?!?!?" Because, sure enough, some homeschooling parents do. Some of them. Not me, though. I would never do such a thing. ;-)
I'm laughing at myself as I write up a set of lesson plans covering 36 weeks to give to my oldest.
In my defense it's what she wants, so that she fall 'behind' in one subject and go 'ahead' in another checking off what she's done along the way.
I love this list! And I will be borrowing a few of them, seeing them in print made them mean a whole lot more to me and brought conviction! Thanks!
Thanks again for letting us publish this, Angela. I enjoyed it just as much as when I read it the first time.
Hey Kris — as a former teacher, let me assure you, there are, indeed, teachers that grade their students' papers and say, "What the heck were you doing?" ;)