For the frustrated, burnt out, struggling homeschool mom.
Frustrated. Stressed. Burnt out. Overwhelmed. Worried.
Those are all words that have described my homeschool journey more times than I care to think about.
But it happens to so many (if not all) of us! Homeschooling is hard- the process of getting started is SO overwhelming! We don't want to fail our kids, we want to make sure they're educated and can grow to be normal adults able to get a job or go to college. How can we be sure we don't screw them up for good?
We started homeschooling 5 years ago when our oldest was in the middle of first grade. We had left our jobs, packed up our kids and headed to a state we'd never been to before to start a business. Life was... hectic to say the least. We felt we need to create "school at home" and quickly became frustrated- him and us. We thought we needed all the workbooks and structured instruction- we quickly burnt out.
After we had really created a negative environment around homeschool, our business started picking up and before we knew it baby #3 was on the way. We were traveling between 3 and 4 states on a normal basis, living and working out of hotels, and that's when unschooling really appealed to us. It was the perfect opposite of our original idea of 'school at home' style homeschool.
While I think that an unschool approach was a GREAT detox for our family-- it didn't check all the boxes for us either. Yes, the kids did lean still... but we didn't have a good rhythm, it was a struggle to keep 'an environment of learning' around our kids while real life was happening and we were swamped with our business. Too much time was being spent with video games and Netflix, while the kids were loving it- momma was getting STRESSED.... and kids being harped on to read a book or learn something, forcing them to watch documentaries while they just wanted to binge on Minecraft created a negative home environment - NOT what I wanted.
So then we headed back to more of a structured setting. I wrote up a complete schedule hitting every subject, ordered books like crazy (GREAT books even), we had a daily routine set in stone, I started waking up before the sunrise to ensure I had 'mom time' to focus myself and to 'hit the ground running' every day. We did it, the kids learned, but it was fast. It was fairly strict. It was too much.
I had been drawn Biblically to a minimalist style in other areas of our lives -- I was tired of all the clutter, the junk in every room of our house. We started purging clutter and excess, we stopped spending so much money on non-necessities. I started really streamlining and controlling excess when it came to our business -- and what a difference all of this made! It was only natural that minimalism would come to our homeschool.
We knew that time in the Bible for ALL OF US needed to be the foundation - laying the base for Godly character and passion must be the #1 objective for all of us no matter what. If that was there, everything in life can fall in line. We knew that we wanted our kids to be strong in the core subjects -- reading, writing and basic math. The things we all actually use in our adult lives. We knew we wanted to have a simple way to introduce our kids to possible passions and hobbies. We started taking on ONE thing each day vs. trying to check off every extra elective every single day. We knew the process had to be simple, flexible, family centered. I'm not shelling out large sums of money, I'm not messing with a million moving parts, I'm not running them from place to place and activity to activity, I'm not forcing stuff they're not interested in, I must have the flexibility to run full force with the things they're interested in.
That's where we made The Minimalist Homeschool. Bible centered. Covers all the core subjects. Gives an activity for each elective subject with the freedom to run with what they're interested in and skip what they aren't. Relaxed. Slow. But checking all the boxes. Yes-- this is the groove we've been searching for over the past 5 years, 4 states and 7 homes. Thank you Lord, my tired soul couldn't last much longer!
Our partial year program officially kicks off tomorrow. We'll be following it with our kids- a run through of a year's worth of school to cover all the basics from Kindergarten through High School. This summer we'll release a full and more in-depth program for the 2017/2018 school year. And it is our family's goal that this can help others that are feeling stressed, burnt out, overwhelmed, genuinely lost and not sure where to go. Don't give up -- you CAN do this! Relax, focus on the Lord. Focus on your family, your relationships with one another. In the grace, the unity, the love -- learning will come from that. It always does. It'll be ok momma- you've got this. God will guide you-- you just have to ask Him to help. 😘
Click HERE for The Minimalist Homeschool program to finish off 2016/2017.
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