Help!School here starts the second week of August. I am hoping to start this year with some handy tips that will help a naturally unorganized person (me!) maintain order and get things done! I did pretty well last year teaching second grade but I have loads of room for improvement.
Are there any homeschooling moms (or Dads) out there who have experience who would be able to give me a few suggestions that have worked well for you? I am not opposed to hearing from the naturally organized people as well. After all, if you want to lose weight, ask a skinny person, right?
Let me shamelessly play on your emotions and remind you that (hopefully!) this school year I will be gone for a month to Ukraine finalizing our
adoption (our girls will stay here so we may just take a vacation till I get back) and then we will be adding three non-english speaking children to our home!
If you know of any others out there who may not frequent my blog who might be willing to share some advice,
send them a link and ask them to join in the fun! I'm sure we all would love to see a bunch of comments. The more the merrier!
4 comments:
Thank you for your words of encouragement they meant alot to me!
I homeschooled my children for several years. My best advice to you is write out a schedule and leave a little room for something fun in the day or it becomes so tedious. Nita
Hi Melissa,
I wanted to tell you about a new Cultural Learning Center that we are starting in Birmingham, AL. We have many families that have adopted older children from Ukraine. The CLC will be a transitional type school with a Christian based curriculum that will work well with homeschooling. It will be available online. The CLC will be a service of Reach Orphans With Hope. You can learn more at our website, reachorphanswithhope.org. We are in the middle of our summer program. I hope enjoy the website and find the information helpful. It seems as if we share a love for the children of Ukraine.
Blessings,
Joan
I have the best intentions - really, I do. I love organizational items (storage bins, label makers, etc...) but have to admit that I'm seriously lacking in the organization department! So I don't know how helpful I'll be.
This will be our second year of homeschooling - we have a preschooler, a six year old and a fifteen year old. My oldest does a portion of her work online which frees up time for me and keeps her on a schedule (which is good since college is just around the corner - yikes).
With our younger daughter, I tried to make a general timeline of what we wanted to accomplish by the end of the year. I only made detailed lesson plans one week in advance, though. That way, if we got off track a bit, it wouldn't throw off the whole year and I could adjust as we'd go.
We belong to a wonderful homeschool group (250 families!!) through our church and there are so many great activities. I've learned, though, to be selective about all the extras. If we did everything they offered, we'd never get any "work" done. I'd rather work at a leisurely pace than frantically run from one activity to another (I know so many moms who get burnt out because of this).
We have a bench in the hall that has compartments with three baskets (I mentioned my love of cubbies, compartments and baskets, right?) which are supposed to serve as the kids "lockers." They each keep their books and supplies in a basket and can tote it to where they'll be working (my little guy keeps crayons, coloring books, etc... in his).
Generally speaking, the more "relaxed" method is working out for us. I do try to grade papers regularly so I don't get behind and I keep all their completed work in subject-specific folders. So we're semi-organized (but I'd be embarrassed if you saw my desk right now).
Hi Melissa! I wanted to stop by and tell you about a blogging Homeschool Open house that is starting up on August 1st. I'm going to be posting a little bit about our days and homeschool tips. I'm really excited to hear what other moms have to say too!
Here is the link...
http://homeschoolblogger.com/tiany
Scoll down a bit and you can read all about it.
Hope this helps!
Kelli
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