6. Read, read, read together.
Slowing down doesn’t mean we won’t read everything in sight, though.
I am a huge proponent of childhood literacy and I intend to continue instilling that in our kids. Reading is the most important skill a child can learn – by far.
If you can read, you can learn anything. And if you like to read, you WILL learn anything.
We’ll be spending even more time sharing stories and writing stories together this year.
Sometimes, when I’m exhausted, we just spend an entire lesson reading a random book. It nearly always leads to questions about science, history, and math that we end up exploring.
7. Let the kids teach.
There is no better way for a child to learn than by teaching someone else. And, since we have multiple kids, they can help teach one another.
My two youngest children are very close and they tend to work well together. So, when our youngest daughter needs help with math, her older brother is available to help her.
That frees me up to work with our oldest son who also needs help with math from time to time.
A note of caution here: Always pair up kids who already get along. If I tried to get my oldest son to help our youngest daughter, there would be fireworks.
8. Take frequent breaks.
I tend to go into “hyperfocus” (a common symptom of ADD), but while that works for me at times, it doesn’t work for my kids.
They need regular movement breaks to help them refocus their mental energy for a new concept or a different topic. I plan to schedule a movement break at least once an hour of the school day.
9. Include more creative activities.
Creativity will be taking a front seat on our homeschooling journey this year.
Our entire family loves live theater, so we’ve been encouraging the kids to display their creativity with costumes, poetry recitations, songs, and more.
Bonus points if they can weave in something they’re currently learning!
10. Begin each school day with family time.
This resolution relates back to #5, because it has to do with slowing down in our homeschool journey.
For years, my typical homeschool morning routine went like this: wake up the kids, tell them to make their beds, tell them to start on breakfast, eat breakfast, start school.
This year, I want to start the day a bit slower and connect with them all each morning. That’s going to take time because I have four children.
But I believe those shared moments with each child will set the tone for the day.
Need to go back and reread resolutions one to five? Click below!
Those are my 10 new school year resolutions!
Do you have any changes you intend to make this school year? Are you planning to adjust your style of teaching or the way you structure your lessons?
Let me know in the comments!
Check out these other homeschooling tips you can use this year!
For my 9yr old son Teaching Textbooks works wonders as a ‘Math Lab’. Using a timer has also worked well for us. O also created a list of steps for him to use to ‘Calm Down’ you could create a list for Tiger to ‘Focus’ and find 5 things for you to go over with her everyday on toold to get her to refocus herself. We do love the independance that Teaching Textbooks gives him extra practice and he really enjoys the graphics. We did use Time4Learning but he’d get distracted since it offered other subjects. But we are revisiting it next year.
I’ve heard wonderful things about Teaching Textbooks. We’ve already purchased a math curriculum for this year, but I’ll definitely look into it for fourth grade. Thanks!
Wow! Great list. I love how you made the lap-books lovely! That is hard for us not to do, isn’t it? It prompted me to think about my own.
my new resolutions are:
1) to get properly organised before we start again next week. I am in the process of de-cluttering and re-arranging our entire house. It started with just their room and our school area but one thing has led to another. Then I am going to get their lap-books and folders organised so that I can just pick up what we need quickly.
2) Embrace my son’s wriggliness. I have brought a numeracy and a science cookery book for him. He can cook and wriggle happily and I will be happy he is learning. Win-win.
3) Make it a bit more structured and formal for my daughter who would be starting primary.
4) More handwriting. See one!!
5) Listen and take more direction from the children, as they are the actual learners.
6) Have fun with the work. When I have fun it goes well, when I am grumpy…..well, you know!
I love this list! Staying organized is SUCH a hard thing to do when children are at home all day. We need to do a thorough declutter around here as well. And I completely agree that our mood often dictates the atmosphere for learning. I was just telling my husband that it’s hard to let go when lessons don’t go the way we plan, but the kids don’t know that things have gone off the rails, so if we keep it together, they usually will too. 🙂
I know, I had to learn if it goes off the rails we stop and do something else and come back to it later or another day. It was a hard lesson but a good one. I like to finish stuff but it isn’t about me. I think our mood dictates everything. It seems to be contagious.
The de-clutter continues. I realised I haven’t done this properly since we moved here 8 years ago and then we had the children and you know how much clutter they create.