Do you feel behind in your homeschool? Did you work through the summer unexpectedly to finish up some of your subjects? You’re not alone! There’s more of us than you might think!
Even super homeschool moms experience bumps in the road. Life happens! Homeschooling doesn’t happen on an island away from sickness, family emergency, or just an overbooked schedule in an attempt to do allthethings!
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In all honesty, Kira worked right up until the upcoming school year last summer. We didn’t even have a two week break from one school year to the next because she was finishing up lessons from the previous year.
Let’s just say neither of us were happy.
When you start talking to other homeschool moms, you’ll realize most of us feel behind in our homeschool in one way or another. Maybe we wanted to start Logic this year, but didn’t get around to it, or wanted our kids signed up for foreign language lessons, but they just can’t fit it in their schedule.
Of course there’s the case of the curriculum that drags on and on. Something, likely carefully chosen, that turns up dry and boring.
Catching up
The beauty of homeschooling is we have nearly full control of our schedules, so we can move things around to catch up. When Kira really needed to make headway on a subject, she could dedicate an entire day to it, and since she wasn’t transitioning from one subject to the next, she could pound out a lot of work in one day!
Sometimes a subject just takes longer to finish, too.
Especially in the younger years, when things are a bit more forgiving, it’s not a big deal to cover Ancient History over two years instead of one.
In fact, I have started some of Aamina’s Kindergarten work in order to alleviate her Kindergarten year a little.
The longer we keep school stress-free, the longer the student loves doing school, engraining a love of learning in their heart and mind, in sha Allah.
Consequences
Sometimes catching up is necessary because your (or my!) child just didn’t make the best use of their time. There are lots of time management tips to help as you move forward, and especially with older students, I suggest coupling that with natural consequences.
Our most-used natural consequence when Kira was behind in her work is that she couldn’t go to fencing, or visit friends until her work was done.
Very similar to the workforce where a project has a deadline, and sometimes that means sacrificing some personal time to make sure it gets done.
I’m glad we did that now that she’s in college because she knows what things to cut in order to make room for additional time for homework.
Don’t forget to assess
If catching up in your homeschool is a recurring issue, make sure to assess whether the work is both necessary and at a reasonable difficulty level.
Diagramming sentences used to get pushed to the back burner, mainly because it was such a painful experience each time. Kira hated it. I hated it.
So, as soon as we didn’t have to do it, we dropped it. Good riddance!
Sometimes it’s just not worth the fight.
Take a deep breath
Even if you’re looking at back-to-back school years because of a shortage of motivation, know you are not the only one. Homeschooling takes a lot of discipline, even in the best scenarios, never mind when there’s family illness or emergencies going on around you!
Get back on that horse, and measure your progress, not just your shortcomings. Just keep moving forward.
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