Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Smith:
Welcome back, Vicki! Today we want to talk about daily life. In merging homeschooling with family life, it can seem like nothing ever gets finished. How can we start the school year with reasonable expectations for day to day homeschooling—and more consistently meet those expectations?

Vicki Bentley:
It helped me to rough out a routine for the day, allocating certain amounts of time to different tasks or school subjects to be sure I wasn’t trying to cram more into our day than was humanly possible. I really like Renee Moseman’s encouragement in The Smarter Preschooler. She encourages us to create an intellectually stimulating environment, not an intellectually demanding one.

Be realistic! You don’t have to be Superwoman. Build in some downtime. If math's a tough subject for your kids, try math lessons on four days, then math games on Friday, so if they’re done with the week’s math lessons, they can play math games! For us, that was anything with points or money. If they were behind for that week, they’d use that day to catch up.

On catch-up-the-house days, let the kids sort the Legos and the Matchbox cars and the puzzle pieces. Classification and organization are science, math, and language arts skills. If it drives you bananas, Mom, to have dishes in the sink and the beds unmade, take care of those quickly, in the morning, before you start. When you feel that your home-making is somewhat in order, then you can have hope for another day of language arts, and math, and science.

Mike:
Well thanks Vicki for sharing your very practical wisdom with us again today. Until next time, I’m Mike Smith.