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Writer's pictureTara Darlington

5 Easy Homeschooling Tips

Are you feeling anxious about suddenly being thrown into home-schooling? Well, you’re not alone. Lots of people are. Your children have spent years with trained professionals. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that a 5-day a week commitment to your child’s education is now overwhelming.

Even with schools providing digital content to parents, the implementation, delivery and supervision of the curriculum will now become the parent’s responsibility. It’s a big change for lots of people, especially if you’re new to working at home.

As a mother of 6 children, I have home-schooled my kids at different times through classes 1, 4, 5, 6,7, 9 and now year 11. Our oldest is now at Australian National University studying International Business.

Home-schooling is an excellent opportunity to think outside the box. You’ll witness aspects of your child’s personality develop and strengthen. While inspiring parts that have been lying dormant.

Remember there is no rush to get it all perfect. Allow yourself some breathing space for feeling overwhelmed and anxious. Your children will not fall behind. They’ll have plenty of opportunities to catch up (more on this below).

Keep yourself grounded and calm with exercise, gardening, and meditation. You can’t work with your children if you’re agitated. They’ll pick up on this and be agitated as well. Carve out self-care time and do grounding activities on your own or together.

This is an excellent time to harness your inner creativity. As work and school schedules fall away, grounding activities, slowing down and not rushing into anything will get your creative juices flowing and a new rhythm and structure will emerge. This is the exciting part!

I’m thrilled to share my top five tips. Which will help you take advantage of opportunities that are not generally available to you when your kids are at school. And should make the transition to home-schooling a little easier.

It’s time to think outside of the box!

1. LOOSEN THE SCHEDULE — Find the rhythm that works best for your family.

You are free of the 9am — 3pm school day structure. If you’re an early morning family, book work can be completed before or after breakfast. Or you could spend the morning cooking together and working on a project and book work can be moved until after lunch. You can break it up into small learning steps which are great for kids.

2. MAKE IT ENJOYABLE — Your child can engage and learn in a way that is fun.

While there are obvious benefits to group learning, there are many benefits to individualised delivery. Your child can now work in the way that is best for them. How do they prefer to engage with life and learning? What is the best environment for them? Let them lead the way.

3. KEEP IT SIMPLE — Academic bookwork doesn’t take as long in an individualised learning environment.

Once you have identified the best time and the best way for your child to learn, you will find that the academic ‘teaching’ usually takes less time than it did in a group setting. So, don’t feel you need to do an hour or two hours, for something that may, in fact, take 15 or 30 minutes!

4. LET ‘LESSONS’ BE ABSORBED — There is more time for slow learning which absorbs deeply into your child.

Now that the academic lessons are taking significantly less time, there is more time for slow learning! Your child is ready to involve themselves in an activity that allows the new information to be absorbed and processed on a deeper level. You may need to help them get started with an idea, they may just move onto something on their own or you may have time to connect and do something together.

5. ALLOW YOUR CHILD TO BE INNOVATIVE — Your child will learn to self-moderate, innovate, and play cooperatively on their own.

As you develop a rhythm within the family, you will find that your children start to find their own natural flow. You can now work your schedule into their rhythm. And presto, greater amounts of time have been created which now allows more time to do what you need to do.

The big takeaway is LESS IS MORE.

And relax, you now have more time for real connections and projects your family will love. There is a real opportunity for children to discover and develop their personal interests both on their own and with you. The more relaxed your child is, the easier they will soak up learning and discover activities and projects that they love.



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