How to Easily Homeschool Consistently

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It’s so easy to be distracted these days! You have calls, emails, texts, and social media begging for your attention. Dinner to cook. Laundry to wash. And toddlers to chase. So how can you homeschool consistently?

Set aside Time to Homeschool

One of the biggest mistakes homeschoolers make is not setting aside time to homeschool. By this I mean, when will you homeschool?

• Are you going to start at 9 am?
• Will you wait until 1 pm to start?
• How much time do you need to homeschool?

Quite frankly it’s easy to skip homeschooling a little 5yo who’s only doing 30 minutes worth of school. You’ll hop on Facebook and start chatting with friends. Or you’ll answer a phone call from your sister and enjoy a good conversation. You’ll sit down to create a menu plan for the week. Later you will homeschool your little one.

And guess what never happens.

You get caught up in laundry, cleaning, and chores. And then you remember you need to run to the store to pick up some chicken for dinner. After all, you only need 30 minutes for homeschooling. And you can do it at any time!

And the next thing you know, it’s bedtime and your little one is dropping. No school happened.

What is the solution? Set a time for your school day to start. Treat it like a doctor’s appointment. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t check Facebook.

Be there. Do the work.

Simplify Your School Day

A second reason that you find it hard to homeschool is when homeschooling has gotten complicated.

You’ve been homeschooling for a while and have a bunch of kids. It’s so tempting to add a second math curriculum, just to make certain your bases are covered. So you add more to your homeschool day.

• Another history book.
• Vocabulary workbook.
• A bit of extra grammar and diagramming.
• Another instrument to learn.

Now every time you sit down to school your children, they groan. They complain. They try to skip work.

And why?

Because you’re doing too much. Your homeschool is complicated, time-consuming, and has no end.

Now I’m not saying you need to drop all curriculum. No. Kids must be educated.

Kids deserve a good education.

But they also need time to play. To make friends. To have a life outside of schoolwork.

So cut back and streamline your homeschool.

Keep to one curriculum or program as much as possible. For instance, I use Saxon Math for all my kids. and I don’t add more math to their school day. {I do leave puzzles out, but that’s a topic for another day.}

Streamline your homeschool. What do you use for math, language arts, history, science, and Latin?

Resist the urge to keep adding and adding to your school day until it’s become so unwieldy neither you nor your kids want to homeschool.

Maintain a simple classical homeschool.

Rejoice in Baby Steps

I know, baby steps are so small that they never feel like you’re getting anywhere.

But baby steps are the trick to homeschool consistency. Instead of trying to jump into a full homeschool day, start small. Start by having your children sit down and free read for a time. Work on inspiring yourself to homeschool.

And homeschool consistently.

Each baby step will take you closer to your goal, even though it feels like you’re only inching along. Of course, you are inching along.

The trick is remembering that homeschooling is a marathon, not a sprint.

You can’t do a 100-meter dash and expect your children to learn everything they need for adult life.

Instead, you’re slowly filling their bucket with facts, skills, and information drop by drop, step by step. And sometimes it’s frustrating. Come fifth grade, your kids don’t remember much about studying the ancients in the 1st grade.

But they do remember a bit.

And you’ve laid the pegs for them to build upon. Now you can add more information and your children will remember more the next time around.

Eventually, you’ll be sitting at the table listening to your teenagers chatting away and realize. Somehow, someway, they did learn. They did pay attention. And they did become educated.

It all starts with baby steps.

And if you’d like a bit of help creating your perfect homeschool through baby steps, check out my Building Your Perfect Homeschool in Just 13 Weeks workbook. It will guide you in how to build a homeschool that works for your family.

To have homeschool consistency, you need to set a time to homeschool and stop squandering your day away. You must simplify your homeschool, and complete your studies in a timely manner. And you need to remember that homeschooling is a marathon, not a sprint.

After all, educating children takes time and consistency.

Recommended Reading

Books:

• My Purposeful Plans Journal: For Setting and Tracking Goals
• Help! I’m Homeschooling!: Helpful Habits for the Heart of Homeschooling
• The Organized Homeschool Life: A Week-By-Week Guide to Homeschool Sanity

Links:

• Diligence is Key to the Well-Run Homeschool
• How to Teach Your Child to Stay on Task
• When Changing Curriculum Mid Year Is the Answer