Avoiding Homeschool Burn Out

Homeschool burn out is a real thing. I've been homeschooling for 14+ years, and I've experienced burn out many, many times - even to the point of putting some of my children in public school! I've tried to pinpoint some of my "burn-out triggers" so I can recognize when they creep up on me. Maybe you're experiencing burn-out and don't even know it!

Trigger One - Busyness

Being too busy is a surefire way to give me homeschool burn out syndrome. With five kids still at home (and one on the way) it's too easy to get "too busy." Often I don't even realize that I'm being overwhelmed with activities until it's too late. It's easy to balance everything in my head - but once I start juggling the actual balls of activities, I often get overloaded quickly.

Right now, I'm teetering on the brink of "too busy." I have one playing tennis up to three times a week, one that does tae-kwon-do twice a week, speech lessons an hour away from home once a week, midweek church services, Bible Drill with two of my kids, and other church responsibilities. I can feel "overload" coming on pretty quickly.

The questions I ask myself when I get too busy are: What activities can we do without? What activities are causing us more stress than joy? What activities can I drop without disappointing my children? Sometimes I have felt the need to have no activities for a while, and my children have not suffered for it. I think family time will trump extra-curriculars any day!

Trigger Two - Curriculum

Curriculum choices are never easy to make. I know I spend hours pouring over samples and contents and reviews to see which curriculum choices may work for my children. Sometimes, though, the curriculum we choose can contribute to burn out.

Are there too many components to your program? Shuffling back and forth with books or manipulatives can quickly get frustrating. Is there too much reading aloud for you or your children's preferences? Are the book choices dull or dry? Is there too much writing, or researching, or busy work? Are your children bored? overwhelmed? underwhelmed? 

I like to stick with curriculum for the entire year if possible. Switching sometimes creates more problems than solutions. However, you can tweak your curriculum as much as you'd like to suit your family better. You can always select a different read aloud than is listed, do some of the written work orally, cut out the busy work and moving pieces if possible, and add some fun projects (or take them away!). 

Sometimes a curriculum switch is necessary. If you feel that way, then switch! It may just the change you need to squash the burn out.

Trigger Three - Lack of Organization

It's easy to get overwhelmed when you aren't organized. If you're constantly look for the book you need, trying to find a pencil or sharpener, searching for the art supplies you bought last week for this week's project...you're going to get frustrated!

Homeschooling requires a lot of moving pieces - books, notebooks, binders, scissors, glue, pencils, crayons, and more. Having a place for everything, and everything in its place, helps tremendously! I try to keep our homeschool area organized, so I know where everything is all the time. I keep a basket with our current read-aloud books as well as my teacher's guide. This makes it easy to grab the basket and start school!

My kids each have bins with their school books in them. They know just where each thing is - math books, grammar books, reading books, science books. We have one bookshelf dedicated to just our current year's homeschool books. Finding a new book or activity guide is made really simple this way. I have a caddy with pencils, pens, markers, colored pencils, scissors, and glue sticks. We keep our sharpener right in the dining room so we never have to search for it. These are simple things to implement that help keep us organized each day. 

If a lack of organization is causing you to feel the burn, then I suggest you take a week off of school to get organized. Dump everything out, purge what you don't need, and find new homes for the items you use daily or weekly. Invest in baskets and bins, tubs and crates, caddies and buckets. It will make things much easier on you!

Those are my top three homeschool burn-out triggers and what I do about them. Pinpointing the triggers has helped me to avoid burn-out and get myself back on track. If you're feeling weary in your homeschooling year, try to identify any problem areas that could be causing you stress. Brainstorm some solutions for these problems. Take a week or two off of school and decompress. Change what you can and fix what is broken.

What are your burn-out triggers?

Blogging Through the Alphabet: R is for Returning

Wow! We are on Week 18 on Blogging Through the Alphabet! I can't believe I have kept it up this long, but there's no way I'll quit now! We are on the letter "R" this week, and I kept thinking of the word returning.

We will be returning to a family-integrated, Charlotte Mason style of homeschool. When we first started homeschooling some 8 years ago, I used many Charlotte Mason concepts without even realizing it. I had no idea there were different methods of homeschooling; I just did what worked for our family. We read the Bible, did copy-work from the verses we read, and found spelling words in our library books. We drew and colored pictures from our living science books and made lap-books and played games. We spent a lot of time outside enjoying nature. We used real coins to learn how to count money and real objects to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I gave them writing prompts to finish a story in their journals. And it worked - beautifully.

Somewhere along the way, I became consumed with shiny new curriculum catalogs and perusing curriculum websites and blogs. I had the "grass is greener" mindset when it came to homeschool curriculum. I always wanted to try something new, something shiny, something exciting. When it became dull or boring, I tried something else.

And now I'm returning to what works for us - what feels right for our family. Slowly, I'm introducing Charlotte Mason's methods into home. I'm not doing it all at once, for fear that we will burn out quickly.

I'm not buying much shiny, new curriculum - it's not necessary for the way we will homeschool. {Notice I said much - I did buy a history curriculum for the entire family to use.} We will be using books - real, living books - for spelling, copy-work, and grammar. We will use Notebooking instead of worksheets. We will be implementing more nature study and nature walks. We will be admiring beautiful art and wonderful music from many famous artists and composers. We will be learning handicrafts and trades that will be useful in life - cooking, baking, sewing, woodworking, gardening, pottery, painting, bead-making, and more. We will listen to poetry and memorize scriptures and enjoy our learning. Gentle homeschooling has been on my heart for a long time, and everything about Charlotte Mason's methods embrace this idea.

We are returning to a slow and steady homeschool.

Linking up with Blogging Through the Alphabet:

 

Gentle Homeschool

 

Gentle homeschooling. Those two words comfort me, intrigue me, motivate me, and inspire me. Doesn't it sound perfect? Are the two compatible?

 

gentle: mild in temperament or behavior; kind or tender; not harsh or severe

 

homeschool: the education of children at home by their parents

 

So the very definition of gentle homeschool  is educating your children at home in a kind and tender way, without being harsh or severe.

 

 

I feel like I am leaning more and more into a gentle style of homeschooling. The longer I homeschool, the more I realize that our children don't need to be {and shouldn't be} pushed into learning, forced to sit at the table for hours on end when it's beautiful weather outside, bored to tears as they read another textbook and answer yes or no questions. Homeschooling is not supposed to be stressful, with mom yelling at the kids and scrambling to get everything done. Homeschool is not supposed to look like public school - kids lined up in desks, raising their hands to ask questions, keeping their mouths shut all day, not allowed to fidget and move around, learning what they are "supposed" to learn, and not what they desire to learn.

 

Homeschool is supposed to be a comfortable, relaxed, gentle way of learning.

 

 

 I see gentle homeschooling as lots of reading aloud together, snuggling on the couch or sitting beside each other. I see gentle homeschooling as nature study together - walking in the woods, examining flowers and leaves, butterflies and bumblebees. I see gentle homeschooling as playing games together - go-fish to learn letters or Monopoly to practice math. I see gentle homeschooling as talking with your children, discussing history and science, math and grammar. I see gentle homeschooling as letting your child set their own pace, not pushing them to learn to read or rushing them to memorize their times tables. I see gentle homeschooling as creating together - painting pictures of the trees in your backyard or sculpting play-dough animals with your young child. I see gentle homeschooling as involving your children in the household duties - cooking and baking, laundry and dusting. I see gentle homeschooling as lying on a quilt outside, watching the clouds move and listening to the birds chirp. I see gentle homeschooling as demonstrations and experiments that will make your child smile and learn at the same time. I see gentle homeschool as hands-on - using pattern blocks, and puzzles, and beans, and counting cubes, and play-dough, and real coins.

 

 

 

I also see gentle homeschooling as family learning - children of all ages, even mom and dad, learning about history, the Bible, science, and geography together. These subjects are easily adaptable for all ages! The whole family gathered around the table, listening to mom read a story, looking up vocabulary words together, creating notebook pages, and encouraging each other in their education - that is gentle, family homeschooling.

 

 

How do you define gentle homeschool?