Flexibility in Homeschool

hi i'm candice and you're watching homeschool on the hill and today we're talking about flexibility and i don't mean like doing the splits i i can't do the splits i've never been able to do the splits i just want to give you three quick tips that might help you to be more flexible in your homeschool and hopefully enjoy your homeschool more so the first tip i have for you is to create a buffer in your weekly schedule and how i do this is by having a lighter day on friday our first four days of the week our full academic load and on friday we still do some of our school work but it's a much lighter academic load and then we save the afternoon as our fun friday and that's a time when we can do science experiment or my boys aren't really into art projects anymore but uh we could do a nature walk a field trip we could watch a movie for a book that we've been reading or maybe something that has something to do with a time period that we're learning about play games that sort of thing so each week i fill up my planner the first four days are completely full and then fridays much lighter and this allows me to be really flexible because something can come up earlier in the week and i'm able to bump everything and fill up that friday if it's needed if it's not needed we just get this kind of bonus fun time to look forward to but if it is needed it's there and so it just allows me to be so much more flexible when things come up earlier in the week i don't have to stress i know i have a place to put them later in the week the second tip i have for you is to identify what i call the back burner subjects and that just means when something comes up what are the things that i can put on the back burner that they don't need my attention right now they don't have to happen today which subjects are those subjects that you know they are your go-to they're on the chopping block when something comes up no that doesn't mean they're not important i'm not saying these things are not important i just mean that they don't have to be done every day they don't we don't have to stress about them when something comes up now we'll say it really depends on which materials you've chosen so for us one of our back burner subjects is spelling and the reason i have such an easy time making it spelling is because our spelling resource is going to roll from year to year so there's no we have to be at this point by the end of the school year versus someone else who maybe picks up a spelling workbook and every monday this is what the activity is and tuesday and wednesday and it's all spoken for that full five days a week our spelling resource isn't like that and so your materials might dictate which subjects these are for you so my third and final tip is to narrow it down and what i mean by that is to take a look at your materials you have lots of different subjects lots of different materials take a look at those materials and see if there's anything that you can trim out before the school year starts let's narrow it down in each one of those materials to what is really important for your current homeschool year so for example you may be switching to a science textbook this year maybe you have a fifth grader and you've decided to go with the textbook for fifth grade science up until this point maybe you've been doing unit studies in your home school and as you flip through that science textbook you realize there's going to be a unit on anatomy and that kind of seems silly to you because maybe at the end of the previous homeschool year you did a great unit study on anatomy and there's really no reason for your fifth grader to repeat that information so take it out just make a note to yourself put a sticky note there whatever you want take that out narrow down what's really important in that science textbook and it gives you a little bit of breathing room to not have it completely full and think you have to check off all of those things go ahead and give yourself permission i'm giving you permission give yourself permission to mark out some things that you do not need take a look at maybe i don't know all of the books you were going to read aloud this year maybe you're using a program that chooses those in advance and you look at something and you think this isn't going to be our taste or oh there was a repeat book in here that we've read in the past let's pull that out we don't need to have that in our schedule we don't even have to replace it with anything else and it gives us a little bit of breathing room and just by the way i let my boys have a veto in their literature selections so they get to choose for themselves if it's something they really don't want to read they don't have to read it they only get one so they have to use it wisely i mean at the end of the day let's be honest what does it matter if they read 12 great books this year or 13 great books this year that's just not something i'm willing to get upset about anymore and i'm telling you don't get upset about that sort of thing go ahead and narrow it down to what's really important so those are three things that i do so that i can remain flexible when it comes to homeschooling and i enjoy homeschooling so much more now that i am flexible and i am able to have a buffer day or i'm able to take off certain subjects if something comes up or when i go through and i know that i have eliminated things that are just unnecessary for us and we have a little bit of wiggle room with different materials so encourage you to find something maybe one of the things that i shared and try to implement that in your home school and give yourself a little wiggle room so that you can be flexible and then of course for any of you watching if you have any tips that you want to share with the rest of us things that you do that help you to stay flexible when it comes to homeschooling please share those in the comment section below and look if you are new here i would love it if you would take a moment and introduce yourself because i really do love making new friends and if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet please consider clicking that subscribe button and then you'll see my videos popping up in your feed i do try to release a video every friday as always i want to thank you guys so much for watching and i'll see you later bye you

Channel: Homeschool on the Hill

Views: 834

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: homeschool, home school, homeschooling, home schooling, homeschool flexibility, flexibility, how to be more flexible, flexible, homeschool family, homeschooled, homeschool on the hill

Id: aVR_v97AVCM

Length: 6min 22sec (382 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021