Finding your groove as a homeschool family is a little like finding your way as a parent. You can read books and blogs, and talk to friends to get suggestions, but in the end you have to just start somewhere!

You have to start where you think is best and accept the fact that you are not going to homeschool exactly the same way a year from now, or two or ten! You are going to change and grow. We all have to go through this progression – it’s part of growing, maturing, and finding our own style.

That said, I would suggest wading in, rather than diving into the deep end! For your sake and your kid’s sake.

Start Slowly
Make small goals, not a big to-do list. (I strictly ignored this advice upon beginning to homeschool! I had something to prove you see.) Some of us want to make a plan, detail it out, item by item, and cross everything off of our list everyday. We do it because we want to be able to say, we did “school” today, and in our mind “school” is not accomplished unless the complete list is checked off.

A better way is to start with a couple of things your children are sure to like. Then call it a day. (Really!) The next day do those same things, plus one harder thing. Each day add something new, until in time you have worked up to a full schedule.

Depending on the transition being made, this process may take a week or a month. If your child is leaving public school after several years, you may need to take this progression very, very slowly. If your child has learned to hate “school” they need to see that this isn’t going to be same ol’, same ol’. This is going to be different. At the very least they will not “hate” that day of school, and at best, they will have some curiosity about tomorrow.

Take it Easy
Trade off between difficult subjects and easy ones. We used to get the hateful subjects out of the way first and then spent the rest of the morning enjoying the rest. The problem was that by the time we got to the good stuff, our brains were worn out and we didn’t enjoy it as much as we should have.

I’ve found that if we do something easy, then something hard, then back to something easy, and continue trading off that way, we get so much more out of every subject – the hard and easy alike. We finish the day less exhausted too. I talk about this more in my post about short lessons.

Sneak It In
Learn to school subtly, throughout the day. This didn’t come easy for me at first. I thought we were either doing “school” or we were not. I still think you need to have a scheduled time for lessons, but adding things here or there throughout the day can greatly shrink that scheduled time. Some ideas are:

• Read a poem over breakfast. (Poetry)
• Read a story before bed each night. (Literature)
• Listen to an audiobook in the car.
• Go for a walk and pay attention to your surroundings. (Science, Nature Study)
• Cook dinner together. (Math, Science, Work/Handicraft)
• Talk about everything – ask them to tell you about their experiences. (Composition)

That is just a small list of ideas. Your whole school day cannot be accomplished like that, but you can cover a lot of stuff in this way, without your child ever feeling “schooled”. At the end of the day, record what you did throughout the day. You may be surprised!

Be Picky About Your Time
You can’t do everything, so you need to be picky. When we first started homeschooling we lived in an area with few opportunities for homeschoolers. Shortly thereafter, we moved to a place with TONS of opportunities for homeschoolers: field trips, co-ops, museums, homeschool days, lessons of every kind, and on and on. I quickly found that we needed to slow down!

The same thing goes for the subjects you choose to teach. You can’t teach your children everything in one year. Stick to what is important, then fill in with the extras. If you add to your schedule, little by little, like I suggested above, then you will know when you have found a place that is comfortable for all of you.

It’s hard to go slow. We get so excited that we want to just dive in and teach them everything! We buy everything that looks interesting or educational, and then we insist on doing every page so we get our money’s worth.

The thing to remember is that homeschooling can be different. We don’t have to start every subject on the first day of the school year, but at the same time, all schooling we do will be one on one and therefore more effective. Take advantage of this flexibility – start slow so that every day can be a successful day!