Options in Planning and Homeschooling

Before continuing on in my discussion of planning with my teens and preparing for homeschooling a new year, I will take a moment to share about the necessity of input from our kids. From about age 8 on up, we told our children that we had 180 days of instruction to do, and we worked with them on starting, finishing, and discussing where any breaks would be. This has been good for them (as well as a good math lesson) as we went from the general of starting and finishing the year, to each specific break and how long.

As one is in high school and the other one will begin it this year, we now work on planning our day from the general (of when to get up and when to end school) to the specific of how long we will allow for each subject. Count it a privilege if you are homeschooling your children at any age to work with them and teach them the life skills that we as adults often do not grasp for a very long time. Teach them work before pleasure in their time management skills. Guide them, so that they will come to these conclusions with our help and not be mini-adults. Let them learn and fail but within the safe environment of their home. Time management and being able to do a plan for the week has proven to be one of the most valuable skills my daughters were mastering this past year. They fought it initially, I watched, (not happily, but I pulled it off :) and they are actually looking forward to doing working according to their weekly plan this year. It worked well for them.

These skills can be taught to students in public/private schools as well. As best you can, work with your children. Integrate life management skills with their academic skills. It's a joy to see it work, and we all learn when it doesn't.

4 comments:

RJ, the Hope Coach said...

Thank you for your recent visit and comment on my site!

I was homeschooled through 9th grade myself, and then homeschooled my youngest son from 7th grade on. Your articles provide fantastic insight and encouragement - I'm definitely follow!

~RJ, the Hope Coach
http://jrrsehopecoaching.com

Susie Buetow said...

It is a great post. My homeschooled teens are Juniors in High School this year. It will be our first year since I started homeschooling them in 6th grade, that we have others controlling our schedule and what they will learn. They are starting their Associates/Dual High School credit for their last two years. It will be an interesting year. We are already beginning school 3 weeks early which totally messed up our vacation schedule :)
Time for a change and this is the year.
Love reading your post. Thanks for stopping in and following me during the Friendly Wednesday Blog hop. We host one on Wed and one on Thur. Come back and link up.
xoxo SusieQTpies

Bethany LaShell said...

thanks for stopping by & commenting yesterday! I fully believe in working towards independent learners and teaching kids how to be responsible.

momof2 said...

It seems as though you have a great plan! It is an important lesson to teach your kids time management skills.

Thanks for stopping by my blog - I am following you now.
Danielle
http://daniellepender.com/