Creative Homeschooling

Choosing to homeschool opens up a unique opportunity to provide your child with an unconventional special education . One of the things most homeschool moms and dads and their students love is the fact that they can create how they choose to teach and be taught. One of the things I’m working on this year is making our school day go by easier. Receiving Harmonie’s ADHD diagnosis, more on that in another post, opened up my eyes to a specific need we need in our school day.

It’s important to take note that not everyone is suited for homeschooling though. If you do decide to send your kids to school, you may want to consider a k-8 public charter school, which provides age-based learning on a safe and nurturing environment, or if you would like to check out private schools then a good option would be something like ravenscroft.

Learning to Be More Creative

One of the issues we have always had in our adventures in homeschooling is my need for structure. I went to public schools growing up, so I was raised on structure with a great private math tutor and rigid learning. As a homeschool educator, I no longer have to be beholden to the traditional ways of schooling, but that is the only schooling I know. This one simple fact makes it very difficult for me to “break the rules” and look at our school routine in a different way. 

The ADHD diagnosis made me realize I had to learn to be more creative and less rigid in how I schedule our school days for the sake of my child. This is Harmonie’s last year of middle school and it is important for me to get her prepared for the heavy load high school brings, while not overwhelming her with too much work. This can be a great challenge when you are working with a curriculum that is overloaded with assignments.

How We Handle the Overload

In the interest of catching up on our work, as if you can ever truly be behind in a homeschool environment, I have come up with a plan of action that seems to be working really well for us so far.

Harmonie cannot handle busy work and gets overwhelmed when she is assigned too many assignments all at once. Knowing this, I have taken the time to put in a little extra work to devise an easier way for us to get through the required work without having to overdo it. 

One of the things I have started doing to eliminate the overabundance of work is cut back on the amount of required work she has to do in a day. Instead of assigning Harmonie assignments from her books and then giving her test on the material later, I assign her the reading, find the content on Khan Academy and a few other online sites we use for resources, and then assign her the test as her assignment. By the time she has read the chapter and then looked at it online, she is ready to take the test and pass. If we find she is just not grasping the material, we add a few assignments from the curriculum for practice. This one little adjustment in our daily routine has helped tremendously. Harmonie stalls less and gets more work done. This has built up her confidence and made me happier because I’m watching our school todo list shrink.

Another thing we have implemented into our routine is audiobook reading for a book reports. Harmonie loves reading books the good old-fashion way but finds it difficult to get through books she’s not interested in. Audiobooks playing in the car with the Kindle version on the iPad has opened up a wealth of possibilities for us. We have found that we can get through books faster and book reports easier by using audiobooks. She still reads excessively, but now she just focuses on reading the books she loves. In my book, no pun intended, this is a win-win solution for everybody. 

Another trick I have found that works, is having a single subject day or week. A single subject day is a day where you only assign assignments from one specific subject. Here is an example. In vocabulary, there are assignments, quizzes, and test. Instead of making Harmonie do assignments, then take quizzes and test on her work, I let her use her quizzes in place of her assignments and use the test to gauge what she has learned. A single subject week is when we focus on catching up or plowing further into one single subject. I have to use multiple media in order for this to work without boring her, but that is what makes Single Subject Week so much fun. We get to immerse ourselves into the subject deeper than we would if it was one of seven subjects in our day. 

ADHD is a lot to deal with, especially when it comes to educating a child, but it is not an impossible thing to accomplish. These are just a few of the things we have implemented into our day. They have made our school day go by much faster and Harmonie has become more attentive during our school time together. She is less overwhelmed and more willing to plow into her assignments and even request certain assignments and subjects to work on from time to time. An engaged homeschooler is a happy homeschooler. 

What are some of the ways you try to energize your homeschool day? Let’s swap ideas!