What mistakes did you make when first starting to homeschool?
what mistakes have you done while starting to homeschool? or are doing?
what did you do to make it better?
You know, my first year was pretty good. I only had one second grader. I made more mistakes with Cole when he started K. I didn't account for how he needed to learn and I pressed too much. *sigh* K and half of first grade with him were very bad.
I was letting the kids keep all their books etc in their own rooms. Things were constantly being lost and it took ages to get started each day by the time everything was located.
DH bought me a new shelf for the hall where we now keep all the school stuff and supplies together. Now, we can get our stuff out in about 5 minutes and nothing gets lost (or destroyed when the little ones explore).
I also made that mistake. :) Now we are much more organized.
Quoting arctophile:I was letting the kids keep all their books etc in their own rooms. Things were constantly being lost and it took ages to get started each day by the time everything was located.
DH bought me a new shelf for the hall where we now keep all the school stuff and supplies together. Now, we can get our stuff out in about 5 minutes and nothing gets lost (or destroyed when the little ones explore).
I thought homeschool needed to imitate a traditional school classroom.
We are now very child led and formal "curriculum" instruction is limited to a couple of hours per day, if that.
The first year I homeschooled I tried to do "school at home. " We were very structured and everything was scheduled, including bathroom breaks. I made my kids get up with an alarm and be dressed by 7 am. It's kinda funny now, we are very relaxed. Some days my son stays in his pj's all day lol.
The first mistake I made was signing up for K12 thinking it was truly a homeschool thing. LOL! That set me up for trying to do school at home, which lasted two painful, fun-free years.
We scheduled breaks, too! I even tried to tell them how to make breaks more productive. Glad we're over that!
Quoting irvinehiker:The first year I homeschooled I tried to do "school at home. " We were very structured and everything was scheduled, including bathroom breaks. I made my kids get up with an alarm and be dressed by 7 am. It's kinda funny now, we are very relaxed. Some days my son stays in his pj's all day lol.
We are slightly structured but still relaxed at the same time. The absolute must for us is that we start no later than 10. That means that our youngest will be done by lunch and our oldest should be done no later than 2 and that includes the lunch break. I have a potty alarm that goes off every hour atm, but I will be adjusting that to every 75 min. The mistakes I made the first year were not pulling apart the workbooks....makes life so much easier when you do it. We do have a slightly "school at home" feel to our set up but the structure works for my girls. I let them do their reinforcement work anywhere, except the dining room table.
My mistake was thinking you had to do it all, finish it all, etc...
We tried Saxon with this approach that year, and wow.. did my kids HATE Saxon math. I mean, when mom assigned all the problems.... LOL!
Leaving public school...
- oredeb
on Feb. 22, 2013 at 10:41 AM