5 ways to turn your homeschool year around

Navigating a Roller Coaster School Year

What a year it’s been, my friend. If you’re like me, managing your kids’ schooling has been one of the major stressors you’ve been forced to field during this season of relentless challenges. Whether you’ve been juggling virtual school schedules, navigating the challenges of in-person schooling in an upside-down world, have already been homeschooling for years, or are doing it solo for the first time because none of the other options were working for your family, let me start by telling you this: You are doing an amazing job.

Sure, things might look and feel like chaos on the good days and a train wreck on the toughest ones. But you’ve held down the fort day after day with a flexibility and stamina you didn’t even know you had. You’ve washed countless masks, overcome tech problems, gotten through melt-downs, kept the rest of life afloat, and put on a brave face and positive spin for your kids as often as you could muster. You’ve made it this far, which is incredible.

We’ve all been hanging out on the lower rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy this year, with the basic needs of health and safety claiming a lot of our focus and our social support on extended hiatus. So let me just say it right now: any high aspirations we might have had of a pretty little homeschool year (or a pretty little anything this year) need to be cut down to realistic size. It’s a time to be practical, not idealistic, and a time to slather grace all over yourself and your family and call whatever you’ve been able to manage good enough. Your kids are going to be just fine.

Still, even if we know our children are safe and fortunate and resilient, this is their education. This is their childhood. So how about you and I infuse the remainder of this wacky school year with a little extra joy?

Here are 5 EASY ways to infuse more joy into your homeschool:

1) Give them a change of scenery

Staying home is getting old (understatement of the century?). But we can give our kids’ day a jolt of fun by letting them do school somewhere unusual. A fort under the kitchen table? A cozy chair by the fire? A closet-turned secret hide-out? A picnic blanket surrounded by “forest animals”? In bed pretending to be Colin from The Secret Garden? You can even hop in the car and let each kid set up their own “office” in the back seat.

2) Incorporate their favorite toys

Do you have a kid who loves LEGOs? Host a building challenge and have them build whatever they’re learning about. We made ziggurats last week! Do your kids love playing with dolls? Let them bring their babies to school or create a kindergarten class of their own. Two of our tender-hearted and reading-hesitant kids will practice the alphabet much more willingly when we tell them the baby letters in their alphabet puzzle got lost and need to find their mamas, or that the Hatchimal doesn’t know how to read and really wishes she could hop along this path of sight words with someone who could teach them to her.

3) Make it interactive

One of my favorite ideas that we’ve come across in our homeschooling journey has been History Timelines. As a visual learner, history makes so much more sense to me now than it did during my own schooling because we map it out on timelines! A spiral bound version is nice for continued use in future years, whether your kids are homeschooled or not, as a way to keep track of what they’ve learned and help them conceptualize when it all took place, but it’s also been a really neat experience when we’ve printed out or drawn some on paper and taped them up on our walls. To be able to walk around the perimeter of a room in your house and simultaneously take a walk through the history of the world really helps kids (and adults!) make sense of how things have unfolded and where they stand in the grand scheme of history. They can even stick their own photo on the timeline! You can find ready-made sticker packs organized by era, which makes it really easy, or you can simply print out or scribble on some drawings and important dates yourselves.

4) Let them be the experts

When I notice my kids getting a little bored with the same old school routine, when I can tell they’re suffering from lack of social interaction, or when I’m getting some pushback as I teach them, it usually reignites their enthusiasm when I hand the reigns over to them and let them teach! Whether big brother is holding a class to teach his little sisters 5 new words in Spanish, or big sister is teaching us all an art technique or designing a preschool activity or PE obstacle course for her little sisters, they love getting a chance to take the lead. Recently when I had forgotten to prep our science lesson, I had them each come up with a science question they had about winter, go find the answer, and come back and teach us all about it. Sometimes I have them make a recording of themselves giving a book report to send to their grandparents, and they love leading simple science demonstrations, too. Even pre-readers can find something to demonstrate, like handprint art or a Simon Says exercise class or Show and Tell. You might even find your parent/teacher load lightened a bit. And if not, at least they’re having fun!

5) Make it a celebration

 My kids’ favorite memory of homeschooling, and mine, is probably going to be what has been one of the very easiest to implement. We call it “Poetry & Popcorn,” and it involves popping some popcorn, spreading out a picnic blanket outside or on the living room floor, and reading children’s poems. Sometimes we have an easy picnic lunch instead of popcorn, or we might read a family chapter book instead of poetry, but no matter how we do it, they eat it up! I’ve heard of some families doing it as a tea time at the table together on a Sunday afternoon, and we might progress to that as the kids get older. To have the shared experience of literature together will help weave the fabric of your family’s culture and surely create some fond memories.

Bonus Idea: Field Trip Reimagined!

One of the biggest bummers about homeschooling right now is that it has thrown a wrench in one of the biggest perks of homeschooling: field trips. But no matter- you can have a field trip at home! When we lived in Japan, there was a local children’s museum nearby called The Wonder Museum, and we took several homeschool field trips and weekend excursions there. One Saturday, my husband and I had promised the kids we’d take them to the Wonder Museum, but we were so exhausted and really preferred to spend the day at home. So we offered the kids the chance to create their very own Wonder Museum, and they took the bait! Each person created one or more stations around the house, and we visited each station. We had popcorn stringing, Nerf gun target practice, a color world for the baby, painting lessons, a Japanese tea party, and a dark room full of Magna-tile structures illuminated by twinkle lights underneath. The kids totally bought into it (maybe because it incorporates all 5 of the joy-sparking ideas listed above?), and we’ve done several more Wonder Museums since then. Just make sure to agree on a cleanup plan before everyone is off setting up toys in every room of the house. 😉

The Bottom Line

This crazy school year will come to an end, my friend. No matter how many rough moments you and your kids have had so far, most of them will soon be forgotten, but it’ll be the moments of laughter and togetherness that will last in their minds. You’ve had some good moments mixed in there, I know it. Let’s sprinkle in a few more and make it a year to remember.