Homeschool Resolutions
Filed Under (homeschool) by samantha on 01-01-2010
Tagged Under : activities, cooking, family, homeschool, New Year resolutions, projects, travel
Although it seems I’m always assessing how well our schooling is going, there are generally two times of the year when I make big changes. The first is in August, as I plan for the new school year, and the second comes at the end of December, before school starts again after the holidays. Now, for the new year, I have several homeschooling resolutions:
1. Focus more on school during school time: I tend to get easily distracted with “life” during the school hours, so naturally, my children become distracted as well. For me, this resolution means that I’ll be unplugging the phone and leaving the computer off until after lunch.
2. Include more of the fun stuff: Some days, it seems that it’s all we can do to get the academics covered well. But part of the joy of homeschooling is being able to explore, investigate, and create together. Whether it’s taking nature walks, working on projects, or trying out new recipes, I want enjoyable activities to be a regular part of our school days.
3. Get dad involved: My husband has a full-time job during the day and then works a few extra hours a couple of nights a week. It’s hard to imagine that he’d have time to help out with the schooling, but there are some easy (and relationship-building) things he can do with our children. He can snuggle up with them on the sofa and listening to them read, or he can choose a story to read to them. Or, he could call out a few of those math facts while they sip cocoa together. Either way, the children would enjoy spending that time with him.
4. Make the most of trips: Because we have a lot of extended family living within a day’s driving distance, we often travel to visit and spend time with them. This year, we’ll make the most of those trips by using each one as the focus of a unit study. Before we go, we’re going to research our destination, locate it on the map, and trace our travel route.
All in all, I think it’s going to be a good year. Are you making any changes in 2010?

This year, I was going to be ready for Christmas early. I had finished much of my shopping after Thanksgiving, and I was going to have all my Christmas cards addressed and ready to go by the first of December. And to add a special touch, I was going to make the cards or have the children help me make them. I planned on printing photos of the family to include in the cards as well.
…Or perhaps this should be entitled, “Lessons from the Parade?”
This year I thought we’d get an early start on school. It seems our year is often interrupted, so if we had an early start, we’d hopefully finish up in May.
During our visit with family this summer, we had a chance to hear one of my nephew’s music CDs. It came with a book entitled Philadelphia Chickens, written and illustrated by Sandra Boynton. The songs in it are so silly and so funny that when we found the book and CD at our library, we just had to check it out. As we were listening to the CD in the car, one of the songs really made an impression on me. The song was “Snuggle Puppy,” and the chorus goes like this:
My niece introduced us to a fun party game last week that’s works well if you have a group of people who want to play. It’s a combination of telephone – the game where you whisper something to someone, and then they whisper it to someone else, until it goes all the way down the line – and charades, where you act out a word or phrase.
We’re still in central Florida, and the temperatures have been high! Last week they were in the mid-90s, but with the humidity, the weatherman said it felt more like 105 degrees. I’d say he was right.
This week we’ve been spending time with family in Florida. Besides an occasional storm that comes up in the late afternoon, the days have been hot and sunny. With twelve children ages 1 to 15 looking around for things to do, we’ve had to designate the morning hours, which are generally a little cooler, as “outside time.”
This past spring brought several new experiences for me, one of which was letting my children go to visit relatives for more than just a day.
What is a home? Or rather, what is my home? What is the home I’ve created for my family?
