Five Tips for Homeschooling with a New Baby

Homeschooling with a new baby? This season will pass! Here are some tips to help you homeschool with a baby in tow.

At some point in many homeschool moms teaching careers, they will welcome a new bundle of joy. Babies are a blessing and should be treated as such, but to many moms, they are also overwhelming. Especially when they appear in the middle of a school year:). Unbelievably though, school CAN be done with an infant. It just takes a little work to find your groove. Here are five tips for homeschooling with a new baby.

Take Time Off

Don’t plan on getting out of the hospital on Friday and starting back to school on Monday. This will NOT go well. Plan to take at least 2 weeks off from school. You can take more if you’d like, but do not take less than that.

Use a curriculum that is fairly independent

Now is not the time to dive into unit studies or hands-on projects that require a lot of work from you. Find a curriculum that your child can use on the computer, buy workbooks for certain subjects, check out lots of books from the library. Find a way for your children to get school done, without needing loads of help from mom.

Only focus on the main subjects

If you have younger kids that cannot work well independently focus solely on language arts and math. This will minimize your work, and still allow you to get school done. Do this for as long as you need. If you are worried about getting the other subjects in check out library books and read while you feed your baby, find educational TV shows on Netflix, or check those out from your library too.

Eat simple meals

If you can freeze meals ahead of time in preparation for the first few weeks after the baby is born. Stock up on meals that you can dump into your crock-pot with little to no preparation.

Take care of yourself and your baby

Remember that school can wait. Use your baby as a character lesson in patience and love. Take care of the needs of your infant and you. Don’t let yourself to stress about school. Children learn every day, there is no need to feel “behind” or stress about lessons. Enjoy the time with your family, and your baby.

Anytime a family welcomes a new baby there will be a time of adjustment. Don’t see the baby as an interruption to your homeschool schedule. Instead, learn to relax and go with the flow. There may be days the baby needs to be held all day, that’s okay! You will never get this time back. Before you know it that cuddly infant will be a toddler running around wreaking havoc! So, enjoy this time when it is tiny and eager to be loved! The newborn phase will go by before you know it, and believe me when I say that school will still be there later!

Author Bio: Misty Bailey is the blogger behind Joy in the Journey and the podcaster behind Joyfully Homeschooling.  Her goal in this online space is to encourage and inspire you on your homeschool journey by providing practical tips for real life homeschooling. Through real stories, real struggles, and real life, Misty encourages her blog readers and podcast listeners to embrace imperfection and strive for a more joyful homeschool.