How can you keep your home—and homeschool—running smoothly during those busy homeschooling days? Here are some tips to help the busy homeschool mom have a smooth running home and homeschool.
It’s amazing that one of the number one questions homeschoolers continue to hear is “What about socialization?” I’m not sure I’ve ever met a homeschooling family that is actually home for nearly as much time as some people seem to think. Education is a lifestyle, and as we all know, life doesn’t ever stop.
How can you keep your home—and homeschool—running smoothly during those busy homeschooling days? You know, the ones where you are gone as much as you’re home?
Keep First Things First
When it comes to academics, consider what your top priorities are when it comes to getting your schoolwork done. For us, that included reading aloud, writing, and math when our kids were younger. Because of that, we often started the school day with those subjects. If we didn’t make progress on other subjects, at least I knew they were spending time on those skill-subjects that were key to all of their other studies.
Prepare Meals Ahead of Time
When you have “one of those days” it’s easy to just grab something while you are out and about. But it doesn’t take long before the expense and lack of nutritional value of those fast food runs puts the mommy guilt into overdrive (by the way…an occasional meal out won’t hurt anyone!). With a little planning, though, you can still enjoy home-cooked meals even on the busiest of days with this one, simple hack: Do some freezer cooking! Get the best tips and ideas, as well as a great selection of recipes, for freezer cooking from one of my favorites: The Pioneer Woman. She explains her approach like this: “Generally speaking, I do a mix of one-dish meals—things like casseroles, soups, stews, and chilis—but I also like to prepare ingredients up to a certain stage and freeze them so I can grab them and start cooking some of my favorite meals.” This is my go-to guide for freezer cooking.
Get Ready the Night Before
Making sure you have everything you need the night before will save you valuable time the next morning. This is true for any homeschool day, but it’s essential for the times when you have to maximize every minute. A few easy things you can do include:
- Gathering all school supplies and books needed into one place
- Packing backpacks with “school-on-the-go” supplies or things you need for the activities of the day
- Putting freezer meals in the refrigerator to start thawing for the next day’s dinner
- Laying out your clothes and, in the winter, coats you’ll need the right before. Don’t forget to find everyone’s shoes too! We kept a basket of them by our back door.
- Doing a fifteen minute quick pick up of those areas that seem to get out of control too easily. (For us that’s the kitchen table (where we tend to put piles of stuff when we come in!)
Smooth Sailing
It takes some planning, but having a smooth running home, and homeschool, is possible even on the most hectic of days. Whether it’s a homeschool group, activities, classes—all those different ways your kids “socialize”—you can know that it’s possible to keep both an active life and a peaceful home.
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