The #1 Hack to Keep Your Homeschool on Track (Every Day!)

Sometimes it feels like I’m herding cats to get everybody into one place to try and do one thing all together.

BUT … I also know that I tend to get distracted too! And when I get distracted, our homeschool REALLY gets off track!

So today I’m sharing the number one thing I do so that I keep MY biggest distraction at bay.

Transcript

Hey guys, ToriAnn Perkey here. From my homeschool to your homeschool, does your homeschool sometimes get off track? Do you wake up in the morning, and you think you got this great plan and everything's going to go really well and by about 9:15 AM things are starting to fall apart and you're thinking argh. And this happens day after day after day?

Oh, staying on track is tricky when you're a homeschool mom. 

You have all of these different factors that you're trying to keep in control.  You're trying to corral one or many children. And trying to take all these disparate personalities and say hey, we're all going to do the same thing every single day.

And on top of that you're trying to be a mom and deal with the fact that sometimes kids are having a hard day or they're not getting along. And you're trying to run a house, which means that you're also doing laundry and you're also cooking.

Keeping track and staying on track is really hard.  And today I want to tell you the #1 hack that I use in my home to keep us just a little more on track every single day, because distractions are the biggest bane to any homeschool.

Of all the things I mentioned the thing that will get you off track the fastest is distractions.  Distractions come in all shapes and sizes.  They can look like all sorts of things and what distracts me may not distract you but I know one distraction that distracts almost all of us and it's this.  

It is your phone.

Your little phone -- your window to the world that is so wonderful, that is in your pocket. It gives you so many answers.

It is also the thing that dings and beeps and clicks and rings all the time.  I know because mine dings and clicks and rings and beeps all the time. And it's so hard when it makes those noises to not look at it.

And I have been guilty of being in the middle of reading a book to my children and having my phone ring and say, hey, just hold on just a second, I'm going to get this. And then the next thing I know, I'm on my phone talking to someone, and my kids are scattered to the four winds, and the reading is over.  

Or I'll be in the middle of helping a kid with math, and it will ding, and I'll have a notification, and I think okay, I can just kind of look at this while I'm helping them. And before I know it I'm over here on my phone doing this, and I've totally lost the kid.

Of course -- this right here is so distracting.  So, here's my #1 hack that I've started doing that makes such a difference in my homeschool.  I put my phone on airplane mode during school hours.  I put it on airplane mode.  I don't silence it because then I can pick it up, and it has all those little notes that say things happened.  Still distracting.  Argh!

And you guys, it's totally normal to be distracted. Our brains actually release dopamine -- the feel good chemical -- whenever our phone goes off.  It's like a little reward that says, ding, something happy just happened. And your brain wants that.  So, of course you're going to go look at it.  It's totally normal.

But it is something that you get to be in charge of.  So, put your phone on airplane mode when it's school time.  That for me means a couple hours in the morning.  

I flip it up. I put it on airplane mode. I put it over to the side. And then after lunch, I totally pick it up, I turn it on and then it's like Christmas because my phone's like Brrrrrrnnnnnnng, and then it's super exciting, right?

There are so few times when someone has to get a hold of me that I figured that having my phone on airplane mode is kind of like being in a movie or in the doctor's office or some other place where I can't look at my phone.  It's like it's okay to not be available all the time because if I'm not available for everyone all of the time, I'm really available for my kids some of the time, which is part of making your homeschool work -- making your homeschool stay on track.  Because if you're not distracted, then you can stay focused on the reading. You can stay focused on the math. You can stay on target just a little bit better.

Now, airplane mode is not going to help you with kids fighting.  We'll have to talk about that another time. But it will help you with that little dinging and that little ringing that pulls you away all the time.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I make these videos every single week so that you can be a super successful and confident homeschool mom.

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