Are you interested in what it takes to have a really good homeschool day?
After 16 years of homeschooling, I’ve figured out a thing or two that you can do.
For me, a really good homeschool day means you:
It also means that my kids are engaged in meaningful, productive, learning activities. (Over the years, that often meant cool games instead of just workbooks. You can check out my reviews to see some of my favorites.)
So how do you do it? How do you have a day where you settle into bed at the end of the day and think “Today I was a good homeschool mom!”?
I have a few tricks that I’ve developed over the years. And that’s what I’m talking about today.
Transcript
Hello ToriAnn Perkey here and from my homeschool to your homeschool, today I want to talk about how to have a really, really, really good homeschool day.
Do you know what it takes to have a really, really, really good homeschool day? Well stick around because that's what we're talking about. Now I know that not every day can be amazing. But you can actually significantly shift how many good homeschool days you have if you adjust one thing. And that is expectations and you don't have to adjust it one way or the other. You just have to get clear on the expectations that you have about your homeschool day.
Let's talk for a minute about expectations. Expectations are what you hope to have happen, and then what actually happens during the day is either going to be less or more or right in alignment with those expectations. And it actually isn't how much gets accomplished during the day that determines whether or not you have a good day. It's where how much gets accomplished lines up with your expectations. So, for example, if your expectations are here and you and your kids only get this much done, then you're not going to feel like it was a very good day. If your expectations are here and you actually do this much, you're going to feel like it was an amazing day.
So let's talk about how do you get your expectations to be in a place where you can consistently have really good days. Now, before I go any further, if you're new or struggling, I actually have information about this along with a lot of other topics in my free homeschool help center. So be sure to check out the resources down below this video if that's something that you would be interested in. They're all free and they help you do your homeschool in different ways.
Okay, so let's talk about expectations. There's two kinds of expectations that you really do need to get clear on in order to have a good day. The first one is you need to get clear on your expectations for your kids. If you guys, your expectations are there, whether or not you stated them. What you hope will happen, what you want them to be doing. And if you aren't clearly letting your kids know what it is you want them to do and how you hope the day will run, there is no way for them to meet you in the middle and even begin to remotely do it. It'll be very hit or miss, so you want to be really, really clear.
What do you want them to do? How do you want them to show up? What kinds of activities do you want them to do? What kind of attitude do you want? Have you had those conversations? Now, don't get me wrong, I do not believe that just if you have those conversations, suddenly everybody's going to fall in line and you're going to have an amazing day. Don't get me, I'm not going there because believe me, that is not how it worked in my home it's not how it does work in my home. However, when we get clear expectations you have a better chance of then having a conversation if something doesn't line up.
So what were some of the expectations I had or I have in my homeschool? Well, when my kids were little, and now my kids are all teenagers, but when my kids were little, the expectation was you'll come sit on the couch and you'll read with us and you'll have a good attitude. You won't whine and complain. When we play a game, you will show up and be kind to your siblings. You will be respectful about the time that I've put into preparing this, even if you don't love it. And again, they didn't always meet it, but we had systems in place for when they didn't meet it, it was called discipline.
So once we set up the expectation, I knew what to do if it wasn't being met. And it wasn't like we were being drill sergeants. It wasn't like I was making them do lots and lots of things. I was setting up fun and engaging and exciting things to do, but sometimes they just didn't want to do it. So the expectation was, please show up, have a good attitude, we're going to do it for this amount of time and then you're free to go do things the rest of the day, and that worked really, really well.
Now, I didn't always have something planned and so if I were to describe my baseline for any type of good homeschool day, I would say it was engaging in productive, meaningful learning activities. [NOTE: See my reviews page for lots of awesome activities for your homeschool.] That's the expectation I have for my children. So now that they're even older and I'm not as involved in the little itty bitty days of their lives, they're much more self sufficient. They're doing a lot of the learning on their own or they have outside classes that they're engaging with that give them the education. Now that we're more engaged that way, my expectation is the same even though the activities have changed and that is, are they engaged in productive, meaningful learning experiences?
Now your expectations for your kids might be completely different. It might be a certain amount of time. It might be completing certain types of activities. It might be did everyone just get along today? Depending on where the baseline is is in your family right now. But regardless, it's that expectations piece that lets me know whether or not I'm having a good day based on whether that sort of thing can happen.
Now this is the trick. You have your expectations that you have for your kids. The other expectations that you have to work on are your own expectations. How do you perceive what is happening and how do you feel when it doesn't line up? This one is a little bit trickier because it has to, you know, all sorts of things play into expectations, guilt, fear, desire, hope, and those are really, really deep, powerful emotions that can impact how you feel about your day. But setting realistic expectations. Yes, I want everything to run perfectly. Yes, I want everyone to get along. Yes, I would love it if everyone were leaping for joy. Every time I put something in front of them.
I would love that, but it's not realistic. So the second piece is getting realistic with my expectations. And that means I have to do two things that are not easy, but super important.
The first one is I have to allow agency. Whether your kid is four or whether your kid is 17 they want agency. They want to be able to make their own choices. And even if they don't like what they're being asked to do and maybe they don't want to do it, I have to allow them the space to make the choice whether or not they're going to engage. Now some behavior's not okay. There are consequences. There's discipline. Absolutely. And that's a subject for another video.
But agency means the kid actually gets to choose. And when I'm being realistic, I'm allowing them the freedom to make the choice. Not easy because in my like, non-agency world, I want to force them to do all the good things because I think I know best. But the reality is it doesn't work that way.
And now the second thing about adjusting realistic to realistic expectations is remembering not every day is going to be an amazing day. Not every day can be. And every kid in your family is going to have their own mix of good, not so good and terrible days. Every single kid. And unfortunately not every kid has the same mix.
I've got one kid who has a great day, probably seven out of 10 there's a couple of rough patches there and that's always been true. Seven out of 10 most of the time I know that kid is going to show up. I got another kid who hits good days about every three and 10 which means there is a lot of days where they're struggling for some reason, whether it's emotional, whether it's academic, whether it's whatever. They just came with a different package. Days are harder for them and we're working with that. Right?
It's not like I get to pick and choose how they show up. I get to pick and choose how I react to what they show up with, so knowing that some are going to be more likely to have good days than others, helps me adjust my expectations and be more realistic. Now once in a blue moon, once in a blue moon, everybody has a fantastic day and those are the red letter days that you write down and you remember and you journal about. But I'd like to say that usually you can hit a good day about one in 10. About one in 10 is when everybody shows up fairly high on the show up happy level. Everybody's kind of humming along, things are moving well. One in 10 so if you're having one really good day in 10 mama, you are a successful homeschool mom.
And your expectations, adjusting those to that level. Maybe that will help just a little bit. Now if you are struggling, there are lots of ways to try to get the expectations and everything else in a better place. Make sure you check out my free homeschool help center. Lots and lots of free resources there to help you. So many different opportunities to learn different things. In the end, homeschooling is a journey and setting your expectations so you can have good days is one piece of being a successful homeschooler.
I'm ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
Finding a good writing curriculum for your middle school kid can be tricky.
(Okay … middle school age can be tricky with everything … but that’s a conversation for a different time!)
A good middle school writing curriculum needs to cover basics like constructing a paragraph and then teach how to write an essay, as well as other non-fiction styles.
Hopefully it will push a student to expand their vocabulary, vary their sentence structure, and learn to express their own thoughts.
And of course, you still want your kid to work on punctuation, grammar and other writing mechanics.
Finally, a writing curriculum will also push them creatively and help them LOVE writing.
So where do you find something that does all of this??
I’ve been looking at writing curriculum since my 4 kids were little. And since 2013, I’ve taught writing and English at our local co-op to the kids who are 12 to 17. So I’ve seen and used A LOT of different curriculum -- some okay and some great.
Today, I’m going to compare two curriculums that I find very compelling -- WriteShop I & II and IEW’s new Structure and Style (available May 2020).
NOTE: Be sure to check out my video where I give you a detailed look into the student and teacher manuals for WriteShop and Structure and Style.
*****Also I need to state the following:*******
Both curriculum are designed for middle-school/early high school (grades 6 through 9). And they both assume that your child knows how to construct a basic sentence (start with a capital letter, end with a period, have a subject and verb, etc.)
Both curriculum require that you have a decent level of writing, although you DO NOT need to be an expert with either. (Both provide teacher support -- but in very different ways.)
Each has a video teaching element that you can use if you don’t want to do the teaching yourself. WriteShop’s is like watching a moving slideshow with narration (the voice is easy to listen to). Structure and Style has filmed Andrew Padua teaching a full class of middle-school students.
And both are fairly mom “intensive” -- which is to be expected of a writing curriculum. (Writing is subjective so there’s no easy way to just send your kids off to do it on their own. Someone must review and respond to the writing for your kids to improve.)
WriteShop focuses on teaching your kid how to write by starting with brainstorming and then gently leading them through all the stages of writing -- rough draft (they call it “sloppy copy”) through a final composition.
Each lesson follows the same basic structure:
Each lesson is designed to take two weeks -- with additional writing skill activities and narration/dictation skills built in as well.
I love that WriteShop I starts with just constructing paragraphs, and let’s the student work on their writing one paragraph at a time until they feel confident. Only then in WriteShop II, do they move on to longer non-fiction compositions -- like essays.
My experience teaching many kids is that once they’ve mastered good paragraph structure, it’s much easier for them to apply that knowledge when they start writing essays.
I also love the quantity and quality of writing skill practice that WriteShop I & II includes. There are three included in each lesson, and each builds on the last. These are a FABULOUS way for kids to practice skills that they can use over and over in their writing.
The brainstorming element of each lesson is also well done. Instead of just saying “brainstorm … here are a few ideas,” there is a detailed brainstorming outline that walks the kid through all the different ways to approach the topic. (These are AMAZING and I’ll be folding them into my co-op classes starting next week.)
The downside of this approach could be that it leaves your kid on their own to know how to write a good paragraph, but WriteShop compensates for this by providing TONS of examples of well-written student paragraphs.
This is great for both the student to see examples AND as a mom (so you know what level of writing is appropriate to expect at this age).
Additionally, the resources in the appendix of the WriteShop appendix blew me away -- TONS of additional writing topics and creative writing ideas. This alone is a fantastic writing resource, and helps provide additional ideas for creative writing beyond the non-fiction writing that is the focus of WriteShop.
There are a few things I don’t love about the curriculum.
The formatting of the pages could be difficult to read -- especially for kids who have dyslexia or other reading issues. I think this is an excellent curriculum to consider for kids who struggle with organizing their ideas, so this is unfortunate. (Be sure to see my video if you want to see the pages for yourself.)
Also, while the amount of help provided to the teacher/mom is extensive, the tone is insistent that you not skip anything and follow the instructions very carefully. While I can see why there are some moms who probably would appreciate that level of hand-holding, I found the way it was written felt restrictive. (I’m a big fan of modifying based on what’s happening in your home and with your kids!)
Structure and Style focuses on teaching how to write by giving the student well-written paragraphs, teaching them to deconstruct the paragraph (using keywords), and then asking them to rewrite the paragraph in their own words using only the keyword outline.
(Note: Structure and Style is the newly revised version of Teaching Writing: Structure and Style, that has been the flagship curriculum for the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) since the 1990s. The bulk of my experience has been with their previous version, so some of this review is based on sample pages. The new version will be available May 2020.)
I like this because your kid sees great writing from the very beginning. However, this format of writing can get tedious at times and doesn’t encourage a student to write from their own ideas.
Each lesson is structured as follows:
Of course, the parent is involved in reviewing and revising, but it isn’t scripted in the teacher edition.
(IEW has a completely separate program teaching parents how to teach their programs that they consistently reference if you want more help reviewing your child’s work.)
Each lesson is designed to take a week. Additional “fix-it” (for grammar and mechanics practice) and literature activities can be included to flesh out the program, but must be purchased separately. There are some writing skill activities included in each lesson, but not as many or as thorough as in WriteShop.
I love that Structure and Style also starts by having students work with paragraphs and then slowly graduates them to writing essays and other non-fiction. And I’m impressed by the variety of topics that they encourage students to write about.
I also love that there are several creative writing assignments -- and lessons on story structure -- sprinkled throughout the curriculum. These are more open-ended and really let the student flex a different kind of writing muscle. My students and kids enjoy these breaks from the “harder” writing assignments.
I’m a big fan of how Structure and Style does their writing checklists that the student uses in each lesson. They understand that a checklist can feel overwhelming, so they only include a few things at the beginning. The checklist grows as the new concepts are introduced. In essence, the student “grows” with the checklist.
While IEW’s Fix-its are not included in the basic Structure and Style curriculum, they are available and can be aligned with the lesson plans. I LOVE this style of learning grammar and writing mechanics, and I have incorporated these into every class I teach.
Finally, I HAVE to talk about the format of the teacher edition. IEW is slowly reformatting all their curriculum to match more traditional publishers, where the teacher edition is “wrapped around” the student edition. (Be sure to watch my video to see what this looks like.) I’m so excited that Structure and Style will now have this format!
This makes it sooooo easy to see how the teacher edition and student edition relate. No more flipping back and forth, trying to reference between the two. This is HUGE deal for me, and if it’s close between two curriculums, this will often tip the scales for me.
Unfortunately, the student edition formatting isn’t much friendlier than WriteShop’s. And the font they’ve chosen to use is particularly difficult for dyslexics to read.
Here are the main features of WriteShop and Structure and Style compared:
Structure & Style (IEW) | |
|---|---|
Writing process -- brainstorm, “sloppy copy,” 2 revisions | Writing process -- deconstruct paragraph with keyword outline, rewrite in own words, 1 revision |
Variety of brainstorming styles encouraged - including outlining and mindmapping | Uses similar writing process through entire curriculum – deconstruct or outline, then write |
Lots of student examples of written paragraphs in each lesson | Student samples only in the appendix |
Brainstorm and rough draft | Deconstruct pre-written paragraph with keyword outline |
Skill builders (3 for each lesson) reinforce writing skill focused on in that lesson | Some skill building – but focus is mostly on writing paragraphs |
Thorough and complete checklist from the beginning for each lesson (can be overwhelming) | Checklist only includes skills taught so far and grows as more skills are learned |
Uses standard vocabulary to describe conventions and style | Uses IEW proprietary vocabulary to describe different writing elements |
Incorporates copywork/dictation for grammar/punctuation help – but requires copywork book (separate) | Incorporates “Fix-it” grammar into lesson plan – BUT requires purchase of upgrade bundle |
Video lessons – powerpoint/pictures w/person talking – focused and specific | Video lessons – live teaching classroom environment |
Problem/solution section in teacher edition very helpful if you’re teaching and want to know what to look for | Gives some specific examples in teacher edition on how to structure teaching – but not a lot of help looking for student issues |
Teacher edition separate and sometimes difficult to reference with the student edition | Teacher wrap-around edition makes it easy to connect information to student edition |
So which writing curriculum is best for your family? As with everything, it depends.
WriteShop is a great choice if you want to focus on student brainstorming and seeing student samples, lots of writing skill practice, and writing two revisions for each assignment. There is also fabulous parent support built into each lesson.
Structure and Style is a great choice if you want students to work with well-written paragraphs and then reconstruct them in their own words, learning how to structure as they practice. Also, if you want creative writing built into your lesson plan and easy referencing between student and teacher editions.
It happens even to the best homeschool mom …
You’ve got your homeschool year planned out. It’s full of fun activities and awesome field trips.
You’ve got the perfect curriculum (if there is such a thing!) and the perfect school room.
And then things start to fall apart.
The kids don’t want to do that amazing activity. They fight you to do math or they groan when you pull out the science book.
And you start to think “WHY am I doing this?!?” And you’re ready to quit!
How do I know? … Because I’ve been there over and over and over again.
After 15+ years, I’ve wanted to quit homeschooling more times than I can count.
I’ve had sleepless nights wondering if I was failing my kids.
I’ve worried that we weren’t doing enough … or that I was pushing too hard (or not hard enough!)
But I found ways to push through … which is why after 15+ years, I’m STILL homeschooling.
How did I do it? That’s what I’m talking about today.
So if you’re struggling with your homeschool. If you want to quit but KNOW you have to keep going … this video is for you. ❤️
In the video I talk about creating a homeschool vision. If that’s something you need help with, check out my FREE lesson on how to create a homeschool vision!
Register below to watch my FREE CLASS
Confident Homeschool Secrets
7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)
Transcript
Hello,
My name is ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about what do you do if you don't want to homeschool anymore, but you know you have to keep going. Or you know, you should be homeschooling but you really, really, really don't want to homeschool anymore. What do you do? Okay, so this happens to all of us.
I've been homeschooling for over 15 years. I've got four kids. You know, we started when they were really little. Now they're all teenagers and beyond. And there have been lots of times where I think, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to keep going. But I knew deep down in my heart that I was supposed to keep going. So you know, what do you do?
There were lots of reasons why I got there. You know, maybe it's sometimes it was because my kids were driving me crazy. They didn't want to work or they were fighting all the time. Things like that. And that was really hard. Sometimes it was because I was in a bad place. I was really struggling over the course of our homeschool life. I've had lots of experiences where I personally was falling apart and I'm trying to hold together this whole homeschool thing and my house thing while this part of me over here is not working. And that was really hard.
Another reason that I found some times that I would be really struggling is I would have this dream, this picture in my head of what homeschool should look like and our reality. It was not matching the dream, and that disconnect between the two would be so difficult. I just want to throw in the towel.
So how did I do it? How did I keep going all of these years? Because 15 plus years is a long time. Well, let's talk about that. You know, what do you do? I'm going to go through six different things and I'm sure there's more. But I think all of these done, one or more of these, can help you kind of, you know, get a little bit of the fire back, a little bit of the desire back. Because I, you know, if you're supposed to still be homeschooling, we want to make it so it's not quite as hard as drudgery, as something you're dreading. Okay.
So the first thing, I talk about this all the time, is you go back to the vision, you go back to why you started in the first place and it's really important that you have this written down so you can go back and look at it just in these times. Because if you go back and you look at your vision, you'll remember why you did it in the first place. And I can't tell you how many times I referenced my vision. My vision for tailoring an education, my vision for helping my kids who had special needs, all of these different reasons. I think, okay, I can do this because it's that important to me. And if you don't have a vision, you need to write one.
I have a free lesson that you can access immediately that will help you work through the steps to write your homeschool vision. I'll leave a link down below or up above, you know, wherever you're watching this video so you can go do that. That's the first thing I recommend. Go back to the vision.
The second thing I recommend you do is assess what is not working. Are there underlying problems that need to be addressed? Is it a long term thing? Is it a short term thing? Have you just been through a major life change, a new baby, a move, something like that that's affecting how you feel about the homeschool or just how you're feeling about life in general. And homeschool seems like the thing to quick, is it, is it a long-term issue that maybe needs to be addressed?
Is it a discipline thing and you're having trouble parenting, which just is exacerbated when you're homeschooling? Is it because you have a child who is really struggling in areas that have nothing to do with academics? Maybe they have depression, maybe that they have reading or other learning issues. You know, something that you recognize as kind of a long-term journey and you need to give time to that. But because they're struggling in that way or your struggling, the overall homeschool is suffering. So is there something that needs to be addressed and if so, how can you address it?
You know, once you become really intentional about recognizing what the problem is, then you begin to say, okay, what is it I need to do to be able to fix or address or manage this issue? So that's the second thing I recommend you do. Assess what is it that's actually working and not working.
The third thing I recommend you do is, you know, review your schedule and figure out are you trying to do too much? Because when you have a really packed schedule, you feel overwhelmed and you can start dreading anything related to homeschooling because everything feels too hard. And I've made another video that's all about the benefits of simplifying your homeschool schedule and some ways to go about doing that. I will leave a link down below this video so you can check that out. If that is something that you need to maybe do is just go through your schedule and figure out is there a way to simplify it.
The next thing is asking yourself is there a way to change things up? You know, sometimes the reason we are so dreading our homeschool and we want to quit is because we've done the same thing over and over and over and we're just bored and boredom is a killer. Like it makes it so you don't want to do anything. So maybe it's time to change it up.
Even if what you were doing is something you were super committed to and it was working and it might just be time to put that aside for a while. And just go on field trips for a little bit or just watch documentaries for a while or just snuggle and do, I don't know, an entire review of all the Disney Canon. You know, whatever it is that would kind of just recharge you and your kids and kind of get you in a place where you think, yeah, we can go back and try some of those other things. Sometimes taking a break and changing it is really awesome.
Another way you can consider changing it is, maybe instead of just completely taking a break, you decide that instead of doing this kind of math, you're going to take a break and you're gonna switch it up and you're going to play math games or you are going to do math activities. And just the switch of this focus on how you're doing the subject can also make a huge, huge difference.
The last thing I recommend is, no, two more things. One is take an actual break and I kind of alluded to that just a minute ago. You know the reason we homeschool is because we can take breaks, adjust schedules, revise and change up things. So it may be that you need your fall break, significantly like, end of November all the way through to the end of the year. It may be that you need your spring break in February where you're and you might then take a second spring break in April. You might need that.
You might need to say, you know what, we're just going to not homeschool on Fridays for the near future. We're just going to have a day to play. You know, taking a real break where you have a mental downtime, you get to work on some of those other projects can make a big difference and then you can come back and be excited to start up again.
Now the final thing I recommend is take a look at your own self care. And I know self care is super like popular buzzy word. Everybody's talking about how you need to do self care. And almost to the point where I'm, I personally am kind of annoyed about hearing about it. But I am going to bring it up because the reason it has become so trendy is because it's based in fact.
If you aren't taking time for you, if you aren't making time for a little bit of recharge time, you will burnout. And burnout is a huge problem in the homeschool world. Because on top of all the normal mom and home and home running things you have to do, you also have homeschool. And many of you are also working part time or you're juggling a new baby or all of those. You have to carve out just a little bit of time for you.
Now what you do during that time, totally up to you. For some people it's doing some kind of crafting. For some people it's going to a store by yourself. For some people it's sitting down and reading. For some people it's just going into a quiet, dark closet and closing the door and just turning off your mind for a couple minutes while you listen to some quiet music.
You get to decide what your special time is, but if you aren't making that special time, then ultimately your brain and your body will start to shut down. And that's one of the reasons you're feeling the way you do is because you just are feeling like you just never get a break. So if you don't have time for that, if you legitimately look around and you say, I don't know how I would make time for that. Then it is time to assess what can I cut out? What can I simplify? What can I let go of, change my expectations, to just give myself a little bit of time for that self care.
All of these things, you know, one or more of these things will help you get a little bit of the desire back, a little bit of the fire so that you go from thinking, "I do not want to homeschool." To "You know what? I like this. This is why I'm doing this. This is a good thing. I'm happy to be here. Let's go."
I'm ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
Would you like to know one of the easiest ways to become a better homeschool mom?
AND turn off the homeschool mom guilt and fear?
It doesn’t have anything to do with homeschool field trips or activities.
It doesn’t have anything to do with your kids or your schoolroom or how organized you are.
Instead, it has EVERYTHING to do with what YOU are doing when you look around.
Are you comparing to others … and then beating yourself up for how your homeschool is failing?
Do you see the perfect pictures of happy kids doing their schoolwork and then remember how your kids fought you to even pick up a pencil?
Do you read about major art projects with multi-day hands-on help and wish you had done more than just put on a Netflix documentary?
Mama - you can’t DO that to yourself!
Homeschooling is about you and your family -- NOT what everyone else is doing
And the fastest way to homeschool burnout or to feel like you want to quit homeschooling is to compare your worst to another mom’s best!
So today I’m talking about HOW to stop comparing … and instead how to start enjoying your homeschool.
In the video, I explain the importance of having a homeschool vision. If you need help, be sure to check out my FREE lesson on creating your homeschool vision.
Register below to watch my FREE CLASS
Confident Homeschool Secrets
7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)
Transcript
Hello.
My name is ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool. Today I want to talk about one way to help you have a successful homeschool.
I want to talk about not comparing. I want to talk about this thing that we do. Every homeschool mom does it, and when comparing happens, we feel fear. We feel concern, worry, even overwhelm. It is not doing your homeschool any good. So we are gonna talk about why you need to stop.
You see, it is so easy to compare in the homeschool world. You can look around on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and you see all the things that other homeschool moms are doing. You see the activities they're doing. You see the books that they're reading. You see the beautiful, wonderful, exciting, homeschool moments because those are the ones that we take pictures of and we post.
We don't post things that aren't working. We mostly post the things that do. That's why we celebrate. On top of that, you're going to park days, you're going to your homeschool co-op, you're going to your homeschool whatever. You're interacting with other homeschool moms and they're talking about what their kids are doing. They're talking about the 14 year old kid who is graduating from high school and is starting to work on their associates degree. They're talking about their four year old that just started to read Shakespeare or Harry Potter or whatever, and it is so easy to compare their best to your worst.
You're thinking, Oh my goodness, your kid is graduating from high school and my teenager, I can't even get them out of bed and I'm covered in Cheerios because I've got a baby on my hip and we're trying to teach this kid to read that’s struggling to read. And you know, all we did today that was noteworthy at all is maybe my kid drew some stick figures.
That's how it happens, right? You're hearing these cool things and that's what's going through your head. I'm failing, I'm failing and failing because we're having this experience and everyone else is having this experience and that comparison, that back and forth that is what's killing your homeschool. And it's not what you have to do. You don't have to sit there and do this comparison because the reason you chose to homeschool is because you wanted to create a homeschool for your kids.
You're not homeschooling all those other kids. You're homeschooling your kid and you don't know the whole story. You know your whole story. You know the good, the bad, the ugly, you know the warts that show up all the time. But you don't know the story. You don't know if that 14 year old who's graduating and is going on is dying inside because they're struggling with anxiety or depression or they feel like they have this perfectionist need to excel.
You don't know that. You don't know that that four year old who maybe is just on a rockstar trajectory with their reading is struggling to just learn how to count. Or struggling, how to, you know, write or struggling with anger and they're constantly getting in trouble. You know, the mom's not talking about those things. She's just talking about what her kids are doing well. One, because she doesn't want to air her dirty laundry. And also because we do want to celebrate our successes and not just all of the things that are going badly.
And so you just don't know the whole story. And the reality is it doesn't matter. We can celebrate successes, but in the end you are in charge of your homeschool. You are in charge of your kids, which means that you are going to create an experience for them.
And the number one way you avoid comparing and turn that off in, in a way that is helpful is you make sure that you've got a vision for your homeschool that you reference regularly and that everything else that you're creating is structured around that vision. And I talk about this a lot because it is so important.
If you have not yet written a vision for your homeschool, I have a free lesson you can, access it immediately and it walks you through. It's, it doesn't take very long and it walks you through how to create a vision for your homeschool that works for you and your kids. And I'm going to put a link down below, up, above wherever you're watching this video. So that you can go in and create a vision and then you're going to have a homeschool that works for you. It's going to take you on your homeschools journey to the destination you want for your unique child. Stop the comparing and create a space where your kids can thrive without worrying about what everyone else is doing.
Now I'm going to put in a caveat. It is helpful to know what else other people are doing because sometimes you can recognize that there's something going wrong that you need to fix. Or you'll learn about a new resource or a new way of doing something that can be super helpful or it can also just be great to know, yeah, you know what? We're all in this together. So it's not that you want to shut yourself out and not be listening to what anybody else is doing. You're just looking at it from a fact finding and celebrating standpoint rather than a look, we're failing, standpoint.
And your vision is how you start that and it's recognizing that you are creating a homeschool for your kids and your family and not anybody else's. And if you can do that, the success in your homeschool will go way, way up. I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
It happens to the best of us homeschool moms …
We start out with the best of intentions. Give a great education. Cover all the bases. Make sure they are learning the important stuff. Make sure they are having fun and falling in love with learning.
But before we know it, we are doing too much. We’re trying to cram everything in … every single day. We don’t get through everything. The kids are drowning.
Homeschooling feels overwhelming and hard and stressful.
And then we start to feel homeschool mom guilt … they aren’t learning everything they need to know!
And we start to feel homeschool mom fear … “They’re falling behind! They won’t get into college!”
And the biggest one of all … “I’m FAILING as a homeschool mom!!”
How do I know this?? Because I’ve done and thought each of those thoughts.
Every. Single. One.
However, one of the biggest reasons I’m still homeschooling is because over the years, I figured out how to simplify my homeschool.
My homeschool planning got simpler and simpler.
What we did each day got less complicated and faster to put together.
I paired our homeschool schedule waaaaaay back.
And my homeschool stress went down. And the homeschool success went way up!
Today I want to share five benefits of simplifying your homeschool that I’ve seen in my own home AND in the homes of other homeschoolers.
In the video, I explain the importance of having a homeschool vision. If you need help, be sure to check out my FREE lesson on creating your homeschool vision.
Transcript
Hello, my name is ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about five benefits of simplifying your homeschool schedule. Oh my goodness.
It is so easy for your homeschool schedule to get more and more complicated. It's easy because there are so many options out there for homeschooling. And we as homeschool moms we'll research this and we'll research this and we'll research this. And then we start buying all of these different curriculum or we'd start cobbling together all these cool things that we're seeing on Pinterest, and other people talk about at our co-op and we pull it all together.
And before you know it, you have a really complicated homeschool schedule and it is so easy to do this. Why? Why do we do this? Why do we pull from so many different places? Why do we try to cram so many different things into our schedule?
Well, it's usually because we're afraid that we're going to leave something out. We're going to miss some important point that our kids need to have. We're going to get our kids into their adult life and they won't know something that they need to know. And so the idea is, well, if we just do as much as possible, we'll somehow cover all the bases and everything will be taken care of. And the reality is that is not only impossible to actually accomplish, it's also detrimental to your entire homeschool. So today I want to talk about the benefits of not doing that.
What are the benefits to keeping your homeschool simple because less is more, less allows you to accomplish a lot more than more does. And that's counter intuitive, but it's true. So how do you actually do this? Like we're going to talk about the benefits and we're going to talk about all this, but simplifying your schedule. Well, before I get into the benefits, I do want to talk about the fact that this is something you have to be considering and thinking about on an ongoing basis.
I know that about every four months I have to sit down and really think through everything that we're doing and think, should we be doing this? And every time I do that, I usually do it you know, in the fall as we're getting started as I'm planning the homeschool year. I always do it around the holidays as we move into the second half of the school year. And then I'm always looking at our summer and thinking about what does our school life, homeschool life, just life need to look like in the summer. I'm usually doing it in about four month chunks and because I'm doing it every so often, one of the things I have to do is go back and look at the vision for my homeschool.
I have to make sure that what I want for my homeschool is what we're actually accomplishing. And if that's something you haven't done yet, if you have not yet written your homeschool vision, you need to, and I have a free lesson that you can go ahead and access that will walk you through step by step how to create a homeschool vision. I'm going to leave a link for that down below or up below, up above, you know, wherever you're watching this video so that you can go get your homeschool vision written. Because as I go through all the reasons why you want to do this, if you don't know how to do it, then it's kind of not going to help you out a whole lot.
So let's talk about this. What are the five benefits of simplifying your homeschool schedule? Well, the first one is you're going to be less overwhelmed when you don't have so much to do and so much to think about. And so many things that are falling behind. You actually feel less overwhelmed. When you feel less overwhelmed, you have more fun in your homeschool, you're more excited to homeschool. You show up in just a better way, which means your kids are going to have more fun. And that is actually the second benefit.
When you simplify your homeschool schedule, your kids will also be less stressed, less assignments, less to do's, less just feeling that mom is frustrated because not everything is getting done. And depending on the kid, you're either getting pushed back or you're getting a kid who's trying to please you. And either way it creates stress.
So the second benefit is your kids are less stressed, which means they're having more fun, which means they're enjoying homeschooling, they're looking forward to it. And when both of you are having a good time and looking forward to homeschool, everything gets better.
Okay, so what's the third one? What's the third benefit? You're more likely to do what you actually scheduled, right? If you have 10 things scheduled and you only get to three of them, then not only are you stressed, but you're only getting to three of them, which means you're putting all this effort, mentally at least, into all 10 things, but you're only getting to three. But if you only schedule three things because you recognize that you're trying to simplify and you're just going to dig down deep and do just what really matters, you're going to go in depth. You'll get those three things done because that's what actually fits into your schedule, not what you want to have fit into your schedule.
The fourth benefit. The fourth benefit is it is less expensive when you simplify your schedule. Now I know you can homeschool for free. I know there's lots of resources out there and that's almost one of the reasons our homeschools get so complicated is because there are so many free things we can download. But we are also often spending a lot of money on curriculum. Curriculum that you start and you don't finish because you have too much scheduled, so if you simplify and purchase less, you will save money. If you simplify, you will buy fewer supplies for science experiments or activities or art activities that you never get to. You'll only buy what you actually need and you'll own and then you will actually use what you purchase.
The fifth benefit, and I think this is one of the best ones after lowering your stress level and your kid's stress level, is that you will actually go deep instead of broad. Instead of skimming the surface of all the different things that you're trying to cover in a frantic way, you'll get to go deep and really dig in to the topics, both that your kids are interested in and the ones that you feel are really important. And in the end, there is more value in really grasping onto some things than skimming over the surface and ultimately forgetting a lot of things.
So those are five benefits that I have personally found come from simplifying your homeschool schedule. Huge, huge changes will happen in your homeschool as you find a way to do less to accomplish more. I'm ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool, I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
Struggling spellers -- it’s a real thing in my homeschool.
Spelling always came pretty easily to me. So I was a little surprised as my kids got older and three out of the four needed help with spelling … A LOT of help.
At first, I figured it was just a matter of working on memorization. But that didn’t work. They would just forget.
Then I thought if we just played lots of spelling games that would help. And spelling games DID make spelling more fun -- but it didn’t necessarily make them better spellers.
Because it turns out that three of my four kids have dyslexia -- some more than others -- which meant that they were naturally going to be poor spellers. It’s just the way their brains are wired.
Fortunately, over the years we’ve done several things to help them … and they are getting better at spelling!
(If you think YOUR child might have dyslexia or really struggles with spelling, I highly recommend you check out this book about dyslexia. It’s the first book I recommend to anyone!)
Recently, I was contacted by a mom who has created a great way to help visual spellers and others struggling with spelling. She offered to let me see what she had created, and of course I was intrigued!
I love what she’s put together -- so I want to share it with you.
These See-to-Spell cards focus on teaching spelling for visual learners and story-based learners, both of which I have found to be VERY effective with my kids.
(Sadly, my kids are all a little old to use these cards now, but I would have LOVED to have them when they were younger!)
CLICK HERE to check it out for your homeschool.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
If you want to check out awesome homeschool resources for other subjects, check out my review page for games and books and toys for every homeschool subject.
Register below to watch my FREE CLASS
Confident Homeschool Secrets
7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)
Hello.
My name's ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool. Today I want to talk about how you can help your struggling speller and specifically I have a really amazing resource that I want to share with you that I think could make the difference if you have a kid who's struggling to spell. Now, first of all, there are lots of reasons why kids might struggle to spell. But one is a big one, is that your kid may have some form of dyslexia. Now, there's nothing wrong with that.
There are so many successful dyslexics and dyslexia tends to run really strongly in the homeschool community because often the public school system is not designed to cater to dyslexic kids. And so there's a reason you probably brought your kid home and this might be one of the reasons for that reason. I'm going to say that dyslexia shows up in lots of different ways and you might have seen it and maybe even if your kid doesn't show all of these symptoms, it may still be a reason why they're struggling.
So you may have noticed that your kid has trouble reading or that they're flipping letters. You may have troubled that they may not have any trouble reading, but you may see that they are struggling to spell. And you may see that they are even, that your kid might be able to tell you ideas but has a really hard time putting them down on paper either because they struggle spelling or they just struggle capturing their ideas and putting them into words. So all of these things can show up in spelling is a big one. Spelling can keep kids from reading, it can keep kids from writing and it certainly can keep kids from spelling. So let's talk a little bit about how to help that.
Before I do though just want you to know I have a favorite resource that goes along with dyslexia. It's one of the very first things I recommend if you are definitely thinking your kid might be dyslexic. So I'll put a link down below this video if you want to go check that out. And last week I did talk about if your kid is struggling reading, particularly if they're older, and I'll also put a link down to that video down below, but today I want to talk about a resource that was shared with me that can help your child with spelling.
It's called See to Spell cards and they look like this. They're kind of fun because what is going on here is these cards are designed specifically for kids who are having trouble learning spelling either phonetically, you know where you teach the rules or if you just learn by seeing the word over and over and over again and practicing it, which are two very traditional ways of teaching spelling.
These cards are a different alternative way for kids who think just a little bit differently. Now spelling is hard for dyslexics because their brain is wired differently or any kid who has trouble with spelling the traditional way. It's because the brain doesn't think of words the way a brain that learns spelling in a traditional way does and that brain often is significantly more visual and more story oriented. It just has to do with how all the neurons are connected. And so this particular resource that I am sharing today is really amazing because it leverages the story-based and the visual spaced learning that often these non-traditional learners do.
So let me tell you how this works. So the cards, you get 43 cards in each set. The card on one side has the word, these are sight words. And these are often the hardest to learn how to spell. And on the front is both the word and then a picture that's drawn into the word. And then on the back, which is the side that the parent is probably going to look at, there is a story that goes along with the words. So what you're going to do is you're going to work with your kids. And you're going to say, okay, here's the word "some". And you're going to talk about how you have a guy with a sombrero, you're gonna make a big deal about how he has maracas. It's really good to use some energy and some visuals there. And then you'll notice over here there is a taco. And the story that goes along with this particular card is he wants to have some tacos and you're going to stress that word. Some tacos, you're gonna make a big deal about how this word is like this.
Here's another one "his" his snake likes to eat ice cream. We have the snake, we have the ice cream, we have the like to eat it. And here is a third example. "Done", done is a hard word to learn how to spell. The mouse is happy, the pie is done. And so we have the mouse, we have the pie and how the mouse is eating the pie. So that all goes together. So you've got the visual cue, you've got the story, and you're going to work with your kid, looking at these.
Now by the time I found this resource, my kids were old enough that it no longer, I didn't need this particular resource to help them to spell. But the reason I'm so excited about this is this is a very similar resource to how I taught my daughter, who is dyslexic, to learn her multiplication tables. Another really hard memory skill for kids. And I'm going to leave a link to that. It was story-based, it was visual based, and it radically shifted her ability to learn those multiplication tables. And she still uses that information today, which is why I feel confident that this could be a deal changer for someone who's trying to also teach their kids how to spell.
So I really wish I'd had this with her, and I'm really excited to share it with you today. So if you have a kid who's struggling to spell, I strongly recommend you check this out. I'm going to leave a link down below or up above, or where it is, wherever it is that you're seeing this video. I'm ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
Is your kid struggling to learn how to read? Do you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night thinking, “My kid can’t read … what am I going to do???”
If so, I totally get it! Of my four children, three of them took forever to learn to read.
My daughters were both over eight before they could read. And my youngest son was ELEVEN before he started reading independently.
And during those years, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to help a child with reading difficulties. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything … and that I was doing everything that I could.
Turns out there are several things you can do to help a struggling reader … and there’s also a part that requires you to just “wait and see.”
Finding the balance between the two of those can be tricky. So today I’m sharing five tips I recommend if your child can’t read or you’re trying to teach reading to a struggling reader.
And in this video, I share some of my favorite resources that I found along the way.
Check out this post to learn more about what I recommend for dyslexia.
Check out this review of my FAVORITE chapter book series for teaching kids to read.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Register below to watch my FREE CLASS
Confident Homeschool Secrets
7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)
Transcript
Hello, my name is ToriAnn Perky and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about what should you do if your 11 year old is still not reading. And actually the content we're going to talk about today applies to your kid no matter what age they are. If you think they should be reading and they're not. Now this as a homeschooler can be a really kind of scary topic.
You get all excited, you're teaching your kid to read and you're not making progress and then you're looking all around and everyone around you, their kids are learning to read and suddenly they're reading these big books and suddenly they're, they're reading, you know, full length novels and series and your kid is still stuck on sounding out cat. You're thinking, what am I doing wrong? What is this? What's wrong with my kid?
You know, what do you do? Well, let me just give you a little bit of background on why I feel like I have a lot to offer here. And then we'll talk about exactly what it is that I recommend. So first of all, what you need to know is that three of my four kids, I've been homeschooling for over 15 years. I have four kids. Three of my four kids were really late readers. And by really late readers, I mean that I had one that learned to read fluently on her own at eight another was eight and a half and my youngest son was over 11. Eleven!
I can't even begin to tell you how scary that can be. I thought, what is wrong with this kid? But fortunately he was my last kid. And so by then I had some experience and I put in place the things that I'm going to talk about today and it helped a ton.
Now one of the things to keep in mind about reading is that it's a really interesting expectation that we all have in our culture. Not only should kids be able to read, but that they should be able to read well. And as a homeschooler you may actually feel really good about delaying teaching to read, which is totally fine. So a lot of homeschoolers and a lot of philosophy out there that actually shows that kids benefit from waiting until they're a little bit older to read unless they're asking for it. And that is absolutely an acceptable way to look at that.
But even someone who had kind of bought into that, and that was, that was where I was coming from. When my kids would start to get to eight, I would start to get nervous. And certainly with my son, by the time he was nine and 10 I was feeling that nerves. And the reason is that our culture expects that kids will be able to read at a certain time. And even though my kids don't go to public school, he was going to church classes where he was being asked to read. He was going to family functions where the fact that he couldn't read started to come up. And even though I would explain that we were working with him and that he was figuring it out and we were doing different things, it was really hard for him because as he was asked to read, he'd be embarrassed and he would have to figure out ways to hide the fact that he couldn't read or he'd have to admit that he couldn't read. And so socially it started to become a problem and it was hard for him and therefore it was hard for me and I was trying to help him through all of this.
So no matter where your kid is and how old they are, I want to acknowledge that if your kid is significantly older and still struggling with reading, this is not easy. And because they start to feel bad about themselves, potentially it starts to affect how they feel and see themselves as a scholar, as a reader, as someone who can do well in school and well with academic subjects. This is a really important thing to address. So let's go through this. I actually have five different things that I recommend you do. If you have a late reader, someone who isn't reading yet, and I found that we actually did all of these things with more than one of my children.
So if your child is significantly older and we're saying eight, nine, 10, and they're still really struggling with reading, the first thing I recommend is go get their eyes checked. It turns out that there are often vision issues related to reading that have nothing to do with being able to see far, you know, the blurry idea of "I can't see without my glasses." There's a lot of vision issues that can affect reading.
And with my son, it turned out that was one of the issues. He had trouble focusing with his eyes. The muscles were weak and because the muscles were weak, when he looked at the page, it was blurry. So we got his eyes tested. We went to a specific doctor that had a more specific training on how to help with this kind of a reading issue. And I know where they are in my area, but depending on where you are living, I recommend you ask in your homeschool community, maybe online about specific eye doctors that might be able to help with vision issues that relate to reading and it made a big difference. We got him some glasses, he did some exercises and that definitely accelerated his ability to learn. I saw a huge improvement.
The second thing I recommend is definitely look into dyslexia. Dyslexia may actually have been one of the first things you start to think about when it comes to your kid not being able to read. And it turns out that three of my four kids, all of the children that had a hard time learning how to read turns out that dyslexia was part of the picture. Doesn't mean they can't learn how to read, but it does mean that you're going to need to approach it in a different way. You're going to need to be more patient and you may need to take advantage of other resources that are specifically geared towards learning how to read.
Now I actually have one of my favorite, favorite, favorite books and a bunch of other resources all related to dyslexia. I made another video about this. I'm going to put the link down below so you can check that out if you are interested in learning more about dyslexia resources that can help with your homeschool. So that's the second thing I recommend is definitely learn some more about that and how you can potentially incorporate that into your homeschool.
The third thing that I recommend is continue to work together but don't stress about it. So by continuing to work together, what I mean is you're going to be sitting and you're going to teach your kid to read. You're going to be going slowly and you're going to approach it differently. For us. What I found worked is that we would sit one on one, we would read together, we would go and that was part of our special time together and it meant that we delayed some of the other academic things that I might've had him do in order to focus more on reading and that was true for all my kids, but particularly my child who was 11 before he really learned how to read.
One of the things I really, really like to do is start them into chapter books. I have a specific chapter book series that I love. I will also leave a link down to my review of that series. But what we would do is I would start with, I would read a paragraph and he would read a paragraph and then it got to the point where when I would read a page and he would read a page because the reading was so taxing on his mind and his eyes that we needed to slow down the pace that he was required to put effort into the reading, but speed up the pace at which he was getting the story.
Because there comes a point where the child no longer wants to read those really, really early readers. So we would start to read the harder books, but we would do it in a way that still allowed him to be supported as he was learning how to read himself. So check out that link. I have a specific series, a chapter series book that I love, love, love. If you are just at that beginning stage and it works particularly well with older kids because it's funny and even adults enjoy it, but it still is at a reading level that works for these early kids.
The fourth thing I recommend if you are trying to help an older kid learn how to read is be patient and trust that they are going to figure it out. There are so many elements to reading that require brain development, that require patience, they've required dedication, and depending on what's going on with your kid, it may be a really slow long process. So you want to be consistent, but you want to keep your personal mindset in a place where you're going to feel hopeful, where you're going to believe that it can happen because it will happen.
I believe that if you put all the right pieces in place, every child, just about every, child can learn to read and if your child is one who isn't going to learn to read, you're already aware of that because there are such severe other special needs that you're dealing with and so trust the process. Trust that if you're getting the right things in place, it's going to work out.
The last thing I want to recommend, and this is an interesting one, is that you may have to adjust your expectations. You may actually have to step back and embrace the idea that your kid may never be a lover of reading. And the reason I put this here is because I love to read. I actually learned how to read when I was really, really little, like age three, and I read constantly as a kid in elementary school and then into junior high, high school.
And now as an adult I read all the time the idea that I could have a kid who doesn't want to read or one doesn't want to read a lot. Part of, a little part of me kind of dies inside because it's such a huge part of who I am. But the truth is that I have unique kids with unique gifts and unique skills and unique challenges. And some of my kids love to read and some love to do other things and that doesn't make them any worse. And it certainly doesn't mean that they can't get a good education, that they aren't going to be successful adults and they can't be happy and fulfilled and well educated. It simply means that the route they're going to take to get there is going to be different. So I've had to adjust how we talk about learning in our home.
I've had to adjust the resources that I put in front of my children and provide for them. I've had to adjust my expectations of how they're going to acquire knowledge. And as I've done that, I've been able to calm down. They're able to still move forward and our entire homeschool experience has been magnified and de-stressed because I've adjusted my expectations. So that's my fifth recommendation is you may have to change how you see learning in your home.
If you have a kid who really struggles to read, doesn't mean they can't learn to read, but they never, they may never be a, you know, just a vacuum cleaner when it comes to reading. So that is my recommendation. That is what I recommend those steps. If you have a kid who is struggling with reading, definitely take advantage of all those different ideas and I know that you're going to figure out the best avenue to help your child accomplish this really important and basic skill when it comes to your homeschool. My name is ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
It’s January -- which means it’s time for the homeschool Mid-Year Reboot.
What IS the homeschool Mid-Year Reboot, you ask?
It’s when you come back after the holidays and realize you have another four or five months before summer.And you might be feeling a little bit of homeschool burnout. OR you might be super excited to dive back in.
Regardless, it’s the PERFECT time to sit down and do a review (and possibly a reset) of your homeschool.
During your homeschool mid-year review, you may consider radically changing your curriculum or your schedule. Or you may just need to make a few updates to get things working even better.
In today’s video, I’m going to cover WHY you want to do a mid-year review and what kind of changes you might consider making.
[NOTE: In the video, I talk about reviewing your homeschool vision. CLICK HERE to access your FREE lesson on how to create a homeschool vision]
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Register below to watch my FREE CLASS
Confident Homeschool Secrets
7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)
Transcript
So here's the deal. No matter how well you planned at the beginning of the year, no matter how much work and effort you put into it, your kids have changed. Your life has changed. Things are different than they were in September or August or whenever you started. And so there's a good chance that you need to change things up because we're always experimenting in homeschooling. We're always figuring out what's gonna work and so it's, you know, it's time to do this.
I like to actually think of my year, my homeschool year, in three, four month chunks. I know that's not how everybody thinks of the school year, but I like to think of the months before December, like from September until the end of December and then another chunk that happens from January to about April and then our third chunk is the summer, which is may through August. That's kind of how I like to think about it and what's nice about that is a four month chunk is enough that you kind of know if something's working but isn't so long that you don't have time to switch things up and try something new.
Now, before you get into doing all of the things I'm going to talk about in this video, please keep in mind we are just ending the holidays. That means that you probably just did Thanksgiving, you did Christmas and those are crazy times for homeschooling. There's breaks, there's travel, there's vacation, and it's really easy to look at those, that little chunk of time and think that you're completely failing your homeschool because you didn't do anything because maybe you were so busy traveling or it's just you lost steam or things weren't working. So remember that you have to look beyond the holidays and look farther back to kind of get a sense of whether things were working before the holiday started. And then you'll know how you want to move forward.
Now the very first thing I recommend you do to do your midyear review is go review your homeschool vision. I talk about this all the time. You have to have a vision. You have to know where you're going with your homeschool and what you need to do in order to move forward. And if you don't have that vision it is really hard to know whether or not you're moving forward in the right way. So if you've already created your vision, awesome, go take a look at it. If you haven't, I want to help you out. I actually have a free lesson that you can listen to that will walk you through step by step how to create a homeschool vision. There's a link going to be below this video or up above or wherever you're watching it so that you can go watch, listen to that lesson and walk your walk. It'll walk you through the steps that you need to do to create a homeschool vision because it's really hard to do anything if you don't have that in place.
Now, once you have in fact reviewed your homeschool vision, I now recommend that you ask yourself a few questions as part of this midyear review.
Now the first question is what is actually working? We want to start with the positive. Look at your curriculum, look at your schedule, look at what you've actually accomplished and recognize and celebrate the successes and whatever's working. You want to capitalize on that and you want to keep going.
The second question you want to ask yourself is what parts of your homeschool do you actually look forward to? And this could be anything from you know, snuggling on the couch reading or going on field trips during non-busy times. It might be when you guys get to sit down and play games or it might even be that you guys have gotten super excited about a certain subject and you just want to go deeper into that subject. Homeschooling is all about the adventure, right, so you're going to look at what are you actually enjoying because if you're having fun and your kids are having fun, you are more likely to be leaning into and looking forward to homeschooling every single day. You want to do more of the things that you look forward to and less of the things that you don't.
Now we're going to go into the next question. The third question I want you to ask is what isn't working and why. Not just "Oh, the math curriculum we picked it is not working", but really dig into why isn't it working? Is it not working because you have the wrong schedule? Is it not working because you're doing it at the wrong time or is it not working because it is just not the right fit for your kid? If it isn't, that's okay. You can either resell it or you can shelve it and maybe come back to it later and move on to something else or change directions. I know that that's what we're doing with a particular math curriculum with one of my kids. We are completely changing and trying something completely new because as I've done my midyear review, I'm realizing what we were trying is not working. Other things are really working so, but the reason I was able to make the switch is because I didn't just say what's not working, but I figured out why so I knew what I was looking for in the new change.
The next question, what are you dreading? What do you dread about homeschool and why? Is it that you dread sitting on, you know, everybody says that you're supposed to sit on the couch and read with your kids, but you dread it. But because you have a two year old that's running around, pulling on the book and wreaking havoc while you're trying to read, okay, it might be time to either address that child's needs or maybe try to do it in a different way, or maybe just do something different altogether. If you look at the why of what you're dreading, you'll come up with you'll be able to have a foundation to then make different decisions and move forward.
Now, after you've asked yourself those questions, the third thing you want to do is figure out, okay, what are you going to keep as is? What do you need to adjust, keep and adjust. What do you just want to toss? What are you completely done with? And you'd say, you know what? That didn't work. No guilt, no shame. It happens to the best of us. It happens to all of us. You move forward. You're always tweaking and adjusting.
Now there's a couple of just quick things to keep in mind that I recommend as you're doing this. First of all, we almost always have too much crammed into our homeschool schedule. Simple is better. So as you are doing this review, be sure to be looking to take things out because almost always that is the answer rather than trying to put things in.
The second thing I just want you to keep in mind is that there's a good chance that things are working more than you realize. It is so easy to see all the things that aren't working. It's a lot easier to miss the things that are working and sometimes the changes are imperceptible, very, very slowly incremental. I remember when we were teaching my son to read, it felt like it wasn't working and it wasn't working and it wasn't working. And it took forever to get to the point where he was finally reading and it was because the, and it wasn't because we weren't doing the right things. It was because it just needed time and it needed incremental steps by step and we were only going to get there if we just kept going.
So keep in mind that more is actually happening than you may realize. Now, those are my three major steps. First, review your homeschool vision, and if you haven't got a homeschool vision, go check out that lesson so you can write one second, ask yourself the questions that I went through. And the third is figure out what you're going to keep, what you're going to adjust and what you're going to toss.
Now, if you're looking for a major reset and I'm talking like you know nothing's working and you want to go back to the drawing board and you're just feeling overwhelmed and maybe even like you want to quit, then please, please, please check out my free webinar. It's called confident homeschool secrets, and I go through many of the secrets that longtime homeschoolers know that really, really, really can help you be successful as a homeschool family, as a homeschool mom, as a homeschool dad, it's completely free and there is a link to sign up to watch that as well.
I am excited for you. We are headed into the second half of the year. This is when you really dig in and you get, you can make your homeschool happen and it's time to just adjust a few things so you can finish out the year super successfully. My name's ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool, happy homeschooling. I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
We have used A LOT of games in our homeschool over the years, and storytelling games are some of my favorite!
I’ve shared in the past how we use storytelling in our homeschool to help with creative writing and also for kids who are struggling with writing.
But we’ve also just played storytelling games because they are so much fun. They bring out the creative side in my kids -- which helps them with creative writing and problem-solving.
These kinds of games also help me get to know my kids better. Family storytelling games get us talking and laughing and sharing. I love hearing my kids thoughts -- I learn so much about them that they might not tell me otherwise!
I also use these games in the homeschool co-op writing classes I teach, because storytelling games in the classroom also work really well. They are great creative writing games that help them get started with stories that I ask them to write.
So today I’m putting together a list of my favorite storytelling games for kids all in one place.
(And don’t forget to check out my review page for games and books we love in every homeschool subject.
I also did a review of my Favorite Math Games for Homeschool you can check out if you want games for math!)
Storymatic bills itself as a “gazillion stories” in one box -- and that’s an accurate description.
I love this game because there are two kinds of cards - character cards and situation cards. The situation cards are often silly or intriguing, which pushes the storytelling into new places that you might not otherwise think of.
Check out my full review of Storymatic here or watch the video review below.
Rory's Story Cubes gives you nine dice with six pictures per dice, which gives you 54 images that can be combined in so many ways!
This game is great because it’s so simple, and it works fabulous for kids who are still not reading comfortably yet. (Although I have played just with adults, and it’s also tons of fun!)
Roll one or several cubes and begin creating a story. The game comes with multiple ideas on how to use the dice to play in different ways. (And there are additional dice packs you can purchase to increase the fun!.
Check out my full review of Rory's Story Cubes here or watch the video review below.
Dixit is a storytelling board game that combines storytelling with hints & guessing to create a game that all ages can enjoy together.
This is one of the storytelling games that my family pulls out on “game night” and not just during the school day. We played it for years when my youngest still couldn’t read (he was 12 before he was reading comfortably). It’s challenging for all ages -- but simple enough that even young kids can understand.
Dixit also has several expansion packs you can purchase that we’ve really enjoyed.
Check out my full review of Dixit here or watch the video review below.
Tell Tale is also an image-only storytelling game, which makes it great for all ages.
These cards are more detailed than the Rory's Story Cubes, which is great if your kid needs a little more help figuring out where to start. I also love the graphics AND the shape of the cards! And this game also comes with several ways to play to get your creative juices flowing.
Tell Tale also has a Fairytale version that’s fun if you enjoy the original.
Check out my full review of Tell Tale here or watch the video review below.
As always when I do these roundups, I find lots of other options that look absolutely amazing but I don’t actually own (yet!).
Here are several other storytelling games that definitely make my short list.
Tall Tales has been on my short list to try for several years.
It looks similar to other games that I’ve already tried, but the TOKENS! Eeeeek … I’m such a sucker for small cute objects.I think this game would be particularly good for kinesthetic kids who would benefit from touching an object instead of looking at an image.
Danger: The Game looks like SO MUCH FUN! Players get trapped in bizarre and crazy situations -- and you have to figure out how to rescue them with crazy storytelling ideas.
This game takes storytelling and puts it in context, which means you can work on their creativity with kids who may be struggling to come up with ideas on their own.
Plus I think there would be LOTS of laughing, which is always a bonus!
I love that they give you both a “set the scene” card AND a “plot twist” card. This helps kids understand how stories are built - which helps their writing - and moves the storytelling along if you’re trying to write a story or play with a group.
What’s Your Story: 60 Seconds looks fabulous because it incorporates soooo many elements of any good story - character, setting, problem, and solution.
With only 60 seconds to create a story that has all those elements, your kids will have to work hard to be concise and clear. Practicing these skills will make them much better writers - whether they write fictional stories or essays.
The Memory Palace is a storytelling game designed for younger children and incorporates elements from several games I’ve already mentioned.
This storytelling game is image only, which is great for non-readers. It also has a memory element to the game, which is fabulous for younger kids who are still building those skills as well.
If you want to check out awesome homeschool resources for other subjects, check out my review page for games and books and toys for every homeschool subject.
How can homeschooled kids be prepared for college?
Have you ever found yourself asking that question?
OR are your kids getting older, and now you’re asking yourself, “Is my homeschooled child ready for college?”
That’s the position I was in just a few months ago!
I was sending my oldest off to college. She’d been homeschooled since she was 3, and I thought we had done a pretty good job.
(There were moments that I wondered … but I had this homeschool trick to keep me going.)
But even after all those years, I didn’t KNOW if she would be okay in college.
Sure - I had done a lot to help her be ready to apply for college. I talk about some of that in this post about making applying for college easier.
And I knew she didn’t need an accredited high school transcript, so we hadn’t worried about that.
But I still worried she hadn’t learned enough or she didn’t have the right life skills.
Would she be able to cook enough to feed herself well every day?
Would she get along with her roommates?
Would she know how to take a test?!?
(Yep! I realized other than the ACT, she had never taken an actual test. I don’t know how I missed that one -- but our schooling focused on other ways to assess learning! Whoops!)
Then I found this AMAZING book called The Self-Driven Child.
I was reading it for other reasons -- learning more about how motivation in children works and how you can increase motivation in your homeschool.
(I created an entire course all about motivating your kids to want to learn that you can check out here!)
And tucked away in the back of the book was the BEST list of questions to ask yourself to see if your child is ready for college.
I recommend the entire book, but in today’s video, I’m sharing the list of questions with you!
This list of questions will help you fully answer the question -- “How do I know if my homeschooled child is ready for college?”
As for us, once I read through I felt MUCH better.
And it turns out I didn’t need to worry. A few months in, and she’s doing great. And she DOES know how to take tests!
Turns out I didn’t need to worry so much after all.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Download my Master College Application List Template
Transcript
Hello. This is ToriAnn Perkey, and from my homeschool to your homeschool, today I want to talk about how you can know whether your homeschooled kid is ready for college. I mean, how do you know, especially if they have not done a lot outside of your little homeschool community? Maybe they have taken a couple of classes, maybe they have even taken a class at the high school. You know it depends on your situation, but how do you know if your kid is ready to leave home, fly the nest, and actually tackle that college thing?
Well, today we are going to talk about those, a list of things that you can kind of run down to know whether or not your kid is ready for college. Now, what I am going to tell you is some of these things that I am going to talk about I actually made other videos for. So if you are watching this somewhere other than my blog, feel free to click on the link and check out the link to the actual blog posts. You can see the videos that go along with some of these topics.
Also, I just want to mention that this is a really interesting time period for a homeschool mom and the reason is you have kept your kids close right, and intentionally. A lot of us homeschool because we want to be more involved in our children's lives. We want to be more involved in the education. We want to be a part of the journey and we want to instill our values. We want to help them grow up to be successful adults in an environment that nurtures and respects them.
Regardless of all the reasons that you chose to homeschool, at some point you have to let your kids grow beyond the walls of your home. And that can be a really different experience because you have kept them close. It may be the very first time they've been gone for a long period of time, whether it is just a day by day thing, or they actually move away and go somewhere else.
And so when you start to think about this, it can bring up a lot of emotions, a lot of experience, a lot of thoughts about have I prepared them? Did I do a good job? Have I failed them? You know? And so what we want to do is help our children be prepared and be as successful as possible. We want them to be ready to leave as much as we have worked to keep them close. So what I want to do is just go down a series of questions you can ask yourself.
And all of these questions were listed in a book called "The Self-Driven Child." And I will leave a link to that, you know, down below or up above or wherever you are watching this video. It will also be on my blog. And that book had a whole chapter on your child's readiness for college. Absolutely recommend the book. It is fabulous for lots of reasons, but I loved this chapter in particular. I marked it. I actually found myself calling everyone I know and saying, you are not going to believe what I just found out. There is so much good information here. I wish I had had this years ago.
I am one of those people. So if you have a friend like that, I am sorry because we just get so excited when we find new things that we want to share. So I am excited to share this with you today.
Okay, so lets talk about this. This is all about readiness and there is about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,nine questions, some sub questions that you are going to ask yourself. So bear with me. We are going to go through these one by one.
Okay. So number one first question, does your child understand themselves and how they do things best? Do they understand how they go about moving through their day? Do they understand what they are good at and what they need help with? Do they understand themselves? Do they have a sense of self awareness? That is question number one.
Question number two, can your child self regulate? And what they mean what this book and this list means by self regulate is, are they able to make decisions independent of the people around them, that will be good for them? So particularly, are they able to self regulate against their peers? So if they have a friend who calls them up and says, "Hey, let's go to the restaurant at midnight", and they know that they need to go to bed cause they have a big test the next day. Are they able to say no because they know what is best for them? Are they able to regulate their own environment and be in control of themselves?
Number three, is your child adequately self-motivated? Who makes their choices about school? So does your child know how to get things done themselves? Do they know how to pick their own classes? Do they know how to know what they want to take? Do they know how to track themselves and plan themselves? Are they able to make decisions about their education independent of you? Now, this does not mean that you completely are not involved. All it means is that they are able to take the lead and you are playing a supporting role. Because if they can not take the lead, then when they are out on their own, they will be lost. Because they will not be able to make those day to day educational choices that are so important in the college environment. Okay, so that was number three.
Number four, can they manage day to day living independently? Independently means can they do their own laundry? Do they know how to cook? Do they know how to take care of a vehicle if they are going to take a car to college. You are looking at, do they have the life skills to live on their own? And it is unfortunate how many kids go to college who do not have this. Now I do not think this is as much an issue in the homeschool community.
I think that my experience has been that in the homeschool community at large, we are really, really focused on making sure our kids have life skills. And we have the benefit that they have been home to learn those life skills while they are also getting an education. But I do think it is a good thing to ask yourself, do they know how to make doctor's appointments? Do they know how to, you know, get themselves to a doctor's appointment, have a conversation if they need to figure out information, all of that. Okay, so that's number four.
Number five, does your child have a healthy way to manage stress? College is stressful, life is stressful. And how does your child manage themselves when they get stressful? Do they do it in healthy ways? Like go for a bike ride or a walk or exercise? Do they do some kind of calming exercise, whether that's meditation or playing a musical instrument or reading or you know, anything that they do that is a really healthy way to calm down as opposed to watching television, eating, playing video games. There are some really unhealthy ways to manage stress that will not serve them well in the college environment. So just kind of being aware of your child and where are they with their ability to manage stress
Okay. Number six is, is your kid burned out? This is a really honest question to ask. We can get in the mindset of, well, my kid is done with high school. It's time to go to college or whatever age they are and just think it is the next step to hit without taking a step back and saying, would they benefit from some time off? Would they benefit from that gap year that happens outside of the United States. Where they go out and they work or they do an internship unpaid or they travel or they do something else.
That allows them to just explore other aspects of their personality and who they are that is not educational. Do they just need a break where they go to work and they come home? How has their educational experience been so far and would they benefit from some time off? So number six is, is your kid burned out? I think it is a really great question to ask and sometimes the answer might be a little hard to come to terms with, but it is a great question to ask.
Okay, number seven, does your child have the skills they need to do the academic work? Now, hopefully in your homeschool you have been able to somehow navigate them to the place where they are ready to do college work. But you know what? Maybe you haven't, maybe you haven't. Maybe your kid has special needs. Maybe your family has been focused on other things. Maybe you have decided to homeschool in a really alternative way and your kid has a really great education, but maybe does not have some of the skills that are needed in a college level environment.
For example, reading large quantities or listening to large quantities of information. You know, really fast pace because college moves really fast. Do they know how to write at a college level or at a beginning college level? It is easy to track based on your experience at the end of college, so it is at the beginning college level. Do they know how to study for a big exam. These are skills, these are not knowledge. But if they do not have those skills, it might be beneficial to either do some remedial work, remedial when you are going to college, it is not going to feel remedial. But finding ways for them to pick up some of those skills before they start. If you sense that learning those skills on the fly is going to be kind of hard for them. So that is number seven. Do they have the skills to do the academic work required in the college environment?
Number eight, we are almost done. Does your child know how to ask for support, academic or emotional if they need it? And do they know where to go to get that support? Do they know how to create that support around themselves? A lot of kids struggle in college if they do not know how to get to the academic advisement center. And it is called different things in different universities or colleges, but where they get support for disabilities of any kind. Do they know how to go find for that support and are they willing to ask for it?
Do they know how to recognize when they are struggling in a situation and ask for help from a tutor to take advantage of the writing lab? Schools nowadays provide a plethora of opportunities and support, but the kid has to know how to take it and they have to want to actually go get help. The kids who get help are very successful in college, almost across the board. The ones that do not often struggle. So does your kid know what they need and do they know how to find that? Do they? That is number eight.
Number nine, can your child manage a social environment that is complex? College is a complicated social environment, even more than a high school environment. And if your child has been homeschooled, this may be an area where they have less experience than their peers. Do they know how to handle a large group of people that are all the same age who are jockeying for social position? Do they know how to socially interact and have conversations about topics that are outside of the academic arena?
Do they know how to handle, the romantic relationships that are inevitably going to start happening once they are in a college environment? Do they know how to date? Do they know how to say yes? Do they know how to say no? Do they know how to protect themselves? Do they know how to put themselves in safe places versus unsafe places? These are things that we maybe do not think about when we think about going to college. We think about the academic side. But is your child socially prepared to go? And if they are not, how can you help them prepare? And I think that, in the end, is the real question.
If you see a deficit in any of these areas, what can you do to help improve your child's chances of success? And that may mean taking a break before they actually start the college experience. And only you and they are going together to know how to do that. Now remember, it doesn't have to be perfect. You do not have to say a hundred percent a hundred percent a hundred percent for your kid to be able to go.
My oldest daughter just went to college. We could not say 100% on all of these, but I felt confident enough and I am going to say "enough" because there were moments where I was like, I do not know. I hope she is going to be okay, but she is thriving. She is thriving, and it turns out that she is okay that she is navigating these. The social thing has been a little bit trickier for her. The academic one, she is doing great. I am actually surprised because some of the academic skills that she is doing in college are not the ones that I thought we had practiced at home, but it turns out she had picked them up along the way.
But we had done life skills, we had worked on emotional regulation. We had worked on a lot of this even if we were not at 100%. The other thing is, and I have said this a couple of times, but I am going to say it again. Do not push your kid if they are not ready. That is the number one recipe for failure in college and you do not want that for your kid. Nobody has to go to school at 18 there are so many routes to success.
Some take you through college, some do not. And if you head through college, not everybody has to go to college right out of high school. Not everybody has to do college early. Some people do college at 20, 21, 22 after they have done something else for a couple of years and that is okay. That is okay. As homeschoolers, we are used to tracking differently, taking all different alternate paths. Do not let yourself get trapped in this idea that now that you have done this alternate path up to 18 or whatever age your kid is, now you are going to just jump into the normal rhythm. You have so many choices.
So this is the list. I love this list because it is so comprehensive. It is so much bigger than just, can your kid do a certain type of schoolwork? It is a holistic approach to how do you launch a child into adulthood, into a supportive environment where hopefully they can thrive.
I hope this list has been helpful. If you want to check out more videos about different aspects of this, then go ahead and make sure that you head over to my blog if you are not there already. Watch those other videos.
And I have other resources that are available for you as a homeschool mom, no matter what age your kids are, and I make these videos every week because I want you to be confident. I want you to be successful, and that is why I make those resources. I am ToriAnn Perkey. Thanks for joining me. We will see you next week.
