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.
Why You Need to Simplify Your Homeschool Schedule
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?
Homeschool FOMO
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.
Homeschool Review and Reboot
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.
#1 Less Overwhelmed
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.
#2 Kids Have More Fun
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.
#3 Completing
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.
#4 Less Expensive
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.
#5 Deep Dive
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.
