7 Homeschooling Tips to Save Your Time and Sanity!
Homeschooling.
Some days we love it. Our kids are engaged, there’s not snacks all over the floor, no one is fighting or whining. We are killing it.
Some days we look around in total distress, with hair that’s been dry shampooed at least twice and a forgotten cup of coffee in the microwave, wondering why in the world we decided to keep these crazies home with us. (Am I the only one?)
Then most days fall somewhere in the middle. We’re getting things done the best we can.
I’ve found that sometimes our homeschooling headaches can be prevented by a few simple time-saving strategies!
The homeschooling tips I want to share with you today are ones that I use regularly now, and some I even used when I taught in the classroom. Hopefully they will make way for more of those “killing it” days and at the very least, help ward off the distressed ones. 🙂
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My 7 Homeschooling Tips
Homeschool Tip #1 – Try Using Learning Stations
Being a former elementary teacher, learning stations were something that I used in the classroom every day. They not only allowed for various ways to provide both remediation and enrichment on the skills we were learning, but they also allowed me the time to work with students individually or in a small group.
So, naturally, I decided I would try them out in our homeschool! It has worked great for us so far. Maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about…and if that’s you, no worries! Below is an example of what our stations might look like one day:
- Station 1: Big Daughter does math with me one-on-one.
- Station 2: Middle Daughter plays an educational game on the iPad. (Math Tango, Kahn Academy Kids, Teach Your Monster to Read, Endless Learning Academy, and Slice Fractions are the current front runners in our house!)
- Station 3: Little Daughter works on an activity that I’ve assigned. This varies. It can be spelling work, reading and finding words in a poem that I’ve written on easel paper, silent reading, audiobooks (books with cd, Epic, Vooks, etc.), math manipulative, puzzles, tangrams, journal writing, etc…..it could be absolutely anything you want it to be!
We just rotate until everyone has been through them all once. It ends up being 20-30 minutes at each station depending on how long math takes us. What I love about these stations is that it allows me (mostly!) uninterrupted time with each of my girls each day. And since my youngest is three, that is difficult with most everything else. You understand that mommas!
Homeschool Tip #2 – Organize Your Books By Month/Holidays or Unit Studies
That old saying “out of sight, out of mind” is very real for this mom! Anyone else?! If I put something out of view, I am likely to forget that I have it. This includes that pack of chicken out in the deep freeze that I bought on sale but forgot about, the Christmas gift I was so proud of myself for buying early but forgot about, my cup of coffee that I leave in the microwave when we’re schooling and forget about, and the children’s books lined on the shelf where I can’t see the title and forget what I own.
The decision was made to organize my children’s books long before I began homeschooling, though. I have a thing for themes, and for my brain, it just made sense to organize as many of my books as possible by month. I have 12 tubs, one for each month, and I put any and all titles that I have decided would be great to read in the designated month.
Example:
- January – new year, snow, winter, penguins, arctic, MLK…
- February – Valentine’s Day, Groundhog’s day, Presidents, Black History…
- March – St. Patrick’s Day, Spring, sometimes Easter…
- April – Weather, Earth Day, sometimes Easter…
- May – Mother’s Day, End of School, Memorial Day, Flowers….
- June – Father’s Day, summer…
- July – Independence Day, summer…
- August – Back to school…
- September – Apples, Fall, Grandparents Day…
- October – Fall, Halloween, pumpkins…
- November – Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, pumpkins…
- December – Winter, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza….
If your curriculum is unit study based, or you just know what topics you’re going to be covering, you could also sort them out by those topics as well! Topic is another handy way to categorize the leftover books that didn’t fit into a month.
No matter what, it saves SO MUCH TIME (and money sometimes!), knowing what books you have and where they are!
Homeschool Tip #3 – Put Calendar Time in Your Routine
This tip is geared more towards families with elementary aged kids and younger, but I’ve found it to be beneficial! Here is what our calendar area looks like:
Now you can absolutely homeschool without doing calendar time, but I like it because it’s a quick way to drive home skills by repetition every day. Little ones see how time goes by, how to say the date, days of the week, and months of the year with the actual calendar. I add in other skills, too, such as
- place value
- coin identification and counting
- seasons
- skip counting with the hundreds chart
- messages on the lined dry erase board
You could literally choose any skills you wanted and go over with them during this time! We only spend 10-20 minutes doing this, too. So it’s quick and it’s been effective for us! Also, it does NOT have to be this large! The idea of calendar time could even be done out of a binder. The point is the repetition.
Homeschool Tip #4 – Use Fold-Up Tables
One day I hope to have a big beautiful wooden farm table that we can gather around for school, but the reality is that we don’t have one now! We have a large front room that has become our homeschool space and in it we use two white rectangle fold up tables for most of our table work, and I honestly don’t mind how it looks!
They’re beneficial because they’re super easy to clean. Markers, crayons, paint, you name it, it wipes off with a wet wipe. And since they fold up, I can move them out of the way if we need that space for another activity or just get our space back if we have guests come over!
So if you’ve never thought to grab yourself a fold-up table or two, maybe you will now! Sure they might not be the prettiest homeschool solution, but they are practical. 🙂
Homeschool Tip #5 – Create Silent Reading Tubs
Simply gather up the leveled readers and/or topic related books you want your kids to be reading through and put them in a tub of some sort. You can even go to the library together periodically to change some of them out. The tubs can be plastic dollar store bins, a rolling cart with drawers, or just their own labeled spot on a shelf.
By having a few choices already put into one place, it has made it possible for me to just say “silent reading time” when I need to work with someone individually for a moment or if I’ve made it a learning station (see Tip #1) and they know where they can go to find books they can read. They also enjoy that there are choices so they don’t have to read the same book every day!
Homeschool Tip #6 – Make Playlists!
It occurred to me one day in the car, when my girls requested a song for the 532nd time and I was trying to look it up on Spotify at any red light I could stop at. (Does anyone else only hit green lights when these life moments occur?!) Why hadn’t I made a PLAYLIST??
From then on, the playlist became my best friend, and it should be yours too! Consider spending a little time up front making one for any or all of these categories:
Spotify/Amazon Music/Etc.
- Kids’ Favorite Sing-Alongs
- Favorite Dance Party Songs
- Learning Songs
- Bible Time Songs
- Study Music
- Unit Specific Songs (for example: music from other countries you may be learning about)
- Holiday Music
- Clean-Up Songs
- Educational Podcasts for Kids
And don’t forget YouTube! Especially if you are taking a Unit Study approach in your homeschool, this is SO valuable! Take the time to research the videos you want to show during a lesson or throughout an entire unit. It saves an unbelievable amount of time and you don’t lose the attention of your kiddos while you’re searching.
Homeschool Tip #7 – Don’t Forget Car Time!
Just because you have to run errands, or take someone to an appointment, or are taking a road trip, it doesn’t mean school has to be completely canceled! Get some of those hours in!
Use that Learning Song playlist, the educational podcasts, watch educational shows on dvd (if your car is so equipped), allow some tablet time for educational apps, listen to an audiobook together, do a read-aloud if someone else is driving, or have the kids bring some books out of their Silent Reading Tubs to read.
Car time has lots of possibilities!
And There You Have It!
My 7 homeschooling tips to save your time and sanity. Did any of these tips spark some inspiration for your homeschool this year? What tips do you have for saving time in your homeschool? Let me know in the comments below!
