Overview: Are you one of us homeschoolers who wants the school year to be done? Are you struggling? Here are some tips to help moms who want to throw in the towel!
So, we’ve entered May, and the finish line for the school year is within sight. Just a few more weeks and we’ll feel a lot less guilt about laying down the books and taking a summer break. And that’s a good thing because many of us homeschool moms are struggling.
We want the school year to be over as badly as the kids do. We know we need to finish strong and work through the last few weeks to accomplish everything we want to get done. But what we really want to do is to just say this year is over, tell our kids they passed, and start back up in the fall.
Let’s face it. Many of us are exhausted!
And can you blame us?!? Since the pandemic, our lives have gotten a lot more stressful and the world has felt pretty overwhelming. Most of us have been craving a break for a while.
So now, here we are… wishing the weeks away so that we can put the books down and start our summer vacation.
Have you ever watched the movie Click by Adam Sandler? It isn’t often that one of his movies moves me to tears, but this one is definitely an exception to that. The main character, Michael, is a husband and father who stumbles upon a remote control that not only has power over his TV but also his life.
He soon learns that he can fast-forward through the hard parts of his life and simply experience the joyful parts. I don’t want to give away the ending or anything, but near the end, Michael realizes how much he has missed by skipping so much of his life.
We definitely don’t want to fast-forward our lives – even the hard parts have value. But this is definitely a time of year when teachers and students alike are ready for summer – whether they are attending school outside or inside of the home.
So what’s a homeschooler to do once we reach this stage of the year? Should we put our noses to the grindstone and continue with lessons as usual until Memorial Day weekend? Should we throw in the towel and call it good?
Or should we do something somewhere in between?
Here are 5 Tips for Homeschoolers Who Want the School Year to be Over:
If Your Kids Are the Ones Who are Ready for the Year to be Over
1 – Take Advantage of the Season’s Natural Rhythms
It’s perfectly normal for your kids to have spring fever and to want to spend more time being active and less time studying. This is a great time of year to switch up the lessons and add in more field trips, hands-on learning, and life lessons.
All learning doesn’t come from books. Get those kids outside to do nature studies. Let them help plant the family garden.
Let them breathe fresh air and have longer than normal breaks. Later in the summer, you’ll probably be fighting with them to put down the screens and go outside.
So this is a great time to take advantage of their natural desire to spend more time in the great outdoors.
2 – Study Something They Care About
It’s hard to have a pleasant attitude when we’re doing something we don’t want to do. And that’s the situation our kids are facing this time of year. So this is the time to pull out resources that will sweeten their attitudes and make the end of the school year more pleasant.
Let them learn about things they’re passionate about, whether it’s dinosaurs or princesses or 17th century explorers or guitars.
For example, if your son loves BMX bikes, let him read books about bikes, watch documentaries about bikes, tinker with his bike and learn ways to make mechanical modifications, etc. It’s amazing how much kids are motivated to learn when they are excited about a topic.
Capitalize on their enthusiasm!
Unit Studies come to the rescue this time of year for sure!!! If you need help coming up with ideas for a topic, leave a comment and I’ll try to help you brainstorm!
3 – Reward Good Behavior
Another way to sweeten attitudes is to reward children for their diligence. There are lots of ways to reward kids without having to spend any money. I know some parents who require kids to earn their screen time.
There are plenty of privileges that kids can earn. This post has a bunch of ideas for you to consider: Rewards for Kids – Offer Rewards and Watch Their Motivation Soar.
If You Are the One Who is Ready for the Year to be Over
4 – Call It Good for the Year
Who says you have to finish the entire curriculum to be done? While I don’t normally endorse homeschoolers do things the way schools do, I think we can learn a lesson from them here.
School teachers don’t make it all the way through the entire book each year, so why do we think we need to?
Honestly evaluate how much you have accomplished this year and if you’ve finished about 80%, then you’re pretty safe to call it good. There’s so much overlap at the beginning of each book that I highly recommend either jumping ahead several chapters at the start of each year or lopping off several chapters at the end of the year so that you aren’t continually repeating work your kids have already done.
Reviewing material over and over is a great way to kill your child’s love for learning.
5 – Change Things Up
If you live in a state where you need to complete a certain number of homeschool days, then you may not have the luxury of being done yet. However, who says you have to continue doing lessons in exactly the same way as the rest of the year?
Again, let’s take a page from the schools here. Have you ever noticed that schools fill the last month with things such as parties, field trips, special speakers, concerts, and more? And those days still count as school days.
So, even if you need to continue having formal learning days in the coming weeks, you may want to consider changing things up.
Here are some things you can try:
- Read aloud day
- Game day
- A day filled with science experiments
- Tour a museum or a zoo
- Have the kids prepare presentations of the material they’ve been learning
- Visit historical sites in your area
- Watch movies based on books you’ve read throughout the year
- Let the kids be the teacher for the day
- End of year party
Spring should be a time of hope and renewal. Rather than plodding through this time and wishing the weeks away, let’s change up our homeschools so that we all benefit from the excitement that we all feel at the end of the school year. It will be a WIN-WIN for our children and for us.
Can you think of other ways to change up your homeschool day to perk up the attitudes of both your kiddos and yourself? Please leave a comment below.
