Answering Your Homeschool Questions

hi friends it's Sherry from our life homeschooling I want to take time today to answer some of your homeschooling [Music] questions we just finished up our first week of school and um it was it was interesting let's just say that I probably should have waited one more week to start we had a couple small emergencies that are all ironed out we did 2 Days Of Applesauce something we do every year with my in-laws it's a really big event the kids are involved I do count it as a day of school all that to say our first week of school um was not as smooth as I would have liked but that's okay we have next week so I'll probably be sharing a little bit more about that with you in the coming week just talking about our first week and how school's going for us if you're new to my channel I'm Sherry I'm a homeschooling mom to 10 kids we're starting ourth 15th year of homeschooling I'm married to my high school sweetheart we've been married for 24 years I love encouraging other moms on my YouTube channel and over on the blog rif homeschooling tocom I've had a lot of really interesting questions on YouTube and over on Instagram and some of them I've answered but I just thought that I had more thoughts that I wanted to share with you I felt like there was more that I could add to my answer that you can only answer really just by explaining yourself so I'm going to try to answer some of these I'm not the greatest on the Fly we'll see how many edits there are in this video but I'm going to just go through the questions and let you know what I'm thinking the first question is about keeping your house clean and homeschooling a toddler and actually I put two questions together because another mom said how do you keep little ones happy and not destructively busy during lesson time time this is a question that resonates so much with me because I have always had a toddler in the 14 years that we've been homeschooling I've never not had a toddler my very first year of homeschooling we had a six-year-old a 3-year-old a 2-year-old and I was pregnant and due in November so um that was challenging because of just having so many little ones and being pregnant delivering during the year and then it being my first year not knowing curriculum not knowing how to homeschool at all um but we made it through we made it work of all the things that are hard in homeschooling I personally think that having a toddler while you're homeschooling is one of the hardest so I don't know if that makes you feel better maybe some people it's not going to help but um after you can get over that hump or if you can adjust to that hump accept it maybe then everything else is a little bit downhill so in that way I hope it's helpful when you have a baby you know a lot of times they're just real little and you can just nurse them to make them happy or they're not as mobile so you can kind of contain them a little bit once they hit about 18 months they are all over the place they are pulling things down and they want things and they can't verbalize it to explain what they want which is frustrating to them and they just tend to interrupt everything my 19-month-old right now wants to be outside all the time so from the time he wakes up he wants to be out so that's a challenge and it's a little bit more difficult I would say when you have all little ones with a toddler right now I have some older ones so sometimes they want a break in their school workor so they'll just pick up the toddler and take him outside and run around or on the swing for a little bit and that definitely has made it a lot easier but I really do remember those early years they're not easy I did I have a blog post where I go specifically a lot more in depth about this you can look that up um I have a video as well but I'll just throw a couple things out there that I would be my biggest suggestions the first one is to really lower your expectations and I think a lot of times we expect too much out of ourselves because we're still in that school mindset of all these things that we have to get through today in our lessons and instead of having the thought process where we just need to make progress we're going to start and we're just going to make a little bit of progress today so lowering your expectations um is is the first thing another thing a couple other things you can wear a toddler sometimes I forget this when they're real little I wear them a lot and then um they get independ depend they're on their own and I forget when they're 18 20 months you can still wear them I have a carrier I put them on my back sometimes when I'm trying to do something and maybe it'll just pacify them for a little bit put them in a chair with snacks you can also if you have a little one that's just whiny seems like nothing you can do will satisfy them a lot of them have given up their morning nap and they're only taking an afternoon nap but it's still also kind of hard for them to hold off until their afternoon nap sometimes I have gone ahead and put a toddler back in their crib for just 15 20 minutes of quiet time put them in there with some toys some books and at first they may not like it but they may adjust mine have often adjusted and will play in there for a few minutes so depending on your toddler some of them will do great with that others just it won't work but the biggest thing is to have a long-term perspective know that other people have done it before you it it works it's not easy but you can do it and I always really believed that homeschooling that what we're doing is really good for my kids so I've had all the obstacles all the frustrations that you've had but I just I really believe what we're doing is good for our family and so we just push through we find small Solutions and sometimes we just we call it a day we stop and we do whatever the toddler needs and we come back to our school work later or the next day but we keep moving forward the next question is what's the average amount of money that you spend per student per child on a h school year and this one is kind of hard to answer because it really has shifted for me over the years I spent the most money for shore on our first child because I was buying everything brand new and after that we slowly build up our library and um our second third fourth kids and so on were able to reuse a lot of the materials that I had bought for him um it also depends like we have uh consumable math we do Singapore Math so every year I do have to buy some new workbooks for our kids that is an expense um but I spent the most as our kids for our oldest child but then um right now we have three kids that are in high school and they go to a second drop off Co-op so we're in two co-ops one is more of a social Co-op for a whole family it's kids they've been friends with for years the second one um I mean they also have friends there but it's more of a drop off Co-op where they get their high school credits this is not a necessity you don't have to do this we've chosen to do this because we have a lot of children we have wide range of Ages and it's just something that's relieving to me to be able to delegate that out um so right now that's a a pretty big expense for us each class is about $300 and I have three kids and they are taking between three and four classes there so that's an expense and then I also have to buy books for them however I am hardly spending any money right now on my Elementary aged kids because we have a full library that we have built over our 14 years of homeschooling another way that I cut down on cost is that for the most part I stick with the same curriculum now I hesitate every time I say that because I don't want anyone to not change curriculums if something's not working for you you should you should move on and find something that's a better fit but overall if your curriculum is working pretty well for you I've stuck with the same curriculum it's just a lot less of a learning curve it's cheaper um it's easier for new kids to learn because they have older kids that have done the same thing so right now if we didn't have kids in that older drop off Coop our expenses would be very minimal I've spent very little on my younger kids all that to say it just has shifted the cost has shifted over the years and it's really hard to put a per child cost I would say it's easier to put an overall cost um what we spend per year but you don't have to spend a lot of money to homeschool your kids you don't have to buy every book that's listed in your curriculum you can use the library we use the library a lot we're there all the time so you don't need to spend a lot of money to homeschool the idea that homeschoolers are these privileged people that it's so nice that you can do that homeschooling has been a big sacrifice for me for our family we have given up some things so that we're able to do this um and it doesn't have to cost a lot the next question I want to homeschool my daughter but not sure if I should I've always wanted to do it but my family members have said that I'm not equipped and I don't even know where to start this um the the thing that is is so heart-wrenching about this question is that I know there are a lot of parents in this place and I think the reason a lot of parents feel this way is because they are in that default mindset that when your child turns 6 years old you just send them to school there are no other options and that is simply not true if you want to homeschool your child you should there is no reason why you shouldn't homeschool your child if you've always wanted to try it and you're perfectly equipped to homeschool your daughter because you are her parent you've already taught her how to sleep through the night how to eat with a spoon you've potty trained her you've done all these things book work academic work life skills that's just the next step in the progression that's just what they're interested in that's what they're going to learn next and you are absolutely equipped if you don't know where to start I would encourage you first to find out what the laws are in your state you can go to HS LDA and click on your state and it will show you everything that you need to do to homeschool legally the second thing I would do is to find a YouTube channel find some books I have a lot of recommendations on my blog find some podcasts I would be listening to other homeschool moms find some friends some people that you know that are homeschooling latch on to them find out everything you can about it find a community of other homeschoolers that you can connect with so you can have friends your daughter can have friends you absolutely can homeschool your child and if you've always wanted to do it you should give it a try the next question is is there a reason you do chores later in the morning so if you've listened to some of my videos you know that I have basically a four-fold schedule we start with morning time chores which I call our first school workor and then the kids do their independent work where they get out their checklists we take a break for lunch and outside time and then I read aloud to them in the afternoon the reason we do chores second really is pretty much because my husband works a random schedule sometimes he's home in the morning with us sometimes he's not so this is just the medium that we've found that works well for us um if he's home with us in the mornings that's our only family time so we like to have a laid-back breakfast kind of sit around drink our coffee talk with the kids just relax I'll usually do a couple morning time things with him there but then we'll just slowly do chores um and then when he's gone we just stick with the same routine so that is really our only reason it's nothing you know too deep or anything and I would say whatever is working for you that's what you should do if he was consistently gone every morning I might do chores first because that might make a lot more sense the next question this person says they love the simple morning time notebook that I've put together for you all to use but can you do a template with um that's blank so that we can fill in our own and um thank you I've had such great responses to the morning time notebook this has been a way for us to just kind of consolid and put all those extra subjects composer study hymn study memory work all in one place I've made it available to you and a lot of people are really loving it so thank you for purchasing that and supporting our family um I don't know how to make a blank template I'm just going to be honest with you I don't know how to make a blank template that I could sell so I would have to just look into that a little bit further and see if that's something that I would be able to do so but I've had a couple people ask me about that so that's definitely an option the next question is can you share your favorite Science and History read alouds and I think I had another mom ask me um how do you fit science in cuz she must have watched several videos and hasn't seen science maybe on my kids checklist or where does that fit and yes I usually read science aloud to my kids in the afternoon however I do have some older kids that are doing their own science readings so um some of them have just asked if they can do it on their own the older kids and I let them and then I just read aloud to my younger kids my favorite history and science readings I'll just tell you the two places that I go to amble side online you can look for their suggestions and I also look at Veritas press I love all of their book lists next question can you give some help with homeschooling boys who are distracted and unable to focus this is a great question because most of us who are homeschooling are moms and we are women are uh our ability to focus and to do multiple things at once is so different to the way our boys are wired and yet we're homeschooling boys so I think it's really important to understand the way boys think the way they may they made the way God made them um because they are so different from us boys are physically active so when I'm reading to my six-year-old for example he is doing handstands on the sofa he if if you watch him he doesn't sit still for 30 seconds he's constantly moving but he's listening he's taking it in and um maybe he doesn't get all of it but he a lot of it he's absorbing when you're working with a child a boy for example who's doing math or writing I've had boys that are just they pick up on math concepts a lot faster but writing has been a real struggle for my boys um and so I don't I don't require them to have perfect handwriting because I know and not all boys are like this but for mine specifically they are just not bent to have very good handwriting but they are bent to take apart engines and put them back together to learn how to build things and so understanding how our boys think and how they learn is so important do you have a video on how you do your kids nature journals I do um I found something that has been a really great fit for us with our nature journals and I share all about that in a blog post and video um I use the book The Country Diary of an Edwardian lady which has been a perfect template for us to use um as kind of a monthly narrative and I I follow her pattern in there I got that from a friend of mine of how she has a new month some illustrations and then just a a journal that the kids write in once a week so that's something that works well for us our kids like doing it the last question is how do you stay calm in your daily life and um I want to say first of all that it it's very easy to appear calm and Polished in a YouTube video where you're seeing just 15 minutes of my life but I'm a very normal everyday homeschool mom and I'm not always calm just like you and I have struggles we have struggles just like other families do but I am learning and the Lord is teaching me to live in Daily dependence on him and um I just think of the verse in scripture where Jesus says without me you can do nothing what we're doing in our homes with our kids this is Kingdom work we are influencing their souls for eternity one of the most important things that I do in our H school is reading God's word to my kids every day memorizing it that is the the most important education that I want to be passing down to them the work that we're doing is eternal we are on a different track than the rest of the world we want to teach math science English History Literature all from the perspective of God's design this is his work this is his idea this all originated with him and so we are we have a kingdom mindset and the work we're doing with them is eternal and we can do none of it without Christ's help without me you can do nothing so the most helpful way that I can stay calm in my daily life when I am not getting enough sleep with a new infant or when I have a toddler who's throwing Tantrums when I have teenagers with problems that I don't always know how to solve is to rely daily on the Lord in his word and through prayer taking that little bit of time that is the most effective way to stay calm in in your everyday life dependence on the Lord I hope this video has been helpful for you uh if you have any more questions I'll do my best to answer them I hope your Year's off to a great start I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms I'll see you next week