How I Handle Distractions as a Fifteen-Year Homeschool Mom

[Music] The home by nature has many moving parts. It's an active living environment and because of this, there can be many distractions and it can be overstimulating for kids. I'm going to tell you how I handle distractions as a 15-year homeschool mom. When I think back to some of the distractions we've had in our school days over the past 15, this is going on our 16th year of homeschooling. There are so many. In addition to the normal distractions like babies, toddlers, kids arguing, doctor appointments, random errands that have to be run last minute at that very moment, meals that need to be made, cleanup. We've had some other distractions as well, random things that have happened. I remember one day I was changing the baby's diaper and I looked outside the window and there right in front of us was a hot air balloon and it was slowly going just over the rooftop of our house. So I ran out and I told the kids and then we looked. By that time it was out the back window. It was almost low enough that it was almost landing in our yard. So you can imagine that totally hijacked that morning. Everyone was watching that. On another time, this was our very first day of school. I had everything planned. I was really excited about just getting started and making good progress that day when all of a sudden we looked out the window and there in our backyard, this was about 10 years ago, our dog was wrestling with a hawk out in the yard. And so at that moment at we our oldest kids at that time were boys. We we still have two boys, but they were at the age where this was really exciting. So um that totally distracted us for like an hour. The dog won in the end. Let's just leave it at that. But this was another one of those days that things did not go as planned. Right now in morning time we are still going through our simple morning time notebook. This week we started the Shakespeare story Aello. I love reading from beautiful tales from Shakespeare or beautiful stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbbit. I first read the play from this book and then secondly I read it again from Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. This is a little bit more challenging book and it just fills in a lot of the details. I think Shakespeare can be it has deep plots and just a lot of people disguised as someone else and it seems to always be like a triangle of love. It can get really confusing. So reading from beautiful stories first helps give kids an idea of what the story is about. And then when I read it again from Tales from Shakespeare, it really fills in all the details. We're also filling in some of our folk songs. The ones we've done recently are the three ravens. And another one is on Ilamora Batat, which is just an adorable little song. Our 2-year-old loves it. When I play it, he jumps around dancing. So, this is one that the kids have really liked. And then the one we just started is the Rose of Troli. Folk songs is something completely new to me. I only started doing it last year. Um, not for any specific reason other than it was just something I never got around to, but I am so glad that we started it because the kids are really enjoying it. Another thing we're working on is filling in the countries of South America. This is the continent we're studying this year. We're filling in all the countries. This week we did the capitals and then we'll do the physical features. So today I just wrote down on the whiteboard the name of the country and then put the capital beside it so that the kids could follow along. And if you don't have a whiteboard in your home school, this is one of the best tools. It's just so nice to have a small whiteboard. You can carry it anywhere you need. Sometimes it distracts a two-year-old who will just or three three or fouryear-old who will just lay on the floor and draw pictures. It'll keep them busy while you're trying to do something else. And it's just so handy to have to pull out wherever you need it. Another handy tool is to have a book of maps, uh, a world atlas that's in a book form. I use this all the time. Not just in geography lessons, but anytime we're reading about a place, we'll just turn to that map in the book and find where it is. It's a simple way to incorporate geography that is meaningful because the kids are learning about places in the context of what you're reading. If you're interested in looking at the simple morning time notebook that we use, I'll link it below for you. The last thing I do is I keep my younger kids around and I read the Bible story to them. This is a Bible story that I read to all of my older kids and now they do their own Bible reading on their checklist. For those of you who are new, hi, my name is Sher. I'm a Christian first and foremost. I'm a homeschooling mom to 10 kids, married to my high school sweetheart. And here on this YouTube channel, I love encouraging other homeschool moms and I also create resources for homeschools over on the blog rlifehomeschooling.com. Talking again about some of the distractions in our school day. One morning we were all getting to our work. It was again another peaceful morning. I was looking forward to making progress. And all of the sudden, we heard the sound of what it sounded like a cat meowing coming from our washing machine. And so, of course, this was pretty disturbing. So, everyone stopped and they're like, "Why? Why does it sound like the cat is under the washing machine?" What happened in the end, we had to stop the washing machine. My husband happened to be home that morning, which was really nice, and we had to move the machine, tip it over. The cat had somehow our cat had he's fine now, but he had crawled up and gotten into some of the under parts of the machine. So, if you're a homeschool mom, I'm sure you can relate to some of these distractions. But really, these are just big unusual circumstances. In the normal dayto-day, there can be many things that make it difficult for children to concentrate. We're not working in a building with four rooms and desks with very little distractions. We're working in a home. The world is our classroom. There are meals to be made, things to clean up. Often there are babies and toddlers nearby and they have needs. And sometimes this can be overstimulating for kids. There are a couple things I've learned over the years to help with some of the distractions we face. And I think one of the first ones is to realize that as the mom, I'm really the one who's responsible for making sure that the kids are able to concentrate, making sure the atmosphere in our home is quiet and conducive to learning. And as someone who's a mom to 10 kids who has had babies and toddlers all along the way, I'm not being unrealistic here. I can tell you that sometimes our house is very loud. It's not always quiet and sometimes you may walk in and it would seem cra very crazy. So, it's not always like that, but I do take personal responsibility for checking in and being aware of the atmosphere in our home, and I want our kids to be able to focus and concentrate. And in the end, that responsibility falls on me. When I notice that it's getting too loud or kids are having a hard time concentrating, one of the things I will do is have everyone sit at the table close to me. Now, this doesn't always work. This isn't always what is needed. So, you really need to be able to gauge when you need to have everyone right beside you and when it's good to have them spread it spread everyone out. But when kids are all around you and you're sitting at the table, you're able to monitor who's being distracted, who's talking, you're able to correct children when they need it, and it just helps to have everyone close to you. Now, sometimes kids need to be away from everything that's going on. So, we've also done this. I have a desk in almost every bedroom in our house. So, all of our kids have a desk in their bedroom. My husband and I have a desk in our bedroom. And this is really helpful in a couple different ways. First of all, it's really great for older kids, kids that are in high school that want to get away from some of the noise. They can just go to their bedroom and work quietly up in their room and just be away from some of the little kids. That's just really nice. But I also use it for some of my younger kids that just cannot focus when they're with a lot of other children. So right now, our 7-year-old, I'll have him when he writes his copy work, I'll have him go to my room, sit at my desk, and close the door, and he does the whole copy work selection in there by himself with the door closed. Because when he's out, every little thing will distract him. He'll lose his place. The notebook will fall on the floor. the pencil will fall on the floor. And this, I know, is not good for helping him to move along. So, having him work in my room by himself, it takes him about 15 minutes to do his copy work. And another thing that's really important if you have a child that has trouble concentrating is always to check their work as soon as possible after they finish it. Because I've noticed with our kids that struggle with this that they need to develop their habit of attention. And when I can immediately show them what is not the same as the copywork text that they're working from and they know that I am expecting them to do everything exactly as it's written and that I'm going to be holding them accountable, then they start paying attention a lot more closely. If they know someone's going to be checking their work, this helps them to pay closer attention and to do it right and not just be sloppy and get it done to get it done. Here, William is still reading aloud to me every day. He's a pretty fluent reader, but he when he reads on his own, he loses his place. So, he needs someone right beside him who is helping him to focus. Do you? Yeah. You me. >> Normal level >> pretty much. Yeah. >> Oh, what? You want apple? >> Yeah. >> Do you want mommy cut you apple? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Here. I'll cut you apple. Hold on. All right. So then this is the small. The small. Just remember this right here is like coming off of another letter. So, I think it's our job as moms to determine when we need to sit at the table or sit at the sofa, wherever your place is and have your kids all around you so you can monitor them and when they need to go one of the one of them needs to go to a space by themsel or when you need to work oneon-one with them in a quiet place. And this isn't always easy when you have younger kids around. I I'm very familiar with that. But as homeschool moms, we're not limited by time. We have all day. So, we can always work it in into other parts of our day. Sometimes I'll do it during the baby's nap if I need to, or when my husband gets home, if there's something that we just couldn't focus on or couldn't get done that day and I really need to sit with one child by themsself quietly, I'll take advantage of that. Another thing that I think is really important is if there's one child that's keeping everyone else from being able to work, in other words, if that child wasn't there, everything would be smooth and quiet, then we shouldn't make everyone else suffer because of that one child's behavior. It's worth separating that child, taking them aside with yourself, or finding ways to problem solve. I wanted to let you know about a free resource I have on the blog for those of you who like to use copy work in your homeschool like I do. I have some free ASOPs fables printable copy work. If you want to teach your kids good moral lessons, teach them through stories much like Jesus did in the parables. Used a parable to teach a point. These are just some great stories. Our kids have loved Asop's Fables. Our son James for science is doing Apologia's land animals of the sixth day and they have this drivethru animal atlas. So after you finish learning about an animal, you can glue it onto the area of the world that that animal is found. And he's just really loving this. This has been a fun project for him. In the past, when our kids were younger, I did pretty much everything together. It was easier to do everything with all the kids together when they're all younger. But as you have older kids, this changes. And this year, two of our kids asked if they could do a specific science. James was one of them. He wanted to do these land animals. He, you can see, he is so proud of his subject or his project. It's coming together really nicely. So I said yes that he could do this if he really wanted to and he has taken off with it which is so exciting to see. Something else that needs to be said about handling distractions is that in our experience our boys have struggled with this more than our girls. And I think this is because boys are physically built different. They need to be moving. They need action. But then when it's time to sit down and concentrate, they need sometimes more structure or more um boundaries put in place so that they can focus. So, I have really tried and it's something I'm always working on to give um our kids, not only boys, but often it is our boys to give them more breaks when they need it, but then to bring them back and give them the boundaries and scaffolding they need to be able to concentrate. Today was a chicken corn soup day. We have a lot of soups in the fall and winter. By this time, our younger kids have mostly finished their independent work. Our teenagers still usually have work after lunchtime, but we break for lunch and going outside before we come back in the afternoon for reading aloud. We went out for a hike one day this week with my younger kids when the older ones were at co-op. And one thing I've loved with this younger group of our kids is that I know so many more birds and flowers and trees and leaves than I did when my kids were younger. When our older kids were young, they often would ask me what different things were, but I didn't know what a lot of the trees were or the birds, whatever it was. It was just a blank slate for me. It wasn't something I learned a lot about as a child, knowing the different varieties of animals and plants and things. And we spent so much time just bringing things home, looking it up. And over the years, I've learned a lot. And I love that now our younger kids can ask me what something is, and I usually know it. It's so nice. In this way, if you have a lot of kids like I do, I do think that our younger kids are getting a better version of myself than the older ones did. I'm able to share more things readily and I am able to teach better. It's easier to teach math now than it was when my kids were younger and I was just refreshing it in my mind myself. All of these things get easier and you get better at them. Something else I did different this week that I do from time to time is take a break early in our morning and send all the kids outside to run around, get some early morning sunshine and fresh air for about 10 15 minutes and then have them come back inside and we pick up where we left off in our morning routine. When the weather's nice, we like to take our schoolwork outside if possible, but it's getting colder and so this just gives them an opportunity to get outside early in the morning before starting their work. >> What are they? >> Uh, they're acorns. >> Oh, yeah. Acorn. >> Yeah. [Music] One of the distractions that I think is hardest to manage is screens. And for us, we use screens in our homeschool for different things. And so, you know, kids are drawn like bugs to a light when there is a screen on in the room. And so, this can be very challenging. Um, I did a video on how we handle screen time in our home. I really should update it because things have changed, but I'll link that video for you below. We use screens in our homeschool for morning time. We watch Worldwatch and then our kids do Satara geography and also they'll do some of their typing lessons on a computer. But other than that, I really try to limit how much of their work is on a screen. We also um our kids do Veraritoss Press self-paced history lessons, but a lot of times the way I'll do this is after the time change when it gets dark so early, I'll save this for after dark so that we can maximize the daytime hours when they can be outside. But for the most part, I limit how much work the kids do on screens, and I just have to closely monitor it throughout the day for those, especially our older kids that do use computers for a lot of their high school subjects. One last thing I want to say about handling the distractions in your home is that it's never going to be perfect. We're in a living environment. there are a lot of moving parts and so it's never going to be perfectly quiet. So while we may need to work on some of these areas that I mentioned, sometimes we also just need to accept some of the interruptions and the imperfect atmosphere in our homes. You know Jesus, he was constantly surrounded by a crowd. He was interrupted all the time. And I love reading specifically in the Gospel of Mark about how Jesus handled interruptions. How we respond to what's going on around us makes the biggest difference. I hope this video encouraged you. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.