Easing Back Into Homeschool After the Holidays Without Burnout | Homeschool Plans for the New Year

Hey everybody, welcome to Wallock Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be about easing into the new homeschool year or the new year in your home school without overwhelm. Transitions are hard and not just for our kids. They are hard for us as adults. They are just difficult. and coming off of the holiday high and the late nights and the sugar and the gifts and the parties and the just the excitement of it all and trying to go back to a routine that you probably haven't done in its entirety in at least a month is difficult again not just for our kids but for us as the parents too. So, what we like to do in January is keep it simple. And I know that's like really difficult because if you're anything like me, you're looking at January and it's blank and it's a fresh start and you're like, "Oh, but I could plan and I could color code and I could have a routine and a schedule and a rhythm and I could do all of these really fun things." And you're like mentally thinking, "I'm going to sit down and I'm going to just throw all of this at my kid and it's going to be a recipe for disaster." Ask me how I know because I've done it year after year after year and it never ever works. It is a fail because again transitions are hard. So what I like to do for the first 6 to 8 weeks of a new home school year is give myself and Emily grace. And by giving us grace, I choose to pick one to three things that are like our bare minimums. things that fill her bucket, things that fill my bucket, things that are still kind of like learning but fun, and things that help us get back into some kind of routine. So, we're making that transition. We're just doing it in a simple, smooth, slow, graceful, enjoyable way. So, because of that, I created what I like to call a book in a game a day challenge. This was born probably five or more years ago. And when she was younger, it was simple. She would pick a picture book. We would play a game. A lot of the times that looked like us, you know, reading one of the like circumference books and playing some swamp or, you know, reading um I don't whatever the picture book was that she was interested in. Maybe that specific day it was about monkeys and we would play monkey bingo or um you know, bananagrams or something, right? It just looked like us trying to have like that table time and connecting and getting back in the habit of having some sort of routine. We'd read a book, we'd play a game, and that was it. If we did those two things, it was a successful homechool day. If we did more, great. But I was realistic and I gave me and her both grace. And if we did those two things, I was happy the day was a success and I just let it go. as she hit about middle school age, we created discovery decks. And so that is now what our January and sometimes even into February looks like. It looks like us reading together, playing together, and exploring her curiosity together. So it is simple as us reading a chapter from a book, a page from a book. Um sometimes it's her reading a graphic novel or her reading something. Sometimes it's us reading together, but it's reading in some form. It's playing in some form. Card game, dice game, board game, video game, role playinging game. It may even look like us going outside and playing cornhole or something, you know, some sort of physical game, pickle ball, whatever. But it's reading in some form, playing in some form, and then exploring in some form of her curiosity. So, that's just using one of our discovery decks. So, she will pick a few topics that she's interested in, and I will let her then choose whichever card sounds good to her that day. Um, typically she does these over breakfast. So, I will leave a couple out as an option. She will eat breakfast and watch the video of the discovery deck card, which kind of starts our day in an educational exploratory way. Sometimes what we read and play has to do with that or it's inspired by what she's learned or what she's curious about. Um, and then again, we will read and we will play at some point in that day. If that's all we do, great. It was a successful day. If we do more, that's just icing on the cake. Like, it's just like, hey, that was bonus. I'm glad we got to that. I'm glad we did more. Glad we explored that. Or maybe she got a math lesson done. But I don't put that pressure on her or on me. Simple is like the best because again, we need to form that routine again. We need to start like the ball rolling. And this is a great way to get it rolling because it's things that she loves. It's things that I love. It's ways for us to connect with each other or as a family. So, we read, we play, and we explore. That's it. We do that for like six to eight weeks to start our school year back. And we just kind of slowly keep adding and rolling into and by the time spring rolls around, we're kind of back into our full rhythm at that point. But I've learned that giving us grace is the best way to transition back into the homeschool routine after the holidays with very, very little overwhelm and burnout. Otherwise, we are rolling in from the holidays. Then our February blues and the winter blues kind of hit and we are like butting heads and it it's never good. But this this is always successful. Like it's always super successful. And the things that she learns during this time period always blow me away because it leaves space for her to explore on her own or to be creative or maybe to um do some of the projects and things that she got over the Christmas holidays. maybe build the Legos that she got as a gift or, you know, it just gives her that blank space to be able to do that. And it gives us that space to kind of explore and think, see what she's interested in, and maybe even guide our next term in our home school because I'm seeing like, oh, she's really curious about this. Maybe this is what we do in the spring. So, it's perfect for our home school and maybe it's perfect for yours, too. Now, let's talk about our specific plans for this like new home school year. Um, Emily received a lot of Lord of the Rings things for Christmas because she's slightly obsessed. So, her request is that we read from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Now, are we going to get through all four of these? I don't know. We're going to start with The Hobbit and we're going to work our way through. Where we are is where we are. [snorts] And then some of the games that we will be playing for the next little bit. We have Spottit Lord of the Rings. We have Uno Lord of the Rings. We have the Lord of the Rings Fellowship Trick Taking Game. Um, this one is cooperative, which is kind of a nice change of pace because then we're not competing against each other, we're competing against the game. Uh, we have the Lord of the Rings Duel for Middle Earth. This is a dual, so it's a two-player game, which is really nice because again, I'm homeschooling an only child. So that means that u we don't always have to all be playing a game together. It means her and I can play or her and Kevin can play. We have the adventure book game Lord of the Rings. So this is um playing through the trilogy of Lord of the Rings in eight chapters. So it's one that we will play over the course of time because like each chapter is a new um flip of the book. which kind of like changes the board al together. So, it's essentially like eight games in one. Um, and then the one that her and Kevin are the most excited about is we have a 5e, which is basically D and D inspired Lord of the Rings. And this is the starter set. So, this is a role playing game. So, this is another one that will be played multiple times throughout like the whole course of the six to eight weeks. And then the last thing is discovery decks. And Emily is also equally obsessed with animals. So, one of the decks that she asked me to pull was the animal showdown. Um, I think she's also probably going to do wacky wildlife, um, endangered animals, and I'm sure she'll probably also pull maybe like horses or bears. She is like obsessed with animals. So, any of the animal decks is what she's going to gravitate to. And I have no problem with that because nine times out of ten her watching a video about an animal or learning about it will end up leading us down all these rabbit trails to where they live. So we're learning about geography or maybe like the science or the scientists that did something that discovered something and then next thing you know we're learning about something else. It's wonderful. That's what I love about child and interestled learning. So if animals is what makes her happy, that's what we're going to go with and we are going to learn more about that. Um I did also pull I don't know if we'll do it because again bare minimum but I did also pull our who was JRR Tolken um book and mini unit because we have that available to us and so depending on how in-depth she wants to go that is something that I like have on the back burner. So there's that. So there you have it. That is my simple plan for a easy graceful hopefully peaceful transition back to the homeschool year. it is to read, to play, and to explore her curiosity together. Now, if this plan sounds great and it's something you would like to do, I have for the month of January decided to put all of our discovery decks on a special promotion. Um, no code is needed. Anytime you buy one deck, you will get a second deck free. It's just automatic. You add two to your cart and one is going to be marked $0. That is for the entire month of January. So, if you decide now that you want something super simple to add to your homeschool that like literally requires nothing from you, you can go pick a topic and have your child pick a topic or you can pick two different topics for maybe two different kids um and let them learn on their own so that it's less stress. Or if you decide halfway through the month when maybe you've overwhelmed yourself that you need something simpler to take a break, that option will still be available to you. So, I will leave a link to all of the different topics because we have over 50 different topics available now in our discovery decks so that you can check them out and buy one and get one free. If you have planned your January homeschool or your transition back, I would love to hear in the comments what that looks like for you.