You’ve finally decided to homeschool your children. You’re convinced that this is the best education option at this time for your family.

But, how do you make sure that you homeschool successfully without losing your job or losing your mind?

Most parents are already busy with their many roles and responsibilities. Now, homeschooling will be added to their plate.

You will be homeschooling your child or your children for the first time this school year and you feel nervous about what you have just signed up to.

How do homeschooling parents do all that they do? How do they make magic?

First, deep breaths.

I hope this blog post will help stop your palpitations and enable you to sleep better most nights as you get ready to take on your new role of becoming a homeschooling parent.

For new readers who have just stumbled on my blog for the first time, what I am about to share are time-saving strategies that I have used (therefore, I have already tested them) over the years as I homeschooled my three children. I had been homeschooling my eldest since birth and he is almost twelve.

The first strategy that I want to share with you is to MAKE A MENU PLAN. Moms are usually the ones who homeschool their children because most moms choose to stay at home and be more involved in educating and molding their children. But moms are also usually in charge of the kitchen, planning and preparing the meals of the family. When you have a meal plan, you save precious time every single day. Those moments that you save because you no longer think or wonder what to cook that day, you can use to homeschool a child. You just need to come up with a plan for the week at least or for the month. You work on that once and you get it out of the way for the whole week or the whole month! My good news to you is that I have already done this for you many years ago. I was a first-time mom who loved to put things in order and organize our home and I plan for efficiency. I made three versions of a 4-week-cycle menu plan for my family and you can download it for FREE here. You can download all three for free and one of the versions available even has a grocery list. Can you believe that? They also include balanced, easy to prepare and easy on the budget meals. So, take your pick! You may also tweak it to suit your family’s preferences and needs. It had three versions because my husband was trying to lose weight and wanted to eat healthier so he asked me to update our menu plan and update the dishes included in it.

The second strategy is still related to food. MAKE FOOD ACCESSIBLE to your children. It’s hard to focus and study when one is hungry. This is true to both adults and children. Studies also proved that students who did not eat breakfast or were not well-fed did poorly in academics compared to students who had breakfast and are well-nourished. Thus, if you make food accessible to your children, they can just grab a bite when they are hungry without you having to prepare it for them. I make sure that we have fruits, bread and biscuits all the time so that when my kids get hungry before, during, or after our lessons and it’s not yet the main mealtime, they could help themselves. I taught my kids to be independent and how to prepare simple snacks early on. This enables me to focus my energy on preparing our food for lunch or dinner.

HAVE A ROUTINE. I would not recommend a rigid schedule. Having a routine works better because the sequence is more important or what needs to be done first or after a specific task or activity works better. Routines help children create habits. When something becomes a habit, people no longer think about it. We just do them automatically. Imagine if you can help your child or your children build good and helpful habits, your life will be so much easier. We don’t need to nag them or we need fewer reminders to make them do what they need to do or what we want them to do.

INTEGRATE TEACHING MOMENTS INTO YOUR ROUTINES. When you weave teaching moments into your routines, you make sure that they are done or those teaching moments happen. For example, you can include or integrate reading aloud during mealtimes. My kids take quite a while in finishing their meals. They like to talk a lot. If I leave them alone to finish their meal, they might stay there for an hour or more and not finish it at all. To make the most of our time on the dining table, I include Bible reading and discussion in our breakfast time. If we are in a hurry and for some reason, one child woke up later than everyone else, we move this reading time to lunch. This has been part of our routine for years that sometimes when I forget, my kids remind me to read the Bible already. Isn’t that wonderful? My kids already know our routines. Part of our daily routines also is cleaning time. Our kids help out in the chores. That is part of their homeschool lessons. They are also involved in meal preparations. Prayers are often taught as part of our family prayers. We pray throughout the day. they learn prayers most often by praying with the family. That’s why even before they attend their catechism class for their First Communion, they already know a lot about God, the Bible, common prayers, the Holy Mass, and many more because these are all part of our daily routine.

DO THINGS TOGETHER THROUGH UNIT OR THEME STUDIES. I combine all ages in one activity or lesson then I have one-to-one time with each child. It’s like having a plenary in a conference and then afterward there will be break-out sessions. I choose a common topic that all or most of the children are interested in. Then, I assign age or ability-appropriate activities or tasks to each child. I will be teaching this in one of my future training modules for homeschooling parents. If you want to attend that training, join the Homeschooling Parents Support Group PH on Facebook. This will be offered as part of my masterclass for homeschooling parents soon.

USE THE PROJECT-BASED OR THE INTEGRATED APPROACH in teaching your children. I combine several topics or files of study in one task or project. Either I look for an existing one or I create something new that will allow the kids to manifest or practice competencies that I want to observe or I want them to learn. I like this approach because it does not only save me time. It also enables kids to develop higher thinking skills. In real life and in the corporate world, your boss does not break a task down to you per subject. He/she asks you to do a task or produce an output and it’s up to you to use what you have learned to put them all together to accomplish what is asked. We don’t need to wait for our children to be employees or adults to learn how to think this way. We can train them to think this way as early as possible so that they would be ready for the real world and the workplace. Their boss or employer need not spoonfeed them. One common example of this is cooking. Cooking covers many topics or fields. It is not only home economics. It is also science. It involves math. It includes vocabulary. It teaches following instructions. Following a recipe requires comprehension as well. Cooking and meal preparation covers many competencies. I will be doing a training module also for this topic in the future. So if you want to join, make sure that you are part of my support group for homeschooling parents. Join here.

LET OLDER KIDS TEACH OR ASSIST THEIR YOUNGER SIBLINGS. Teaching helps a person improve on or master a subject or topic. Thus, you are helping your older child when you ask him to read to assist a younger brother or sister. You are not simply delegating a task to your older child. You are teaching him responsibility and empathy. You are helping him develop patience and creativity as he teaches his younger sibling. As your older child succeeds in teaching the younger one, he gains more confidence in his abilities. The process also helps strengthen the relationship between the children. We naturally develop positive feelings for people who help us.

OUTSOURCE SOME WORK OR LESSONS. You don’t need to do everything in managing the home or homeschooling your children. If there is a subject where you are not well versed and no amount of review would enable you to give it justice, find another way to teach it like a video or another person either paid or for free. If you can find another family member, relative, friend, or homeschooling parent to teach your child a certain topic or subject, grab that opportunity. There are many learning videos nowadays on the internet. Khan Academy is one of the platforms you can check out to help you and it’s for free. You can also outsource some housework. Before the pandemic happened, we were sending our laundry to the laundry shop. I also hire cleaners to come to our house at least once a week. I stick to the basics and to the things that only I can do or teach. I hire a music teacher for my eldest child who is better at music than me. I asked my husband to teach my kids IT or engineering topics to our kids since that is his area of expertise. When my brother is around, I ask him to play chess with my kids because he was once a chess varsity player.

Let your children have PURPOSEFUL, EDUCATIONAL, and LIMITED SCREENTIME. Let your children have some screentime that is appropriate for their age. It can be educational shows, videos, or apps that help them learn and grow in specific knowledge or skills. For example, I let my kids watch Magic School Bus on Friday afternoons. The kids enjoy these shows while they learn. I get to rest a bit or do something else while they are watching. Everybody wins!

Last but not least, set a day and time EACH WEEK when you will PLAN AND PREPARE. This could include printing of worksheets/activity sheets or just marking the pages in a book that your child needs to read or answer. That way, you are already set for most days of the school week. You will not spend time each day wondering or searching for lessons to give to your child when you PLAN AHEAD.

There you have it! I have shared ten time-saving strategies that I have tested through the years and found helpful and effective in our family. I hope that you find some of these strategies applicable to your family also. And if you do, I hope you remember to link back to me and leave a comment on this post. I would love to know how this post helped you.

If you need help and support in homeschooling your child/children, feel free to join the Homeschooling Parents Support Group PH on Facebook. You can ask me questions there.

If you are still investigating homeschooling or new to it, I suggest that you read my blog post entitled How to Start Homeschooling: Homeschooling 101.

Feel free to share this post also to fellow parents who are homeschooling if this has helped you. Remember, sharing is caring and helping!