Reminder: Don’t stress the schedule.

With a new school year around the corner, the first days often comes with both excitement and trepidation.

Day one generally starts with new books, a clean slate… and often a hefty planner with all kinds of goals to reach.

Here’s my tip for you, though: if you don’t reach your goals, don’t beat yourself up. 

The focus of the year is to be learning, but everyone progresses differently, and that’s one of the beauties of homeschooling! You can alter and adjust the timing to meet the needs of each individual child. It doesn’t mean laziness or procrastination, but it does mean not stressing the child (or yourself!) if he needs more time to understand a concept!

Our motto has always been to encourage a love of learning. With different learning styles prevalent within the same families, sometimes it takes a few tries to find what curriculum really speaks to your child. Force-fitting them to fit a specific kind of materials may only lead to despair and the illusion that the child “can’t do it,” when all it might take is more time and a fresh perspective.  

Planners are wonderful for organization, but they should NOT rule over you or your children.

Another tip? Don’t fill them in with pen! Sometimes plans need to change, and THAT’S O.K. Use a pencil. …one that has an eraser.

Looking for a planner? Here are a couple of options:

If you find yourself sputtering this far into the school year and think a planner could bring some order to the chaos, here are a couple of my top picks!

• The Well Planned Gal 2018-2019 Homeschool Planner
• The Old Schoolhouse 2018-2019 Schoolhouse Planner

Or you can always try looking on Pinterest for free options to print yourself! Just try searching for things like teacher-planners and school-planners.

Here's a recipe to get you started!

Here's an easy crockpot recipe to help keep those school days running smoothly!

You can download a pdf copy of this recipe here. Enjoy!