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Hi, you're listening to Call to Homeschool episode #278 How to have long term Homeschool success.
Friends, welcome back.
It is Meg, your homeschool guru.
We are in our 17th year homeschooling.
0:17
It's going really well.
It gets better and better every year.
I love it.
Today I want to do a short and sweet episode about something that I've been getting a lot of questions about lots of things that I've been seeing.
And I want to talk about how to have long term success in your home school.
0:33
So if you remember back in good old 2020 when everybody became a homeschooler, as you can imagine, had a lot of people reach out to me and they were like, help me, how in the world do you do this?
And I thought, you know what, the things I teach aren't a quick fix.
They're not a little Band-Aid because you're going to homeschool for a couple months or even a year.
0:54
Like, yes, I can help you with that.
But what I love to help people with is how to be able to homeschool long term, how to be able to have a successful homeschool always.
And really what it is, is how to make homeschool become part of your lifestyle.
1:10
And so there are just two things I want to leave you with today to help you to kind of get into this mindset of like, I can homeschool always, I can go all the way through.
So the first one is to remember to just do the small and simple things.
1:28
Now I write lesson plans and I can show you different things that we do.
Those are like the like everything is aligned, everything is amazing.
I remember to grab all my supplies and we do all of those things.
And those days are few and far between.
But I can always be doing the basics and very, very rarely do I do the bare minimum or schools like 5 minutes, 10 minutes.
1:53
But I'm usually somewhere in between of where we are at least getting together and doing a read aloud.
We're doing some math or doing some language arts.
We're doing just small and simple things.
And I see person after person trying to recreate how long school takes in a public school, government school, studying a private school, tracking that time and trying to recreate it in their home school.
2:17
And it doesn't work.
And another thing is they don't take that long in those school settings of teaching a subject.
So if their math class is 45 minutes, there is not 45 minutes of math instruction.
There is time to get into the class, to get situated, if you have to do any announcements, if there is some behavior issues that you have to deal with.
2:42
And then there you are teaching a mass amount of children.
So you have some kids who this completely makes sense to, who are asking maybe more intense questions or they want to be going faster to the complete opposite end of the spectrum that they're like, what, what is math?
What are we doing right?
2:58
And so you are trying to take a concept as simple as X + 3 = 7 and trying to explain it to 30 something kids that some of them get it and some of them don't, and all the things in between.
It just takes a lot longer, right?
3:14
But if I'm working with my kid one-on-one, I can go with their speed and their level.
So with that of remembering that I don't need to spend 45 minutes a day doing math with my kids.
We just need to be doing some some math a day.
For my 13 year old who's does Saxon, he does math four times a week and he does, he reads a lesson on his own and if he doesn't understand it, he's welcome to come and ask me for help.
3:40
He actually is.
Math has come fairly easy.
I don't know easy the right words, but it makes sense to his little brain and so he's usually pretty good to do it on his own when I'm checking it.
If he's starting to miss problems or when he misses a problem I just always go through and re explain something.
But he does like the warm up part.
3:57
Anyone else who uses Saxon like they have mental math and then they have like the new concept taught and then they have 30 questions.
I don't make him do all 30 questions.
I say odds or events because he doesn't need to spend all his day doing this math concept and so his math can be done in what, 1520 minutes?
4:15
And he is learning so much.
Say you have a kid who doesn't understand math.
Throwing more math at them is not going to make them understand math.
But if you make it really fun and you play a lot of games and all of a sudden you've learned, they're like, oh, math makes sense.
Then their little minds are open that you can still be doing it for 1520 minutes and they can still be incredibly successful.
4:36
Same with language arts.
Language arts does not need to be 45 minutes, does not need to be an hour, or anything longer than that.
Their little brains cannot sit there and just consume information on repeat, just like an adult probably cannot either, right?
4:52
So you can do 1015 minute lessons with language arts, even less if it's a younger kid, right?
If it's an older kid who can do it on their own, it still doesn't need to be very long.
I'm just a small and simple lessons, small and simple things.
That's one thing I got from Charlotte Mason ages ago of just keeping my lesson short and sweet.
5:12
And if I'm losing people's attention, we're just done and not in a done, like, fine, I'm not doing anything but like, oh, I've lost their attention.
So nothing's even being retained anyway.
So why am I bothering?
Because then I'm going to have a bad attitude about school.
But if people are just like, oh, I'm done, then it's like, OK, well, you can learn about something else tomorrow or let's do this other thing, right?
5:30
So just keeping things small and simple.
And as it says in the scriptures, I'm going to butcher this quote.
But if you know it, then say it along with me the right way.
But by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.
So it's that consistency that is going to bring those long term success instead of the big huge fancy lesson or the big huge activity, it's those small and simple things.
5:56
Which brings me to the second part of how to have this long term homeschool success.
And it is becoming.
So if you've read Atomic Habits, right when I got to do the Creation Coach course with Brooke Snow, we were becoming something.
6:11
So an example from Atomic Habits is he talks about whether or not you are like want to have a goal where you want to run 5K, half marathon, whatever.
So you have a goal, you're like, OK, I want to run 5K in 24 minutes.
And so I'm going to train, I'm going to do these things and I'm going to do my 5K and then I'm just done and I don't have to do it anymore.
6:30
But instead, when you become a runner, well, sometimes runners do five case and sometimes runners have a pace in mind.
And then when the race is over, guess what they do?
They keep running.
Maybe they slow it down a little bit.
And then there are times where they train for a marathon or something even bigger, 100 mile race or whatever it is.
6:48
And then sometimes they come back.
I'm like, yeah, but I'm always just running around a couple times a week.
And just with that consistency, I become a very amazing runner.
The same things happens with be creating this lifestyle of learning, of becoming a family that is always learning.
7:09
So instead of just crossing off the box, Yep, we finished third grade.
Check, check, check, check.
Yep, we finished this check, check, check, check.
Like, and then it's done and I don't have to think about this anymore, right?
Just like the person who runs a 5K.
It was a goal.
I did it.
Now I never have to put on another pair of shoes again.
But instead, when you become a lifelong learner, like that's how you also have long term successes because then your kids want to learn things, they want to know more.
7:35
They want to try a different Co opera, they want to try this class, they want you to teach them a certain subject, right?
They are just craving and wanting more because they have become somebody who loves learning.
So they know that like they can learn things on YouTube, they can learn things and different courses.
7:51
They can learn things with mom, through books, like classes, all the things because they are a lifelong learner.
And I want to do a quick recap of how you become something.
So this is what I learned from the creation coaching course.
So to become something, it starts all with what you say of really, well, really seeing yourself as that person, right?
8:16
Like that is where you are creating that blueprint in your mind of what is it that you want to create, right?
So that seeing part of OK, so maybe that means we have an awesome library or maybe that means I see us utilizing technology and making it a tool for us.
8:34
What do you see that working in your life?
How do you see your family being lifelong learners?
Then comes the say art and that could be like a we because it'd be a family thing where I I am a lifelong learner.
I love learning, I love sharing like I love making homeschool a lifestyle.
8:55
I love whatever that I statement is.
Or if a family a we statement, right?
Like this is who we are becoming, We're going to say this.
And then from that say we need to create a feeling.
So if that feeling for me would most likely be excitement, right?
9:11
Like, yes, I love learning.
This is so stinking fun.
Maybe it's a determination, maybe it's joy.
Maybe that's what you're seeking, happiness, whatever that is about feeling that then drives those actions.
And those actions will be the small and simple things of consistently doing your home school, of consistently looking things up.
9:31
And maybe it's even when your kids, especially little kids, ask so many questions.
Why is this this way?
Why is there wind?
Why is this?
What color is that?
Why are we doing this right?
Like so many sinking questions.
So maybe that consistency is like, let's look it up.
Oh my goodness, I have my phone right here, right now.
9:47
We can ask Siri, we can ask Google, we can look it up right now, right?
And so doing those little things, those small and consistent things.
So you do see, say, feel, do on repeat and eventually you become you become that family that just homeschools always that family that can figure out the different trials and obstacles that pop up with homeschooling.
10:12
You figure out things when a kids like I want more of a challenge.
I'm ready for this.
Like, OK, let's figure out how when all these things pop up.
You have become this lifelong homeschooler.
You have become this person who loves learning because you've seen yourself do it.
10:29
You've sane.
That's not a word said the things that said the thing that you want to become.
You feel that feeling and you do the stinking actions so that you can do it and become it.
And as you do these things, you will have long term home school success.
10:49
Friends love you all so much and I will talk to you next week.
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