Shift gears

On days when your kids just aren t getting it
or are overly distracted, try a different approach.

And while it is important to have daily lesson plans and weekly goals, don t let the curriculum drive the entire schedule ever day. Observe your child and adapt your approach as necessary.

Another big mistake I made my first year of homeschooling was to allow my curriculum to drive me. Even on days when it was obvious that my kids just weren t getting it, I would push them to complete the assignments we had determined were appropriate for that day.

When I finally learned to back off, our homeschooling became much more effective. On days when my fifth-grader just could not quite figure out how to reduce fractions to the lowest common denominator, we would take a break and move on to something else.

Although in some cases, we did not even return to math that day, more often than not, we found that waiting until the evening when the hustle and bustle of the day was over worked much better. At that time, she could sit down and breeze through the math concepts that were impossible just a few hours earlier.