Do you ever feel like your homeschool routine gets a little stale, things are just chugging along, but the fun just isn’t there? Sometimes going with the schedule gets that way, even if things are working just fine you feel like you need to shake things up every once in a while.
Shaking Up Our Homeschool Routine
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I’m not good with routines or, ruts as I often feel like. How do you shake up your routine? Do you take time off, go on a field trip?
For the longest time, we actually did school in the afternoon after getting some play out. We all had our time for play, for work, for being about to get outside and enjoy the day before it got too hot, etc. It was the best time for us, during that time.
We like to shake up our routine in a number of different ways. Just changing the medium in which we are learning about something is the easiest way to do it. The Usborne books that came with our curriculum have internet links. We like to take the time to go through them once we have finished a section, kind of like a refresher or review as we don’t test. We just finished up The Encyclopedia of the Human Body from our science, a book that we thoroughly enjoyed.
Let Your Child Teach
Instead of reading and teaching (at) your children, hand the book over and let them do the teaching. If it is a subject that they are really interested in they’ll love telling you or a sibling what they’ve read about it. I try to find a documentary on the subject they are learning too, just to have a different learning medium. Excitement is the best learning tool, nothing makes a topic easier to learn like interest and excitement. BookShark schedules have optional activities that you can do with your kids each week, and they have been different conversations you can have together, to art projects.
Take a Break
Maybe all you need is a break from your homeschool routine and school altogether. Take a day to do nothing, spending the day at home or out and about in your community. Sometimes you just need a break from your bookwork and schedule. I think this need for a break is why I love the four-day schedule of BookShark, we plan our off day on Wednesday, the middle of the week for getting out of the house in particular. Our local science center has a section on the human body so you know we had to spend a Wednesday there checking it out and learning with some more hands-on.
Skip the Written
Sometimes just sitting down together and reading is the best medicine. Occasionally we like to skip math, and worksheets and just spend the morning reading. Taking turns reading from our science or history books for a bit is often a great break from math, language arts, or even the worksheets that come with our science curriculum. We read through The Encyclopedia of the Human Body without stopping to do the worksheets, my kids were interested, they wanted to keep learning and it was flowing nicely. I didn’t stick to the schedule because they were absorbed in learning from the book.
We did go back to the worksheets later, both girls knew the majority of the answers to the questions because they had been so interested. Gauge even told his Dadda at one point that he had a heart and arteries, which I think is so cute that he’s learning along with his older sisters.