You’re a parent, you’re a teacher, you may even be a cook! Homeschooling doesn’t come without nuts and bolts and we’ve taken note. Continue reading to find out some of our homeschooling tips and tricks that could help both your in-home classroom AND home life maintain some balance.

#1: Learn Learning Styles:

Make sure you’re tailoring your lessons towards your child’s unique learning style. Talk to your child about their learning style to help them understand why some things may come easily and others may take some more practice. Do you know your learning style? Interestingly, our teaching style sometimes reflects our learning style. Check out the following chart to get in tune with your child and with yourself.

Learning Styles Graph

#2: Tools of the Trade

Relying on books to provide complete lesson plans that are geared towards schooling your child’s every educational need is a thing of the past. Nowadays, many homeschool classrooms are turning to educational computer games and educational apps to spruce up learning and assure fun and play, both vital for children’s learning, are at the forefront. Be sure to look for internet tools and apps that are right for your child. Not every computer game will be a hit with your child or be the best way for your child to learn, so get to know your child’s needs, get to know what apps and education computer games are out there and pair them up!

#3: Beware of Homeschool Burnout

When you’re so busy taking care of your child’s educational and personal needs, you may forget about taking care of someone…yourself! Give yourself a personal self-check everyday and monitor what your needs are. You may need to remind yourself to work on patience and take more deep breathes that day, give yourself time to take a warm bath that night or take the children out for an education field-trip. Don’t feel guilty! By taking care of your needs you can be sure you are giving your children the best care and your best teaching self. You can even turn this into a learning moment and talk to your students about their personal self-care and what they do to take care of their emotional, physical and spiritual needs.

#4: Focus, focus, FOCUS! Getting children to focus

Sometimes children cannot seem to focus no matter what we do. We can try to motivate them with a prize or sticker, discipline them for their poor attention or even plead them to listen to you, but sometimes they just won’t listen! First things first, get to know your child’s ability to sit still and be fully receptive to whatever you’re trying to teach. Each child is different so this may be hard if you’re teaching more than one child. Pay attention to how much time goes by when your child is fully engaged with you. Likewise, pay attention to how much time your child needs to reboot and recharge. After you’ve gotten to know your child’s attention span, set breaks that include physical exercise and snacks as needed. Sometimes the brain just needs to stop thinking about a subject in order to fully absorb it, so get out there and move!

Thinking Cap Image

#5: Continue to Build Family Connections

It’s easy to get lost in the teacher mentality and try to incorporate school-work into everyday life, but don’t forget that children need parents too! Make time to connect with your family by playing games, talking about whatever is important to your children and having family dinners that don’t involve talking about school. You can even take a day off to focus on family bonding. It may sound crazy but distancing yourself from the work can sometimes be extremely beneficial not only for your children, but for yourself! By making an effort to ensure your child is getting both the parent and teacher side of you, you will feel better about your abilities to fully provide what your child needs.

Thanks for reading! For more homeschooling sites please visit our top Homeschooling Sites page.