Make It Fun!

"Don't forget to make your homeschooling fun!"

This is a tagline I often use after going through all the academic pros and cons in my Homeschooling Basics presentation. On days when I am up to my eyeballs in fractions or verbs, it is time to switch gears and remember to enjoy my children. Maybe it is time to play a grammar game and give the workbook a break. Or make cookies and divide them to learn fractions! Or maybe to just get the car and get a milkshake. Whatever you do, remember that if Mom isn't enjoying it, then mostly likely the kids aren't either.

Sometimes just changing location can make all the difference in a school day. Go outside or drive to the library. Or go over to a friend's house or a grandparent's house. You can take the same books and materials you planned to do at home but having a different environment can make it exciting all over again. Also have other people to do it with can make more enjoyable too.

Once I decided inside of drawing letters inside again I would take my son outside to draw the letters outside on the concrete. Then he threw water balloons at them as I called them out. Now that was fun!

Another time I wrote letters on Easter eggs. This was team work exercise in matching the capital with the lower case letters to put all the eggs back together again. These types of hands-on activities are fun for the children!

So get out of the house or try learning a different way when the daily route of in-home academics grows stale- remember to have fun with your children while they are little, even in homeschooling!