Homeschool newbies

How to Homeschool - 5 Essential Steps to Start Homeschooling from Our Muslim Homeschool

The new school year is here and homeschool prep is at the forefront of our minds. This may be your first homeschool year and you’re wondering how to get started. How can you homeschool if you’ve never done it before? These 5 essential steps will show you how to homeschool easily throughout the year!

We often start the year with good intentions, meticulous plans and well-prepared resources. However, after a few weeks, we risk the ‘homeschool slump’ when the enthusiasm dips and the good intentions we started out with are difficult to maintain. With these 5 key steps, you’ll be in control of your homeschool life!

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1. Work out your daily rhythm

To discover how to homeschool in the best way possible you must realise that everyone is different. There is no one correct way to do things, so spend some time figuring out what works best for you and your family.

During the day, structure your homeschool subjects in a way that makes the most sense for your child. If your children are more focused in the morning, get the difficult topics (like maths) out of the way first. If your children start to get a little tired around early afternoon, use that time for gentle and relaxing Poetry Time.

Figuring out what works best will go a long way in keeping your days as stress-free as possible. Your rhythm may change throughout the year – you might enjoy Poetry Time over breakfast! And that’s fine. If you pay attention to how your children respond to their subjects, you’ll know instinctively when and how you need to change things up.

2. Establish morning and evening routines

Even before you start homeschooling, it’s a good idea to get your whole family into a routine for each day. Routines are very different from schedules! Schedules can be restrictive by dictating what gets done and for how long, and if you have a bad day (and let’s be honest, the reality of homeschooling is things rarely go according to plan!) then the whole schedule can fly out of the window leaving you more stressed and unorganised than before!

Routines are different. Routines tell you what order to do things. This gentle structure is very helpful for children in keeping them grounded and focused. They are able to relax by anticipating what comes next in their day – whatever time that may be!

Incorporate a routine in the morning before you start school. For example, your children have to make their bed, eat breakfast, help clear the table and then get their school things out.

How to homeschool - 5 essential steps to start homeschooling

When it comes to the evening, nothing helps kids wind down for a good night’s sleep like a stable evening routine. As mothers, we are used to using a bedtime routine to help babies sleep through the night, but older children benefit from a bedtime routine just as much. For example: Once they finish their work for the day, they can put away their school things, eat dinner, clear the table, tidy up their toys, have a bath, read in bed, and then lights out.

A routine is the perfect way to add structure to your day without the restrictions of a tight schedule that can easily go off track.

If you’d like to know more about using routines in your day, I talk about it more here!

3. How to Homeschool and get the chores done too

Chores are something we all hope and pray we can implement with our children, but day after day we find ourselves overwhelmed with housework and it seems like no one is helping! When trying to homeschool, it can be extremely difficult to focus on enjoying the time educating your kids when a long list of chores is distracting you.

By distributing manageable chores across your children, you achieve a number of things:

⭐It’s less stressful for you when you know certain things are taken care of.

⭐It instils a sense of responsibility amongst your kids.

⭐They develop a meticulous love and care of their home and bedroom.

⭐Home economics is an extremely valuable homeschool subject. Giving your children chores will teach them life skills which will prove to be priceless in their older years.

Consider adding ‘Chore Time’ to your daily routine so you can better relax and focus on quality time with your children.

4. Plan your meals

Staying with the theme of organisation, meal planning goes a long way in keeping you in control. I talk about how to implement meal planning into your homeschool in my podcast: Raising Mums – Run Your Home Like A Boss

By knowing the week’s menu, you can plan your shopping ahead of time and only buy the items you need each week. This way, you save money and reduce the amount of food that goes to waste!

Get your children involved by asking them which meals they would like to have. Your older children could even help prepare a meal each week. This is a great opportunity for them to learn those all-important life skills!

I use a fantastic online meal planning tool called PLAN TO EAT. If you would like to try it out, they are currently running a 30-day FREE TRIAL!

CLICK HERE to sign up!

5. How to plan your homeschool year

Planning is essential when homeschooling. You need to have an idea what you will use each day, otherwise you find yourself constantly frazzled trying to get resources ready on time.

It can be very easy to fall down the ‘homeschool rabbit hole’ when looking online. The longer you search the more excited are to try every curriculum and every downloadable resource you can find. Whilst this is thrilling at first, after a while you quickly become burnt out by the amount of activities, eBooks, and videos you have at your disposal.

It’s impossible to predict what your entire year has in store for you, but you can find the balance between structured organisation and having freedom to change things when you need to:

⭐Yearly: Each year, have a loose plan for how you will homeschool. This plan includes books you will read, Maths and Phonics programmes, Science and History topics, etc.

⭐Every 6 weeks: This is where you can be more detailed. Using the topics and programmes you’ve already chosen, plan 6 weeks in detail. Which subtopics will you cover? Which pages of those books do you need? Which activities and worksheets need to be prepared? Gather everything together and note down your plan so each day your mind is clear, and you know exactly how to homeschool that day.

how to homeschool - how to start homeschooling
From our Muslim homeschool

Remember, you can’t possibly do everything! So, pick the topics you want and prepare the activities you can realistically get done.

Want to know more about planning? Check out Homeschool Planning 101.

What advice would you give?

When it comes to homeschooling, countless people have plenty of advice! We all need help from other homeschool mums, so please share your advice in the comments below.

What steps do you find essential when starting your homeschooling year? How do you homeschool successfully?

Share with us in the comments below!

Homeschooling advice from veteran homeschool mom

How often do we look back on something and think, “If wish I could have done that differently.”?

Not often are we given the gift of parenting, or homeschooling, with hindsight. But with almost an 11 year gap between my two oldest kids, alhamdulilah, I’m given at least a peek into how my homeschooling decisions have played out over time.

I hope my hindsight can be of use to you as well, as I reflect back over the last 8 years of homeschooling, now that my oldest is, mashaAllah, graduating high school.

Academic rigor is secondary

So often we spend hours upon hours trying to find the perfect book. It’ll have all the right information, with all the best activities, and thorough tests and quizzes to make sure they don’t miss a thing.

But what about the atmosphere in our home? What about nurturing that love of learning that comes naturally to children? How long do we spend thinking about that?

I wish I would have given my daughter more time to be a kid. More time to explore and learn at her leisure, and not during some scheduled hour-long exploratory time. You can’t schedule curiosity.

Don’t let others dictate your homeschool

If you’re just starting with homeschooling and you don’t have much support around you, it’s tempting to fill up your curriculum list with impressive books and resources to try to sway them that you’re not ruining your child.

Let me tell you something – a book list is not going to change many people’s minds.

Pick the resources you feel are best, for your child. How many school teachers do you think are making curriculum decisions based on what their parents or neighbors think? They choose books they think will be the most effective. Period.

Get acquainted with various homeschooling methods

Most of us have gone through the public school system. It’s all we know. Then when we start homeschooling, we dream of bulletin boards, and an in box for assignments.

Sometimes we have to jump into homeschooling because traditional school isn’t working, so we might not have a lot of time to read up on the various methodologies. Even if that’s the case, start reading the core book on each topic and see what speaks to you.

Think of yourself as an educator or mentor, not only an administrator

An administrator simply makes education more accessible. They order books, organize lesson plans, and grade work. An educator or mentor understands how students learn, how their environment affects their learning, and has some basic understanding of psychology.

Be the educator. Treat homeschooling as your career, not a task. That means reading and studying about your chosen career.

Less semester-long classes

The semester long classes were great, and I love that she made some friends in those arenas, but I think we did too many, which made it hard to take part in anything else. We barely went on field trips that related to her lessons because our schedule was so jam packed with classes.

As I’m faced with the temptation of signing up for all the interesting classes again with my younger kids, I remind myself that childhood is not the only time to learn. We can, and should, learn as adults as well. If they miss out on a class about sewing, or woodworking, or reptiles, there will be opportunities for them to learn about that as an adult as well, if they so choose.

Ask help from the community

In the six years we were exclusively homeschooling my oldest (she spent the last two years at a local college finishing her high school diploma), I had three more children and we moved twice. To say I was a bit distracted would be an understatement.

Alhamdulilah, we made do, but it would have been easier if I reached out to community members to organize study groups while she was reading classic books since I did not have the time to read them along with her. If you find someone who is passionate about a subject, they are usually happy to help the young generation to explore that passion.

Grades and deadlines

We are pretty relaxed in the early years of homeschooling, but I do suggest to start grading and giving deadlines one year before you’ll be keeping specific records. In the US (though each state is different), you don’t have to keep records until the student is in high school.

It is a disservice to your child to first experience real deadlines and grades when it will be on their permanent record.

Less is more

Okay, we don’t want to take this to an extreme and ignore educating our kids, but hear me out, especially in regards to graded assignments.

The fewer number of graded assignments you give, the more weight each one has, which means they learn to give their best time and attention to each assignment. They can’t just slop something together and know that something that was easier for them, and therefore they got a good grade on, will even out the poor assignment they just turned in.

Less formal assignments, more time to sit and think about them independently.

Never, ever stop learning

Show your child what it means to be a lifelong learner. Sign up for classes, read books, watch documentaries. Even if they scoff at your boring choices for how you use your time, they will be noticing that you didn’t stop learning when you graduated. And neither should they.

Make du’a

Last, but not least, don’t forget that striving to provide opportunities for a great education is in your hands, but the end result ultimately is not. Allah has a plan for all of us, and sometimes it may look like it’s not going your way. That’s okay, too. Patience is what we do have control over. In sha Allah be patient.

Shannen is an American Muslim convert, homeschooling mother to 4 daughters and mediocre housewife. She enjoys blogging, knitting, quilting, and avoiding housework. Read more on her blog about their Islamic homeschool, green(ish) living, and the ups and downs of parenting. You can connect with Shannen on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

How to Homeschool – 5 Essential Steps to Prepare to Homeschool