Don’t homeschool moms look forward to finishing their school year and having a change of pace for the summer? Being purposeful today by praying, thinking, and planning your summer means ending it with a sense of satisfaction in what you accomplished rather than with regrets of wasted time.
Begin by Considering Your End-Goal
If you want to finish your summer well, you have to know what that means. What do you desire to accomplish this summer? What goals might you have? Would you like to get ahead in school? Maybe you desire an outing every week. Perhaps you have cleaning and organizing to do that you don’t have time for during the school year. Are there areas of character in your children that you could develop before August rolls around?
Write down those summer goals. Get them out of your head, in front of you where you can review, edit, add, and subtract from them. As you evaluate the goals, pray. Seek the Lord to determine what stays and what goes and how to accomplish what stays. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).
Summer Scheduling for Homeschool Mom
With a desire to accomplish those goals, consider putting together a summer schedule. Somehow the “wing it” mentality generally brings you to August with lots of plans still on paper but little accomplished. You might find yourself scratching your head, wondering where your summer went. Not so with a schedule. Whipping together a schedule dedicates time for each of your goals and a huge feeling of accomplishment when summer is over.
Perhaps one of your goals for summer is a slower pace than your school year affords. Your schedule helps you set the brakes on the school-year hurry. Simply give yourself more time for activities, and put in the schedule those activities that say “slower” to you. That might be reading out loud to the children, playing games with them, or taking a daily, family morning walk.
When you have a list of cleaning and organizing projects to accomplish, you want to have dedicated time on the schedule to accomplish those jobs. If you only have younger children, schedule these projects at nap time. If you have older and younger children, put one older child in charge of occupying the little ones, and put the other older children to work on the project with you. You might be surprised how fast you move through that “to do” list with just one hour a day dedicated to projects.
With character issues to conquer, chores are your ally. Not only will there be improvement in the cleanliness and tidiness of your house, but your children develop qualities such as obedience, responsibility, diligence, thoroughness, timeliness, efficiency, and concentration.
If school work is a summer goal, whether to catch up from the previous year or get ahead on the upcoming one, schedule that time. As you construct your schedule, you will see places in it that are natural times for setting school work in front of the children, whether it is to quiet them down, give them a break from hot, outside activities, or to keep them occupied while you take a rest.
No Regrets Summer
Many moms experience discouragement at the end of the summer not because of what they did but because of all they didn’t do. They anticipated those three months without normal homeschooling pressure and all they would accomplish, but somehow it just slipped away. When you set summer goals and then put together a schedule to execute them, summer ends with those goals achieved. Rather than discouragement, you experience the delight of looking back on your summer with the joy of a well-planned and well-executed summer.
Need help making a schedule? Managers of Their Homes is your tool. What about putting together a chore system? Managers of Their Chores can guide you with that.