Getting It All Done........"I'm behind in our homeschool!"

I know many have contacted me to say that they are struggling with getting the school year finished up and worrying that they will never make it to the next grade level because they are behind. Remember you are NEVER behind in the homeschool, in most states we do not have to follow the public school calendar, which is a blessing since we homeschool year round. I do remember our 2nd year of homeschooling (we had homeschooled preschool and then again in the 4th grade). I would dream that our son was a big tall boy STILL in the 4th grade......lol. I could never get him out of the 4th grade in my dreams, we did tons of school and he was still a 4th grader! It was now October of the following school year and he was still a 4th grader in my dreams. lol. We did end up finishing the 4th grade right on target, but those dreams haunted me day and night.

If you think you are behind, sit down with a calendar and your student books. Look through and see exactly where you are, you've had to make some progress unless you have been laying in bed with a pillow over your head for 9 months!  LOL.  Glance through what is left, most of it could be review, look and see if there are any review items that your child really needs, if they did well on all the areas move forward, skip the review. If they struggled with factoring trees or roman numerals or multiplications tables, (or whatever math you are working on that year) take those review pages and work on them. Work on any new materials and then move on. Don't get bogged down with what the curriculum tells you needs to be done, work with your child on what he needs. I know a lot of material has tons of review days before a test, if your child has that materials down pat, move forward with the test. I usually ask if he is ready for the test and he will either say "YES" or he might say, can we work on a few more problems in the area of XYZ."  Or "Would you go over this section with me again?" So in some areas you can move through several lessons in a day. Also who says school must be M-F from 8:20am-3:00pm? Sometimes we will work on stuff in the evenings, a few math problems or some reading. Some of our best school times have been snuggled on the couch on a Sat or Sun afternoon doing spelling words or working on sentence structure. Learning is what you make of it, if you make it out to be drudgery, then the kids will see it has a hardship.

Enjoy your time with your kids, you only get 12 school years with them and that goes by pretty fast!