Taking a break is healthy!
Do you take a break now and then from homeschooling? Well, if you do, good for you and good for your children! Taking a break from time to time is healthy! We can homeschool on the days we choose to do so, provided we meet state requirements. With 365 days in the year, all of them being at our disposal to homeschool, this is not hard to do.
Allow yourself and your children to take breaks.
We cannot homeschool all day, every day, all year long. Either we will burn out or our children will. We need to guard against this. Breaks are a time to refresh, to pursue other interests, and to make other memories. Homeschooling cannot and should not be our “everything”. That is too tall of an order for any one thing in our lives.
Taking a break makes the return to homeschooling a blessing.
When we take breaks and focus on other things for awhile, the return to homeschooling is once again exciting! We are refreshed, ready to learn, excited to begin once again. This is such a blessing! Be careful not to make your breaks clones of your homeschooling. More and more schooling – no matter the topic – makes the return to homeschooling feel like more of the same.
Take time for breaks!
We should have time for breaks. If we don’t, we have probably overloaded our days with unnecessary extras – extra supplements, extra activities, extra responsibilities, extra groups. If you cannot take breaks from your homeschooling, something has to give. Homeschooling deserves its place in our lives, and we must have enough time to give to it. However, to truly love our homeschooling, we need days we homeschool, and days we don’t. We should consciously be aware of which is which. Today, the children and I are all about homeschooling, and what a wonderful day it will be! But, in a month (or a week or on a certain day), the children and I are all about taking a break, and what a wonderful time that will be! These are both excellent thoughts to have, and each have their place. In your homeschooling life, I pray you have both!
In Christ,
Julie
This Post Has 2 Comments
Hello Julie great advice ! What does a mom do if she didn’t get everything done as she hoped ? Does she set a date and say this is when we’re done for summer ? What if the phonics program or math program isn’t all the way finished ? Does she pause and pick back up after summer or try to keep going until all finished . I appreciate your thoughts .
Thanks, Dee! I missed your question until now – sorry about not replying earlier! If you didn’t finish, you can certainly set a date to pause and take a break. Everyone needs a break to look forward to and refresh! Then, just pick back up where you left off. You might want to shorten the break to plan a finish date according to your preference. Phonics is the one thing I would not break from for more than a week or so. I always made sure to continue phonics/emerging reading through our summer breaks, as little ones forget and backtrack. Hope his helps!