Tips for the New Homeschool Mom

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I receive a small amount of compensation if you choose to purchase from my links. I only link to products I love.

As a little girl, I was homeschooled for a short period of time. As I grew older and became a mama, I realized I really wanted to homeschool my children. Through much studying and researching, I knew this was best for our family. But there were mistakes made our first year and I really had to find other ways for my children to succeed. There was lots of unnecessary money spent and wasted, a lot of time gone trying to follow a curriculum that was not working, and some tears shed between the children and me Here are my top 5 tips for the new homeschool mom.

If I had known what I do now I think it would have gone much smoother and easier. Here are my five pieces of encouragement and advice I would like to share to the first time homeschool mama.

Remember every child is different therefore they all learn differently

This is so important and true. These are my most important tips for the new homeschool mom. When I first started homeschooling my oldest stepson was in 4th grade and I just ordered the same curriculum my mother had done for me. It was a lot of money and a lot of overwhelming feelings for us both. It didn’t work as it had for me as a child. We are two different people, we learn differently. So this year I did a lot of research on different curriculums for his core subjects. I found what works for him and he is now so much more confident in his Math and English courses. Here are my latest curriculums for both of my children if you are needing some help, 5th Grade and Kindergarten.

Homeschool can be anything you want it to be.

It is not public, private, or a charter school. The structure they contain isn’t needed with homeschool. I allow my children to stand if they want while they work, go outside to do homeschool, use colored pencils and we listen to music somedays. Sometimes we watch educational movies on Netflix or learn to draw our favorite characters on YouTube. I allow (with reason) for their personalities to shine during our school and I love it. It builds their confidence and they learn better because they have this freedom.

Use what you have

Like I said before a lot of money was spent our first year homeschooling. It was so unnecessary. I now use what we already have at home. Sometimes we use pasta for counters and create our own books to read. We just do our best with what we have and if we need something I will try to find something else before purchasing it.

I do purchase their Math and English books, but as for other subjects we use the library or we check the thrift stores too.

Its okay to NOT follow the schedules of the curriculum and to take your time.

This was a lot of what caused overwhelming feelings during our first year. Trying to keep up with a schedule when your child isn’t understanding it, is not learning. So now when they don’t understand something and need more practice, we take a pause and work on it until it is mastered. Sometimes we have to learn something a little longer to achieve it and that is perfectly okay. We have even skipped the whole section and we will come back to it at a later date when they may be ready.

Allowing my children to choose what they want to learn about rather then what society says they should.

This is an unschooling method that we use in our history, science and any other activities they want to learn about. They have the freedom to choose. This school year they wanted to learn about outer space and we are taking our whole homeschool year to learn about it. They love it and are so excited every time we read, do a project, or watch anything pertained to space.

I hope these tips for the new homeschool mom has helped you with your homeschool journey. What is your most exciting thing about homeschool? What is some advice you could give to other mamas? Stay peaceful.