Every year I find myself saying that I need to slow down and reminding myself that I’m losing memories with my loved ones because life just keeps flying by.
A homeschool journey is for the entire family and just like life, a mom’s homeschooling years will be gone in the blink of an eye. This is 100% true. I’ve lived it. Been there. Done that.
The point of slowing down your life is to truly live and thus be able to make memories. As a homeschool mom, making homeschool memories is important. After all, what will the hard work or pictures of experiments and field trips matter if you don’t remember anything about the accomplishments and activities that you and your children did together?
Homeschool memories tend to change over the years because our children grow and enjoy doing different things. It’s important that we pay attention to our children, their likes, dislikes, etc. so that the homeschool memories both we and our children remember are mostly good. There will be difficult homeschool days, so having some bumpy, not-so-good homeschool memories is inevitable, but we need to do our best to ensure that the good homeschool memories outweigh the not-so-good.
As we are selecting our homeschool curriculum and planning our homeschool schedules we have the opportunity to include fun, family activities that coordinate with our lesson plans and fit in our homeschool days. We also need to be prepared for the impromptu homeschool memory-making opportunities that happen within our days. These unexpected moments spent together often make the best memories of our homeschooling years.
Making homeschool memories doesn’t require elaborate plans, expensive field trips or cross country travel. Most of my favorite homeschool memories with my kids occurred in (or near) my home in Maine or back home in Texas and most were free or frugal family activities.
Take time to look over your homeschool curriculum and plans for the rest of this school year. Then think about the activities that your family enjoys participating in and incorporate those (or similar new ones!) into your homeschool days! Be sure to ask your family members what types of activities that they would enjoy adding to your homeschool year, they might surprise you and suggest something that you hadn’t written down or even thought of before!
Make sure that you don’t cram extra activities into another homeschool day because over-planned homeschool days do make good homeschool memories. Field trips and homeschool activity days count towards your homeschooling days required by your state, so don’t forget to count them!
Don’t forget to check with the following locations for easy to add, fun, organized activities; your local library, historical society, churches, museums, aquariums, fairs, farms, etc. A quick search online, in the newspaper or asking your librarian will often turn up some of the most memorable experiences for your family’s homeschool journey!
Since becoming child led homeschoolers, I’m thankful that we are making homeschool memories more than we ever have before. Playing educational games, teaching life skills, having family conversations, studying historic time periods together, reading quality literature and more have become the most important part of our homeschool days.
I am truly thankful that I learned to live life outside my lesson plans because without that life lesson I wouldn’t have been able to make the homeschool memories that I hold so close to my heart.
How do you ensure that you take time to make good homeschool memories?
