Fun for your First Day Back to School

by Teri Spray

Welcome to your brand new school year! As these last days of summer slip away, I love to look forward to the special new pieces and parts of the new school year. This is one time of year when I encourage families to play a bit of “school at home.” Go ahead and put up some “back to school” posters and banners, your might even decorate a door with trims and posters like a bulletin board.

Make a plan for your first day of school to have some special activity or treat attached. Some parents even tuck away their new school books to build anticipation until they ceremoniously reveal the new curriculum on the first day of school.

I was sad to discover that some home educating families start their new school year by simply dragging out last year’s broken crayons and stubby pencils. Personally, I think new school supplies are a necessity, not a luxury. (The cost here in Denver for a typical school supply set is about $20 at Walmart.)

Every year we have always made a special shopping trip to buy our supplies. It was fun to have the children along to pick out notebook colors and select pencil boxes. In addition to shiny new pencil boxes and fresh boxes of crayons be sure to pick up new packages of washable magic markers or colored pencils, fresh rolls of scotch tape, and even replacement items like staplers and scissors as needed.

We like to use 3-ring view binders for the children to keep their handwriting, essays, timelines and notes in. This way they can decorate the cover themselves, and even change it with the seasons.

Start a new tradition by adding an extra binder this year to use as a family scrapbook or school yearbook. Make fun picture pages of your field trips, insert creative writing papers and photos of your projects. Tuck in a tape of the children reciting memory verses, speeches, or interpreting poems. (One of our most precious keepsakes is a tape of Jeremy and Meredith in the first and second grade summarizing their Old Testament timeline by narrating the story of the Bible in their own words.)

When you begin school with a bit of a bang, the children will take the entire process more seriously. If you are a beginning home schooler, be sure to remember that you are going to have some ups and downs at first until you feel your “home school sea legs”. Some of your plans and programs may get jostled around a bit. Keep looking for a balance point. Like any other teacher, it is wise to start structured at first, then ease up later when the children prove they are able to handle more flexibility.

Burnout Prevention
Here are some helpful hints to help your school year go better from beginning to end:
1) Count your days now. We have enclosed a current calendar which shows 172 days between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Plan which days you will have school. Some families like to put the number of their current school days on their record charts.

2 ) Begin at the end. Look at the end of your school year now. What books do you REALLY expect to complete? Plan your school days by balancing book days with activity days. Try setting aside at least 1/5th of your elementary school days and 1/10th of your high school periods for “non bookwork” activities. (ie: electives, experiments, projects, field trips, etc..). Most bookwork can be completed within 3-4 days per week. Divide your book pages by your planned book days, to create your daily assignments. Personally, I like to plan on one hundred academic lessons each year. The other 72 days are filled with learning activities, creative writing days and review days. Please note that high school credit is not only awarded for bookwork! Experiments, research and projects count as well!

5) Plan for review days. At least every ten days, you will typically need a “catch-up” day for review and correcting old assignments. Try to tuck in one or two each month.

3) Plan with flexibility: Some books may take longer to complete, so don’t fill in the page numbers on your lesson plans or record charts more than one or two weeks in advance. High schoolers may be able to schedule a full quarter in advance, because they can work later at night should they need to catch up or work ahead.

4) Plan ahead for holiday breaks and “spring fever”. When are your busiest times? Can you set aside a day or two for rest and recovery? Plan for one teacher workday each quarter. This is a day when the kids can watch a film and read a book, while Mom catches up on records. Here is a teacher’s tip: Work hard in the fall before the Thanksgiving holiday. Work lightly between Thanksgiving and Christmas, then work hard between Christmas and Easter, then do more outdoor projects and activities to wrap up your school year in the spring. By looking forward as you take your first steps in the fall, this school year might be your best home school year yet!

There are many times as a wife, mother and grandmother when I feel I am failing in any or all of my many jobs. The more that I visit with other women, the more I find that I am not alone in these failure feelings. Once again, I perceive that the devil has been working overtime on our easily deceived female souls to convince us that we cannot possibly measure up.

Last month I wrote a lesson in freedom regarding the Proverbs 31 description of the virtuous woman. As it turns out, upon reading the entire chapter, we discovered that the verses are actually a list of qualities of virtuous women in general and not some superwoman’s resumé. Sadly, some of the Christian Cottage Schools’ moms never even dared to read the article because they were already feeling like failures!

Years ago the Lord directed me to rethink Sabbath rest and discover that his expectations for his children are actually about 6/7. We can never achieve a 7/7 measure of perfection in this life. That level of perfection is left to the Lord. We are human frames of dust who need to trust our awesome God with that 7th task, 7th room to clean, 7th book to correct, 7th window to wash. Then God can guide us to trust Him with those tasks which are beyond our human ability to accomplish each day. That way God gets the glory!