Today I want to share with my homeschool moms, how I keep my homeschool curriculum simple, fun, engaging, challenging and easy.I used to think you had to have a curriculum for all 8 subjects. One for math, spelling, writing, history, science, art, reading and english(language arts, grammar).

That is probably fine, if you are homeschooling 1 or even 2 children, but when you are homeschooling more than 2 children, you probably want to keep it simple for your children and for yourself.

This is my 3rd year homeschooling, and burnout is real if you do not have a plan in place for it.

You have to keep your homeschooling creative, fun, simple, easy, challenging and engaging. You have to switch things up sometimes. I like to call this, my mid year switcharoo.Routines are great as long as you shake things up a bit. You need to incorporate some fieldtrips, co-ops, playdates, time off, vacations and switch up they way you homeschool sometimes.

I like to go to the park or the library and homeschool there. Changing up your scenary keep homeschooling fun and engaging. Instead of having lunch at home, I like to go to the park and have a pinic lunch. I even had a pinic lunch on my front lawn.

Moms, I suggest you getaway for at least 3 days by yourself to a nice hotel. Sometimes you need to be by yourself, without anyone around. You need to wake up without being responsible for anyone. If you just want to lie in bed all day, you should be able to do that on your getaway.Do not ask your girlfriends to join you, because you will find out, you are still on other people time. You need this time alone. You need to pour back into yourself, from pouring into others all the time. Taking time away for yourself will also prevent homeschool burnout.

I use to be an 8 subjects, 8 different curricula homeschooling moma, until I reached homeschool burnout.

I prayed and ask God to show me how to condense 8 subjects into about 3-4 subjects. Here’s how He showed me I can make this happen so that I would not feel overwhelmed, burned out and my kids lessons would be fun, easy for me to teach, simple, engaging, challenging and creative.

Ok, first of all who said you had to use a set curriculum. I had to relax in the way I homeschooled, and then I had to look back over my elementary years of going to school to remember what I actually retained from all those years.I retained the subjects I do life with every single day. Subjects like reading, writing and arithmetic like; adding, subtracting, multiplications, divison and percentage.

Grammar was not a strong point for me in high school but it is my life now, I make sure to make this subject important for my kids because some of them are going to be writers like their mommy.

Life skills or home economics, is very important to the way we live our life as well. We get the privilegde of teaching these skills to our homeschoolers often. Manners have become a lost art in our society, it needs to be taught at home, always, until your children leave your home. It is important for them to know what is proper and what is not when they go out into the world.

Then you are left with history, science, art and geography. Not saying these subject are not important because they are, but you have to make these subjects fun and engaging or they will become boring to your children.When my kids learn, I want them to actually retain what they are learning, not push a bunch of infomation in their brain because I am trying to finish a curriculum to make myself feel accomplished.

So here is my process!

My kids ages are 12, 6 and 5, they are all girls. I have a son that is 3 years old, and he goes to a early childhood center, 4 days a week, for only 3 hours, it is free in our community and it gives him social and learning time with other boys and girls his age.

I struggled to put him in this program. But I am glad I did. He loves it. He requires a lot of attention and this has allowed me to effectively focus on my school age children.

The girls work load looks like this now.

1. Math
2. Spell and Write book
3. Writing
4. Unit Study which includes Art, History, Science some Geography and Book report.

Math

My 12 year old is using

 Ace Homeschool Math, 6th grade, she does 3 pages a day.

My 6 and 5 year old does 1-3 math sheets or activites a day, depending on how challenging or easy it is. I brought math books for both of them, tore out the pages and put them in a binder. They also use ABC mouse.Spelling and Writing

All three girls use Spell and Write by Evan Moor kindergarten, 1st grade and 6th grade which includes spelling, reading, writing and grammar & punctuation. All of these subjects are inside of this one book. I have them to do 3 pages a day. Click the link to see how the book looks on the inside. Click on the book to look inside. You get to see how they are able to put all these subjects into one book.

For additional reading, my 12 year and 6 year old are reading chapter books and my 5 year old is learning how to read with Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lesson.

For additional writing, my 12 year old write book reports, letters and stories. We use grammar & punctuation editing here as well. My 6 and 5 year old does book reports also, I allow my 1st grader to write and spell her words in her 1st grade vocabulary and spelling. Sometimes we go over the misspelled words and sometime we do not.

This is part of the 1st grader process. They write words with the sounds that make sense to them. They draw about the person they are doing a book report about and write what ever they retained in our reading about that person. My 5 year old does copy work. She tells me what to write and then I write it out for her to copy on her own.

My 6 year old and 5 year old also uses Abeka cursive and manuscript writing for their grade level.Unit Study

All 3 girls do their unit study together. Unit Studies include science, art, and history some geography. They do not do all of these subjects in one day. It is not burdensome. I keep it light and fun!

What are our unit studies about? Right now we just finished learning about the Human Body. We will learn about the Moon, Sun, Planets, Genetics, Plant Life, Weather, and Matter.

I will do a seperate blog post about how I plan my unit studies. It will take a whole another blog post to talk about it and to go into details about it. Unit Studies take a lot of planning, but I love the process! They are unique, simple, challenging, creative and so much fun!

This is our process this year. It might change next year. But this year, I had to change things up a bit.

I would love to hear from my homeschooling momas, please leave a comment, and by all means subscribe to Breakthrough Blog 4 Women. Follow me on my social media link down below. If you know a homeschooling moma that can benefit from this blog post, please share it with them. You can follow me on Instagram by clicking on the word Instagram behind you!

Coach Angie!

http://www.noboundariesbtc.com