Dr. Marie-Claire Moreau

Educator, Coach, Life Strategist

House rules

When homeschooling, not all of the learning happens at home.  But a lot of it does. That means homeschoolers overall tend to spend more time at home than other families.  Which is a good thing.  Usually.

With so much togetherness comes more opportunities for learning, true.  But it can also mean more time for children to make mistakes, as well.  Having a good set of house rules provides a framework for addressing  behavioral matters at home.  House rules don’t just make family time more enjoyable, but they are useful for communicating expectations and reinforcing what you value overall.

Families each handle house rules a little differently.  Some parents write them down on paper and hang them in a prominent location for all to see.  Others adopt a set of rules and issue verbal reminders whenever rules need to be invoked.  Still others list not just the rules, but the consequences for breaking, and the rewards for meeting them as well.  Rules may look like lists, charts, detailed explanations, or anything at all — whatever works.

For obvious reasons, customized house rules are best.  However, consumers may also purchase rules that have been published specifically for this purpose, and tweak them just a little bit to make them fit.

Whatever the method, house rules should be explained in advance, discussed as a group, and reviewed often as a family.  Never assume that any child — no matter how old or how intelligent that child may be – understands what is meant by each particular rule.   Using examples and demonstrating house rules through role-playing are two very effective ways to communicate house rules, but use whatever means are needed to fully explain the rules so that nothing is left to doubt when a particular behavior occurs and needs to be addressed.

Finally, revisit and revise house rules every so often.  As children grow and learn, though old behaviors may be put to rest, new ones may unexpectedly appear.  Many a parent has begun with a short list of rules, only to realize the list seems to grow longer and longer each year as first children grow and additional children are added to the family.  While there are benefits to keeping the list short, covering all of the bases is important, too.

For useful tips about house rules, visit the following articles to help get started, being sure to locate plenty of additional resources if these do not match your lifestyle or personal philosophy.  These links have been selected solely to provide examples and a variety of perspectives for those just beginning to develop house rules:

Parent Leadership

Essential Baby

Raising Children Network

Crisis Counseling

Gregg Harris

CNN

[Photo: Free Digital]

 

What works for you now?

While cleaning a seldom-used closet in our guest area, I found this index card I taped to a shelf some years ago.  It was there to help my children, some still very young at the time, put folded towels away during chore time.

This little forgotten sign, now smudged, crumpled and ugly, needed some desperate attention.  After cleaning the closet and refolding all of the guest linens inside, I debated between two different options.  Option 1 involved creating a new index card and hanging it back the same way.  Option 2 was all about making a newer, more attractive sign using my computer and laminating it, preserving the instructions for years to come.

Option 3, which came a few minutes later, was to take the sign down forever.  Because while thinking about it a little while longer, I realized my children didn’t need the sign any more.  They were older and had already learned where all of the towels go.  Keeping the closet tidy no longer appeared on anyone’s job chart anyway.  This was no longer a problem area in my home.  Therefore, written instructions were no longer needed.

When homeschooling and managing a home (and sometimes even a home business, too) so much can be happening at the same time.  Scheduling, organizing and being prepared to handle all of life’s little emergencies are necessary for keeping the entire operation going smoothly.  But these systems must be maintained, too, lest they become badly out of date.

When was the last time you looked at your schedule?  Your child’s job chart?  Your household maintenance calendar, revolving meal plan, pet grooming schedules, to-do lists or anything else you do on a regular basis?  When was the last time you replaced a calendar, cleaned out your Inbox or filed away the receipts you’d been saving for tax purposes?

How are your old systems working for you now?

As life changes, so must our systems.  Just as large organizations undertake preventative maintenance and perform routine updates, so every family should also review its systems from time to time.  Taking a look at what they’re doing and — more importantly – how these systems are working is crucial to keeping the household engine running smoothly.  Updating anything that needs updating, discarding anything that no longer works, and creating new systems where problem areas exist are the only ways to prevent minor issues from exploding into major chaos.

Today, take a look at what is working in your home, and what is not.  Jot a list of those areas that need a little fine-tuning. Then, spend the next couple of days maintaining your systems so that they function well for you now.  Just like my towel instructions, eliminate anything that has become unnecessary, silly or just excessive.  Instead of reusing an old system, as I almost did, re-channel those energies to areas that need you more.

Setting up a classroom

Every family is different, thus every homeschool space is different, too.  Only you can decide what works best in your home, with your kids, using your specific homeschool tools.

Factor in budget, personal homeschooling philosophy and available living space, and study spaces will vary quite a bit.

When building any classroom or study area, looking at photos is a great way to become inspired.  I glean many new ideas by seeing things I had never thought of before!

Lucky for us, the blogging community has come generously to the rescue in this area, providing hundreds of opportunities to see how other families organize and decorate their homeschool spaces.

For instance, here is a photo of a map wall in our home:

 

I struggled for years to find just the style and size map I was looking for, and discover a convenient way to hang it without the edges curling or destroying our walls.  My secret?  Duct tape!  Now, you can apply my “secret”, too!

Just looking at photos and hearing what works well for other families could be just what you need to come up with a classroom strategy of your own.  I love learning from other parents more creative than me!

Parents often ask to see photos of homeschool classrooms, too.

I have created a Pinterest board called, “Homeschool Classroom Spaces“.  It’s one of my most popular, and has lots of great ideas to help you get set up.

There are several articles here that will also help:

Creating Workboxes

Curriculum Bins

Storing Homeschool “Stuff”

You can also become inspired by browsing photos of other homeschooler classrooms.  Here’s a collection of ideas from other bloggers:

A total homeschool classroom reno using IKEA components, taken from Confessions of a Homeschooler

A classroom with Montessori learning in mind, from Living Montessori NOW

Homeschooling in an apartment, from Chocolate Covered Boy Joy

A dedicated school room with visuals and decorations (including a time line), from Adventures in Homeschooling

Homeschooling in a small space, from Living, Laughing and Loving

A schoolroom before and after, from Method Mom

A boy-themed school area, from It’s a Boy’s Life

An inexpensive classroom solution, from Mrs. Random [Access Me-ness]

A home equipped with goodies in just about every room, from The Joys of Home Educating

Using a long counter for children schooling side-by-side, from The Heartfelt Home

A dedicated classroom with many different kinds of storage solutions, from Vintage Homegrown Family

This family shows how they use the dining and living rooms as homeschool areas, from Dragonfly Days

 

When creating a classroom, 2 important rules apply: (1) don’t be limited by what you see; and, (2) never feel pressured to duplicate what anyone is doing.

The truth is, homeschool spaces should be uniquely you!    You could not function well in someone else’s home, just as they could not function well in yours.

Take these ideas and tips to heart, and see what you come up with this year!  If you’d like to share a photo, link or post of your study spaces, I would welcome them as a COMMENT!

 

Marie-Claire Moreau, Quick Start Homeschool

 

 

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Comprehensive high school record

Most every parent understands the importance of creating a high school transcript — that at-a-glance summary of the student’s high school experience, all on one page.

But in addition to a transcript, I also recommend preparing a more comprehensive record of the high school years, too.  I suggest creating a comprehensive record that includes more than just a transcript — and which spells out in specific detail the work completed by the student over the last 4 years.

Think of a comprehensive record as a scrap book of sorts, only one designed specifically for your student, specifically about his or her high school years, and specifically designed to make him or her look really, really good.

updated record books

There is no standard format for creating this kind of record, but I suggest a 3-ring binder that is at least 2″ thick.  I also suggest investing in plastic tab-dividers and good-quality document sleeves to keep documents neat and clean, and make them easy to organize within sections.

Sections will be specific to individual students, but I suggest organizing documents into these sections for starters:

  • Test Scores
  • Transcripts
  • Course Descriptions
  • Honors, Awards, Nominations
  • Letters of Recommendation
  • Special Projects
  • Volunteer Service Records
  • Course Outlines
  • Work Samples
  • Writing Samples
  • Reading Lists
  • Telling Photos, Flyers and Mementos

Additional sections should be added for things unique to your student.  By all means, always include anything that may further highlight or explain what makes him or her unique (and worthy of college admission, scholarship money, or whatever the goal after graduation).

When creating the binder, it can help to keep in mind how and when the binder may be used.  Try to imagine people looking at it — the people in your child’s future, the people who can make a difference in his or her life.  Imagine, for example, your student showing the binder to an admissions counselor at a college, a scholarship committee, a prospective employer, or another person in a position to evaluate your student and positively impact his life.

I cannot guarantee that a comprehensive record will add to a student’s success, but it can obviously only increase the odds.  I have heard from many parents and more than a dozen admissions officers the impact this kind of comprehensive record system has had on student success.  I have seen the impact of the comprehensive record in my own family, as well.

I strongly urge all homeschool families to take the time to put a comprehensive record together for every teen in the homeschool.  It is a great investment in each child’s future, and delivers great peace of mind for parents, too (just the ease of having all those documents together in one place makes finding and photocopying documents so easy, and eliminates the need to search for papers all the time).

Marie-Claire Moreau, Quick Start Homeschool

 

 

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Think about it: alternating days

If you’ve ever lived in a big city, you know all too well the rules of alternate-day parking.  Firing up and having to move the vehicle, fingers crossed on ever finding another parking space, can be quite a frustration and a chore — hardly even worth the hassle of owning a car.

Applied to homeschooling, however, alternate days can be a positive thing.  Sometimes, families feel that certain topics don’t require daily coverage.  In fact, depending on the student and family, attempting to do every subject every day may even prove counter-productive.

What these subjects are will obviously vary from family to family.  But, the idea remains the same in all households — not EVERY homeschooling subject must be taught EVERY day.  As homeschoolers, the choice is yours.

For school-at-home types, this may come as quite a shock.  But in reality, many homeschoolers find it much more productive and much less stressful to tackle certain subjects on alternate days, rather than every day of the week.  So while English and mathematics, for instance, might be daily subjects in a particular family, other subjects like art, music and geography occur on an alternate day schedule.

The benefits to alternating days also vary by family.  Some folks just like not having to drag everything out each and every day.  In the case of art supplies and science kits, for example, using alternate day scheduling offers the option of longer, focused amounts of time on these topics, rather than brief chunks of less-productive time during an otherwise jam-packed day (just setting up the supplies and cleaning up afterwards can take up the entire time block).  Some families like taking a break from certain subjects in order to do other things, or to allow the children to digest what was learned.  Thus, alternating subjects gives them the opportunity to fill the curriculum partly with courses and book work, and partly with other activities.  Again, it is up to each individual family.

When scheduling a homeschooler, take a look at his or her overall daily schedule after running through it for several days or a few weeks.  If there appear to be congested areas on the schedule, or times when there just seems to be too much going, considering alternate days for a subject or two to lessen the load.  Also look for subjects that really require more time (creative writing, for example) but are being squeezed into too-short a time frame.  In the end, you may find that your students prefer being able to dedicate longer periods of study to an area over quick snapshots of time using another method.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. Think about it.