Stop. Right now. Stop going onto Pinterest and looking at homeschool rooms and organizational set-ups. There will be a time for that, but it is now now.

After you have your WHY established, the next step is HOW. 

The HOW step depends primarily on three things: you, your family, and your children.

You- the primary educator:

The two primary components of a successful homeschool are: 

1. Time management– the ability to use time efficiently and effectively such that you get done what you must get done in order to have time to do what you want to do.
2. Topic management– the ability to cover the various topics of your children’s education in a manner that allows them to learn the content most effectively.

Every single method of homeschool education has variations on topic management. Some methods are more topic-integrated, some are more topic-isolated. We’ll get to homeschool methods in a minute.
    

Time management, however, is a skill that you bring to the table. You do not have to have super-star time management skills to be a successful homeschooler. What you do need to have is honesty about your skills and a willingness to find ways to improve.
Remember, the goal of time management is: do what you must do efficiently, so you can do what you want to do more often.

I will be putting together some specific solutions to each of these challenges in another post, but for now, here are some tips for addressing the ones most pertinent to homeschooling:

• If you do not have a planner (either paper or digital) GET ONE and USE IT!
• If you do not have a rough outline for your day, MAKE ONE! I suggest using a Block Schedule because it gives you a lot of flexibility, while still being structured.
  • For example: Our School Block is 9:30-12:30. I start working with my littles while my bigs are working independently. Then I can send my littles to work on Play-dough while I do lessons with my bigs. Some days, I spent 1 hour with my littles and other days I spend 1 1/2 hours with my littles. With the Block Schedule, I don’t have to worry, because it’s all within the larger 9:30-12:30 Block.
• If you do not have somewhere to write down your To Do List, GET ONE! This could be inside your planner, a separate notebook you carry with you, a digital To Do List on your phone.
• Set a specific time of day to work on your To Do List. Knowing that you have a certain time of day that you will work on your To Do List will set your mind at ease for the rest of the day. 
  • For example: I check email every day at 2:00, after my kids are at Quiet Time. I don’t check email before that, or after that, usually. Because I know I will have that time, I don’t grab my phone and check my email all day long. My friends/family know this, so if there is something that requires immediate attention, they text me.

Your family

Remember that family culture we talked about while looking at our Mega-Picture?
Here’s where we will use it. Your family culture is your family’s flavor for life. It may be musical. It may be covered in dirt and lake water. It may be numerical and logical. Whatever it is, use it to help inform your homeschool style decisions.

If your family is very logical and thrives in super-structure, choosing Unschooling, which is not very structured may not be the best fit. Conversely, if you love spending hours outdoors every day, an online Traditional School model, where your children are spending hours in front of a computer screen might drive you insane. 

Your family culture is a profound strength. Use it in your schooling.

Your children

Learning style basics: 

Visual: Your child learns best by seeing information. This child will want to look at pictures, movies, diagrams, charts, etc. as a way to understand information. 

• They might need to imagine how something looks in order to interact with it.
• Prefers to read a textbook rather than listen to a lecture.
• Use sight words in their reading.
• Easily remembers patterns, details and games that require visual recall (Memory)
• Often can visualize maps and directions in their head and find their way using them.

Auditory: Your child learns best by hearing the information. This child will want to listen to music, instructions, audiobooks. 

• “That sounds like a snake.”
• More natural listeners.
• They might need to repeat back instructions to ensure that they understood them.
• Will want to hear information, books, music etc. repeated so as to fully understand it or remember it. 

Kinesthetic: Your child learns best by doing. This child will want to act it out, get their hands dirty, build, move, and use their entire body, if possible.

• They may be fidgety and need to get up at regular intervals to move around.
• Learn through trial and error.
• Uses all 5 senses to interact with the world and learn from it.
• Needs to “do” the information or concept to fully understand it.

Social: Your child learns best by interacting with others.

• Talk to think: This child processes information through “talking it out.” They are literally working out their understanding as they are expressing it. They will likely make lots of self-corrections as they are talking and their understanding deepens. They may also say things like, “wait, that doesn’t make any sense” as they are trying to process the information.

Solitary: Your child learns best by spending time alone with the information so that they can interact with it in their own way.

• Think to talk: This child processes information by mentally processing first, then expressing their ideas. They may appear to be daydreaming, but they are often trying to formulate their ideas into coherent thoughts that can be expressed.

There are many combinations between these primary groupings: Visual- Social; Kinesthetic- Solitary; etc. Knowing how each of your children learns will help you to know how to present the information that they need to learn. It can also help to inform which style of homeschooling best fits your family.

If you want an extremely in depth analysis of your child’s learning style, I recommend Discover Your Child’s Learning Style by Mariaemma Willis and Victoria Kindle Hodson (Prima 1999). It is the most complete assessment of children’s learning styles that I have ever seen. It addresses learning style, interests, environmental stimuli among other topics that pertain to how your child learns.

Intentional Parenting- Part 1: Start with the Mega-Picture

Intentional Homeschool Parenting- Part 2: Why

Intentional Homeschool Parenting- Part 3: How

Intentional Homeschool Parenting- Part 4: What