Previously: Part one: adequate nutrition, adequate sleep.
If you need a break, take a break.
The second thing I did to avoid homeschool burnout was to schedule regular breaks. These were not one day off here and there, like the public schools do. That was not enough time for me. We operated on a six week on, one week off schedule until we had completed 36 weeks of school per year. I figured the six to one ratio was biblical, so there was something to it, LOL.
For six weeks, we schooled Monday through Friday, no days off, to keep the momentum going. Then, the seventh week was an entire week off. This means that when we closed our books on the sixth Friday, we had nine whole days off with no schooling! For the first few days I didn’t even think of school – I caught up laundry and housework, we planned a fun day to the zoo or to visit grandparents, and then, on the 4th or 5th day, I would start spending a few hours a day catching up grading and lesson planning for the next six week block.
It really worked, because along about 4 1/2 weeks in of a six week block, when you are tired and the laundry is starting to pile up, you can tell yourself you only have to go for one more week! There is light at the end of the tunnel; you are not faced with three or four months of piled up laundry and backed up grading, which would discourage anyone.
to be continued …
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Update: part three continued in Less is more.
This is my nightmare. I can’t keep up with it. Last year I was such a perfectionist about it, that I ended up all but giving up my entire system at the end of the year (when the house was about to sell and I had to go to work full time for the summer). I STILL have two weeks of last year’s stuff to grade and our final report card for the year was never mailed to the grandparents.
This year, I have graded but not recorded them in a grade book. I have the number grades in my lesson planner, but it’s going to take a microscope to go back and extract them to get them all in a single column to do report cards. I’m considering not even doing report cards this year.
Care to share your report card system? Or do you have one?
I didn’t write report cards. In my mind, the purpose of report cards is for the teacher to inform the parents how the child is doing. Well, we didn’t need informing, because we knew, being the teachers.
What a wonderful idea. I love the Biblical significance.