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February is Coming… are you ready?
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Often this is the most difficult month of the homeschool year. It is a combination of factors including illness, yucky weather, being tired, worrying about the school year’s progress so far (or lack thereof), boredom, wanting something new and fun, and more.
Here’s my advice, as a long-time homeschool mama:
Plan for joy and hold on to consistency.
Plan for joy: Set up a few fun things to look forward to in February. Simple, but fun. Do a family Valentine’s Day party or tea time one afternoon. Memorize a funny poem together. Bring some nature INDOORS to explore (snow, pine cones, twigs, rocks) or fill a bird feeder and do some birdwatching or stay up late for stargazing. Have one “just because” day, where school gets cancelled just because you all need a day off.
Hold on to consistency: Have a regular daily routine for learning and do it. Maybe you need to pare down a bit. Or maybe you need to look for helps like an audio book to do the reading aloud for you. But put in a good morning of effort on what matters most to you for this month of learning. Use routine to help. If you just never seem to get to picture study, composer study, and poetry then make those the ‘lunch time subjects’. Every day at lunch time do 1 of those. Look at a picture and put it up on the wall for the week right by the table. Turn on music by your current composer at lunch the next day. On the third day have a poem already printed and ready to read aloud.
How do you get through February each year?
Years ago I moved our first day of school from Sep 1st to August 1st and that has been a HUGE help to get me through the Feb “slump” because now by the time we get to Feb we are a couple weeks into our LAST term of school with only about 10-11 more weeks of school left for the year so instead of feeling like the year is dragging I can look at the schedule and realize we are so close to the end, that it helps to keep us motivated to finish strong.
Yesterday both of my older kids looked at their shelf that holds their school books and noticed how there was so much less there than at the start of the year, because as they finish books we move them off that shelf back to the regular book shelf. My older son said “wow, we are getting close to done” That right there helps to keep us moving through the winter slump. 🙂
We usually finish school in late April, and take off May, June and July. August is so warm and May has great weather and it right when we all want to be outside. 🙂
We usually start a new extra of some sort to keep things interesting. Usually it’s something I bought at the beginning of the year, but haven’t gotten around to. Sometimes even just a documentary or new board game. It’s nice to have something fresh added to our days during the mid-winter blahs.
We used to have a Valentines tea party, but we now have two February birthdays, and one is the day before. So we are usually tired of sweets on Valentines.
3 day weeks of focused school and 1 day a week of ‘fun school’ where we might read a book throughout the week and then on Friday we will watch the movie and compare, or Friday’s could be baking treats for poetry tea, playing board games or eorking on a family art project.
Just some ideas we have planned/or did in the past!
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