Motivate Your Homeschooler

New homeschooling moms, overwhelmed by curriculum options, need to be sure they’re actively motivating their homeschooler. No matter if you use a formal curriculum, or choose to unschool you need to keep your homeschoolers motivation intact… to keep them engaged. This is day 4 of a month long Joyfully Parenting Homeschooling Series designed for busy moms, who want to prevent mom burnout and rock it as a homeschooling mom.

Hey There!

If you’re gung ho about a homeschooling curriculum (and there’s some great ones out there), but your child isn’t… you may have a LONG uphill battle ahead of you.

Or…

…maybe you’re more of the “unschooling” vintage type, or simply overwhelmed by curriculum options. Regardless, you don’t want your homeschooling lessons to turn into bored meetings. Got it?

Perhaps, you’re more of what I call a “Modeling-Clay” mom parenting styles type (BTW if you don’t know your mom type, I invite you take the “What’s Your Mom Type?” parenting quiz now). This mom type’s allergic to structure and routine, and struggles to get her child on board. Maybe you can relate? It’s possible you’ve got a kid who loves sudoku, or doing worksheets ad nauseam (and there are those kids).

That’s why inserting motivating topics into your child’s lessons—ones that they are interested in—are key to helping them thrive in their homeschooling adventures… ‘cause I know you don’t merely want to survive homeschooling. True, or true?  

So this’s episode four of our month long blog series of Homeschooling Joyfully Parenting Tips and our goal is to rock your homeschooling, but without mom burnout.

Now it’s super duper critical you use lessons, at least some of ‘em, to spark your child’s interest. Yup, I want you to start seeing yourself as your child’s curiosity muse, rather than a half-baked teacher. While indeed learning to read, write and be come decently proficient at math are critical basics, if you completely lose your child’s interest they could go on homeschooling strike, or worse become an apathetic homeschooler—disinterested in most everything…maybe, other than their latest game or show.

So if your child likes baking, casually insert fractions into your epic cookie-making session. If your child adores elephants, use this topic in their writing lesson. Perhaps, watch one of my fav IMAX show, Born to be Wild.  If your child loves superheroes, make a superhero comic book to be one of your read-alongs, or be cool with it being one of their silent readers (at least for now).

Now I get it… there’s a balance and your child may not like everything, but the beauty of homeschooling is that it totally allows you scope to follow your kid’s passions and interests. So make sure you’re actively doing just this.

So what are your child’s top three current healthy interests that you could piggyback on? How might you incorporate these into their lessons, or homeschooling days?

I invite you to write down  and share your child’s three interests.

This’ll do two things:

1. It can act as a reminder and help you clarify where you’re going and…
2. It may inspire other moms.

Oh, and I mentioned what I call the “Modeling-Clay” mom type, which is one of four mom types. If you haven’t yet had the chance to take the “What’s Your Mom Type?” parenting quiz and discover your secret mom superhero alter ego, I invite you to do this right now.

Hope to see you soon.