In this episode I'm sharing some encouraging words for new homeschoolers to support you as you embark on your new journey of home education. View show notes at: http://www.christianhomeschoolmoms.com/new-homeschoolers-tips

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Foreign. Welcome to the Christian Homeschool Moms Podcast. I'm Demetria, your host, and this is episode number 129, Things to Know as New Homeschoolers.

So on this episode, I'm going to take you over to my YouTube channel and let you listen to a video that I recently posted. And it's about things that I wish I knew when I first started homeschooling.

I'm gonna let you listen to that because I think the video speaks for itself and I believe that you will be encouraged, especially if you have been stressed out this past year of homeschooling. And if you are looking forward to a new year of homeschooling next year, that's not as stressful.

And also if you are a newbie homeschooler, you're just beginning. You haven't started yet.

These are going to be some words of encouragement that I hope will prevent you from making the same mistakes that I and many, many other homeschoolers have made over the years as we've learned how to do this thing in such a way that it's a reasonable lifestyle for ourselves and our families.

So we want to make sure that you don't put yourself in too much stress as you're homeschooling, because this is something that if you have been called to do this with your family, you want to make sure that you're able to stick with it for the long haul.

And as far as whatever the long haul means for you, if that's just this year or if it's for many years to come, but you just want this to be a sustainable lifestyle for you. So these are a couple of tips that I wish I knew as a new homeschooler. And I'm going to go ahead and roll that video now and let you listen in.

And then I'll be back in the end to share a few words with you about announcements and updates because I

really want to help homeschoolers.

As you start to think about your new homeschool year and the decisions that you made to homeschool your children, I want to encourage you and I have a couple of tips for you if you are a new homeschool parent. These are some things that I wish I had known and that I wish I had kept in mind as a new homeschool parent over 15 years ago.

And when we first started homeschooling, it was definitely something that took some getting used to and some acclimating. And even though I knew this was decision that I definitely wanted to make.

I was coming from a very business, a very career oriented mindset and business mindset. So I thought that I can jump into teaching my kids with a certain amount of structure.

And I thought that I would receive the exact feedback that I needed and the exact results that I was looking for, the same as I would, apparently in my businesses. But it's not the same when you're teaching your children. Neither is it the same if you're teaching a class of children that are not your own kids.

Right. So it's very different when you're homeschooling your own children.

So here are a couple of things that I want to help you keep in mind when you are teaching your kids.

If this is your first year, second year, if you feel really new at this, or if you are a veteran homeschooler, you've been doing this a while, but you just need a refresher just to remember the things that will be helpful to you as you proceed on this journey.

So the first thing that I wish I had known as a new homeschool parent is that I shouldn't have to expect that I will know it all or be able to do it all in my first year of homeschooling my kids. This is the year. The first couple of years especially are the years that I'm just getting to really know them.

To be perfectly honest, we as parents are always starting at square one, because right when you get to know your kid in the stage that they're in, they grow up and then they enter a new stage. So you will be homeschooling your preschooler and suddenly you blink and they're in second grade and now you have a whole new kid almost.

It's like you have to relearn the way they think, the way they work, because they're older and they've matured, and some things they've matured out of and they've grown out of. And so the idea of being adaptable is an extremely important one in the homeschool world. And as your children grow, you are also growing.

So that's the other thing.

Another aspect that you have to really remember is that your kids are growing and you're also changing and maturing and you guys are evolving as a family. So the next time you blink, they'll be in fifth grade, and the next time you blink, they'll be in middle school and then in high school.

And all of these changes are taking place in such.

What seems to be a long time of parenting actually becomes condensed when you look backward because these little condensed times of their life, they're like little time stamps and they don't last long.

So right when you're getting to know your children and you think you've got your homeschooling all together, they grow up and you have to really recalibrate and think about, okay, who are they now and what do they need now? Because sometimes the needs that your kids had in kindergarten, they no longer have those specific needs in the second or third grade.

Now granted, there will be some things that stay the same with your kids all throughout the years because they are themselves and it's just not going to change about them. Maybe for example, some more concrete things like the way they actually learn, that typically stays the same.

There may be some evolving, but you can pretty much figure out your child's learning style and it usually typically stays the same. But there will be some ways in which your child interacts with subjects and content areas that change from year to year.

Maybe one year they seem to be really struggling in a certain area and a couple years down the road, just give them some time and really work with them and you'll see that they'll grow and blossom. And now it's not even an issue for them anymore. Maybe now there's another topic or another subject area that they need a little bit more help with.

So. So these things change.

So I wish that when I first

started homeschooling I wasn't so quick to judge myself. And to think that I had to have everything just right that first year because I had a kindergartener and a one year old.

So there was no way that I was going to be able to nail it that year. And I just thought I would be able to, but that's not the case. So that's one thing that I will relay to you is don't try to get everything perfect.

Remember that you're evolving with your children.

The second thing that I wish I

had known is that I don't have to do it all.

I don't have to do every single subject every single day, and definitely did not need to over plan because I am a planner and I enjoyed planning and I thought that's what homeschool moms did. So when my daughter was in kindergarten, I had planned everything for probably the entire semester.

I remember buying all of Susan Weisbauer's recommendations for the Story of the World and I was really gonna go on this classical methodology at kindergarten with my one year old at tow. And I had just bought into the whole classical system without even figuring out whether or not we wanted to be a classically educating family.

Educating family without figuring out what we were really drawn to as a family and whether or not there were other philosophies that we might have been more in tune with or if we even wanted a philosophy to begin with, maybe we didn't want that. So it took us a couple of. It took us about a year to realize that we wanted to be more relaxed.

And so that second year of homeschooling, when I had a first grader and my almost two year old, that's when I really took things easy and I went into what I called a relaxed homeschool mode. And so we weren't exactly unschoolers because I was always a planner, a super planner, and a little bit overboard with that.

But what we did do is we stopped calling ourselves by any label. We quit saying that we were classical.

We weren't looking into any specific philosophy, and we just called ourselves eclectic, which is basically, we were dabbling in a little bit of this and a little bit of that until we can get our feet wet, really, and figure out who we were as a family and what fit us.

So we were very, very relaxed that second year and forward into many years to come after that until we figured out we actually did like some aspects of classical and Charlotte Mason. But that was 10 years down the road when we really figured out who we were as a homeschool family.

But that's one thing that I would do over those first couple of years is not try to peg our family into a specific label and not try to do everything every day because I definitely planned out all the topics and subjects and everything. And it sometimes it doesn't give very much room for enjoyment when you feel that you have to hit all the subjects.

Especially if you are an over planner and you have seven subjects on your list of things to do for the week. So really take it easy, especially if your kids are younger and just enjoy them and have a lot of fun with them. That's what it's all about.

The other thing is you don't have to finish that curriculum if you don't get to the end of the book, it's okay. If you skip around in the book, that's okay. Especially for younger kids. I keep saying that.

I keep reiterating the fact that younger children, elementary age, really, that is a perfect time for you as mama and dad to just enjoy them. Enjoy them to the fullest. Take your time with them, don't rush them through Anything. Don't push anything on them, just enjoy them.

Let their desire to learn about the world around them kind of give you ideas about how to approach educating them. Kids are beautiful beings and they have. Typically, they have a desire to learn, and it's. It's the education system that squelches that.

So we want to be sure as homeschool parents that we're allowing our children the space to live, to breathe, to ask questions, to enjoy life, to be a little bit relaxed, maybe a little lazy, to be a little bored, I guess is the word. Not exactly lazy, but bored.

Right.

Just a little bit. Because it gives them room to be able to say, I'm really interested in this, or I would really like to learn how to do that. Right.

And they wouldn't know what they're interested in if we are busy pushing our agenda on them when they're so young. So it's good to give them some time to unwind, to relax, and to let us know what they want.

And if we're in a place as homeschool parents to give our children the time and the space to do that. And that means that some of the things that we have on our to do list and on our checklist to check off every single day are not quite as important.

So don't worry so much about, I didn't finish that math curriculum. We didn't hit all of the. The chapters in the book. We didn't hit all of the chapters in the language arts curriculum. Right.

You didn't do all of the writing lessons. You didn't do all of the spelling lessons. That is perfectly okay because they are going to come back to that at some point.

And so you don't want to worry so much with K through three, kindergarten through third grade, and just really let them enjoy their life and they will pick up very quickly. Usually kids tend to learn fast. And that's one thing that I think I wish I had worried less about because my kids were learning so quickly.

And it wasn't because I was pushing a lot of things on them.

I was giving them the opportunities to learn by providing the content, providing the books, providing the materials, the CDs and the videos or the streaming services or whatever we were using back in those days. And when you provide that atmosphere, the children soak that in and they thrive in the environment that you provide for them.

So it's not so much the structure all the time. As they get older, they do need that structure. But when they're younger, it's about providing a very Robust educational atmosphere where they.

They know that they can pull a book from the shelf anytime and read a book or just creating an atmosphere where they're not always on electronics, and

that you do have some structure regarding

that when they're young, especially, but that they have space in their day to just get lost in their imagination, go outside and play, read good books.

And so I recall those days, and I miss those days because as my kids got older, we did become more and more and more structured, and our kids did spend more time on electronics and they did spend more time talking to their friends, and they became teenagers and. And that kind of thing. So as they get older, life looks different for these kids, right? They're not. They.

They don't act the way they did when they were little, and they don't. They are not to be treated the same way as they're older because their needs change.

But I really have a heart for parents who are raising younger children to just really give them space to use their imagination. So don't worry about having to finish all the curriculum.

There's so much you can do with your kids that will allow them to grow by leaps and bounds and make up for anything that you thought they may have lost. That leads me into relax more, stress less, which is just obvious.

Just take it easy with your kids and don't stress so much about what you didn't get done. Relax more with them. Enjoy them. You know, they're only little for a season.

And then even when you have teenagers, like I have one teen in my home right now, enjoy them.

Because at the end of the day, they are going to get through their schoolwork, they're going to push to the next level in their life, whatever that happens to be, whatever God has in store for them, whether that's college or. Or military or career, some type of career.

Whatever it is, whatever it is that they're gonna do, they're going to do it, and you're here to help them along the journey. But we're. We're more than that for our kids, right?

As their parents, we're more than just the drill sergeant that makes sure they get all their work done every day. We are. We are here to support them emotionally and we need to be available to them as sort of, I guess, friends.

Not on the, you know, the level of their friends, but we do need to befriend our children. We need to let them know that we're here for them. And so as they're older teenagers, they

need to know that they can Trust

mom and dad to be available emotionally, to tap into their moods and to help them when they need something, when they need someone to talk to, to be a listening ear. And so those things are really, really needed as they get older. And it's not always about schoolwork. It's not always about get it done.

And are you done with your math? And did you finish your language arts?

And what about that paper?

So we don't want to be drill sergeant all the time. So stress less and worry less and relax more.

And lastly, just to kind of go along with what everything that I'm saying today to you, hopefully I'm encouraging you. You don't need to over plan to perfection. So do have a plan. I, I realize that, you know, we, we are planners.

Homeschool parents typically are planners. We're planning people.

A lot of us have planners that we actually write out everything that we're going to do or what we're planning to do with our children. You'll notice that I keep calendars in my house, as you see behind me. I keep planners on my Google Docs. I have planners.

So I'm not going to stop planning. And I never, I never have stopped planning with my kids.

Even my daughter, who is in online

school right now and already has a plan created for her by the school, I still have a plan because my husband and I have planned what we would like to instill within her, the values that we want to instill within her. So even when she has summer break, we'll be doing some things together as a family. So this is all part of our plan. So be a planner.

It's okay to plan, but you don't need to over plan to perfection. You want to keep some margin in your life for real life to happen.

So if you plan everything to a T, then of course our kids aren't going to really be able to enjoy themselves and we're not going to be able to enjoy ourselves. So it's good to have some margin and some flexibility in our lives.

That way we can say, hey, let's just go on a trip or let's just go somewhere, let's just do something right? And then it just makes everything a lot easier to flow, to go with the flow when you don't plan to perfection.

And when you leave margin, you can also free yourself to ditch curriculum that doesn't work and change it in the middle of a school year. Or you could change your approach in the middle of a school year.

You could say, this particular approach, we're using to teach our daughter or our son. This topic is not working for them.

Or you know, maybe it's, it's something that they, a club that they're a part of or an extracurricular that it's just not going well.

When you have margin in your life, you can feel free and free yourself to make decisions that you know are might seem a little bit disconcerting to other people looking on because they're like why, why did you pull out? Or why did you stop or why did you, why did you quit or what made you change your mind?

And people get so concerned when you make a change in your, in your homeschooling or, or whether or not you're going somewhere, whether or not you are participating in a club or a social group or a co op or some activities. So they get really concerned about that when in all it is, in reality it just doesn't work for your family anymore.

It's not working for your kid anymore, it's not working for you and your spouse anymore. So you are making a decision right then and there. This is all, this is it, this is all we're going to be able to take right now.

And we need to move on past this.

And so for you to make that kind of decision and not worry about what other people are thinking is great because it means that you are free, you are free to make decisions that's best for your family. And so always leave room, always leave room for margin in your life.

I have some things I want to share about homeschool co ops that I think I'll do a whole new video on that because it's really important to choose carefully the things that you allow into your space and so that you are being as truthful to yourself and to your family as possible and that you don't have to pretend or put on airs to stick with something just because everybody else is sticking with it. So that's going to be another topic. But I want you guys to feel free. Don't over plan, relax, stress less, relax more.

You don't have to plan to perfection in your homeschool. You don't have to get it all done within a school year. So all of this I hope frees you up to do what's best for your family this year.

And I just wish you the best in your homeschooling. These are things I wish I had known when I first started 15 years ago and I'm glad I know it now because I am so free to

do whatever I need to do.

To get my daughter to her next level and into graduation and into the rest of her life.

And so I don't have to be so stuck, you know, trying to do something a certain way because it's what the system is saying and what everybody is doing. I can feel free to do what's best for my daughter and my husband and me.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode and that these words have encouraged you.

I know that so many of us have been through the ringer when it comes to homeschooling, and this is probably why some of the reasons that I mentioned on this video are the many of the reasons why so many people burn out with home education. So if you can prevent those things by remembering to just take it easy and don't try to do it all.

And just a couple of the tips that I offered here, I think you're going to be okay. I really do. And you're Starting off on the right foot.

If this is one of the first homeschool podcasts that you're listening to and you've not heard much information about homeschooling before, and this is your first time, then I think you're going to really be starting on the right foot. So I really appreciate your listening and I have a couple of announcements.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the audio, I want you to be sure to drop in on my blog when you get a moment@christianhomeschoolmoms.com you can check out some of the blog posts, but particularly if you have any needs for being coached.

If you need homeschool coaching, if you just want to talk to someone about your plans for the upcoming year, if you're uncertain about curriculum choices or uncertain about how to plan out your everyday routines and schedules with homeschooling, you just need a listening ear, someone to bounce ideas off of. I do offer homeschool coaching services. I've been homeschooling for over 15 years and I am super happy and willing to help you.

So if you need someone, I'm here for you. There are plenty of homeschool coaches out there and we're all willing to help. So you can choose any of us.

But I just want to let you know that I do offer that so you can come over to ChristianHomeschoolMoms.com homeschool coach and I am here for you. Also, I wanted to ask you to go ahead and leave a review in itunes and Apple podcasts. Thank you.

For those of you who already have done that so far, we have two reviews. I'm so grateful for you guys. Thank you so much for my reviews. And it's really just helping this podcast. So I really appreciate that.

It helps to keep me going as well. So every time I see a review on Apple podcasts and itunes, it just keeps me going and it helps me to keep bringing out that encouragement for you.

Another thing that I want to mention as well is that I've been able to bring back a couple more podcast episodes.

So if you're looking to go further back, you can go all the way back to 78. And that one is back to homeschool room tips. 79 is six tips for a solid homeschool year and episode 80 was finding wholesome books for teens.

There's lots of information on all kinds of topics and subjects. More interviews have been loaded in. You'll find an interview about Homeschooling through Adversity, Grace Based Homeschooling with Tammy Polk.

And you'll also find an interview with Michelle Hill, who is the author of Passport to Identity of Family Life. And there's of course the interview with Julie Bogart, a brave writer, and Belinda Bullard of a Blessed Heritage.

And of course Veritas Press Introducing Phonics Museum as well as Diana Wiebe of Grapevine Studies. So lots of interviews from prior years and I will have more for you guys. So I'll keep you updated as I get more of these podcasts listed in for you.

And so I do have one more thing I want to share with you before I go. And it is my coaching site for women for moms and women in business. It's found at my website Demetriazinga.com, which is my name.

And you can click on coaching, you can click on podcast.

I have a podcast there just for business women and I have a coaching sessions there as well if you're interested in starting up your own business online. But I will be also starting my website Design Unveil. So I've got that happening as well.

Lots of services for business women, business moms, creatives and service providers. So I'm here to help you as a coach. In addition to homeschool coaching, I also offer business coaching.

So I just wanted to throw that out there so that you knew a lot of the different things I'm doing. There's a lot of stuff going on right now in my life and I'm really passionate and excited about all of it, all these different aspects of my life.

And one more thing that I should share with you as well.

If you have children that are preschool age, I'm offering classes on Outschool and I would love to have you have your kids come join me over on Outschool on Mondays and I am offering also on Tuesdays, so a couple more days throughout the week. But right now, Mondays and Tuesdays and I just spend about 25, 30 minutes with your kids.

We sing songs, we have puppets, we do finger plays, we dance, we color, we do art, we learn about phonics, we learn, we learn reading skills, we count together, we have calendar time. It is so much fun and it's a power packed 25 minutes. So if you would love to have your student join me, I would love to have them join me as well.

And again, that's going to be listed on the show notes and you can find the link to my outschool teaching page in the show notes. So just go to outschool.com and type in my name, Demetria Zinga, and you will find my teacher page.

Okay, so that's all I have for now and I can't wait to come back next time.

On our next podcast episode, we're gonna have an interview with a wonderful, wonderful friend of mine I've known for many years, and I cannot wait to share that interview with you. Make sure when you listen to that one that you grab a cup of tea or coffee and sit back and just listen in for probably about an hour.

Because we're gonna, we're really going to give you a lot of information within that time. So treat it as sort of a therapy session as well as an information session. We're gonna get it all rolled into one.

Homeschool therapy, homeschool information, all in one. So it's gonna be a wonderful, enjoyable podcast episode. Be looking forward to that on the next one.

And that's all I have for you now, my friends and I will talk to you later. Happy homeschooling.