Whether you plan to begin the new homeschool year sometime in August or September, are a year-round homeschooler, or have a customized and unique schedule for your family, there are a handful of things you can do in July in preparation for the next stage of your family's homeschool.
Let's get into it!
1. - Spend a little time decluttering / tidying things up. I know this is not the "fun" part of homeschooling, but as a 25-year homeschool mom, I learned the hard way that the clutter and the messiness of life made homeschooling so much more frustrating than it needed to be. So set a timer or use a Pomodoro app, grab some trash bags and some empty laundry baskets (for tossing stuff into that needs to go to another room or area of the house), and get busy. Clean out and clean up those spaces that have acquired all sorts of non-homeschool related odds and ends. If it doesn't belong there, put it somewhere else (in the room where it does belong, in the donation pile, or in the trash). I mean it when I say this one step really is worth the effort - and I also need to add that this is not the time to declutter your entire house. Only the rooms / spaces that you use for homeschooling. And if you homeschool in every room of the house, then apply this only to the items you use for homeschool. Also, remember not to shoot the messenger... I'm just delivering some hard-earned and life-giving insight from a mom who has pretty much seen it all!
2. - Sort your homeschool supplies. If you have a bookshelf or closet where you keep the majority of your homeschooling supplies, do a "copy and paste" of the declutter and tidy you've already done. Set a timer, toss what you'll never use and do a super quick organization of what you will use. Put the books into categories by subject or use one bookshelf for each child's supplies. Throw away old pencils or half-used notebooks. If you have some curriculum that you plan to use in the future but know you won't be using right away, store that somewhere else, if possible. And if you store it in a box in, say, the storage room in the basement, take a second to label it so you'll know what it is later on. Some of us - not naming names - have re-bought the exact same curriculum simply because we did not take the time to label it before putting it in the storage room. Do as I say, not as I did, right?
3. - Organize the "other" things that you use regularly in your homeschool. Has the basket you keep all your library books in gone missing or ended up being used for something else over the summer? Clean it out and put in where it needs to be. Do you need to renew your library card? Are there any online classes your children need to be registered for? Is there something you need to do, such as online forms to fill out or questionnaires to answer, for your homeschool co-op? Pick a day to get that stuff done, make it an actual appointment in your calendar, set that timer and knock it out. It's better to have it done on time or early than to be rushing to take care of it at the last minute when you feel under the gun. In fact, the whole intent of this post is to try and avoid feeling under the gun about any of your upcoming homeschool year's preparation. Do it early or do it under stress and duress. One of those is a lousy option.
4. - Do some meal planning. Nothing too fancy is required; just double a meal or two over the next few weeks, stick it in a freezer bag, label it with what it is and cooking or baking directions, and toss it in your freezer. This will make either lunches or dinners a whole lot easier when something comes up "all of a sudden". And don't we homeschool moms know that something very often does indeed "come up"? Secondly, create a list of easy lunch ideas that you can feed your kiddos on rotation, and then create a reusable grocery list for those lunches. Life is going to throw us curve balls and hard days. We can't control those things entirely, but we can, in a sense, choose one aspect of the "hard" that those curve ball days bring us. Choose your hard by having an easy-to-implement meal plan is one of the best easy to manage hard choices you can make. When we homeschooled during my husband's back-to-back deployments (5 months followed by 12 months followed by 13 months) this one choice was a gamechanger for my sanity.
5. - Set some phone boundaries right now, before you begin the new academic year. (And if you're a year-round homeschooler or have already begun the new school year, set some boundaries along with a set date that those boundaries will be implemented.) Have a phone basket where everyone's cell phones go during the school day. Or get a cheap phone lock box for your own phone, if you are the only one who has one. (Our kids didn't get phones until they turned 16, so there were some years when I was the only one who had one...and I needed this boundary in order to be fully present while we were doing schoolwork.) When our scroll time is interrupted again and again by our child asking for help with what they're working on and we find ourselves irritated and impatient, well, that's not great. So, draw up some boundaries and stick to them right alongside your children.
And here are some Amazon links for Pomodoro timers, freezer bags, a freezer bag holder to make filling them easier, a phone lock box for one phone, and a phone box for multiple phones, grocery shopping list, a phone basket idea, a phone "cage", and ideas for a library book basket.
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Here's to a great year of homeschooling coupled with easy-to-implement prep you can do right now!
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