How to Do Pandemic Homeschooling the Easy Way This Fall (3 Steps)

The last few months living through a pandemic in quarantine have been right out of the Mommy Wars playbook for me.

Can you relate?

Maybe you’ve also struggled through an entire spring at home with your kids 24/7 under quarantine. It may have seemed like an extended school vacation to them, but to you, it often devolved into a battle zone.

Mom versus children clamoring for more gaming or YouTube video bingeing while you feebly attempt to follow their teachers’ instructions about “home learning.”

Keeping the peace between siblings at times ready to kill each other — or at least inflict serious harm.

Maybe you hunkered down in the trenches of your Mommy War by juggling a fussy baby or preschooler screaming for attention with meal prep, doing laundry and (gasp!) working from home.

All the time worried about making ends meet in an economic recession.

If you’re lucky, you have an employed spouse on a Zoom video conference strategically planned for naptime when at least one voice in your household is hushed.

Whew! June finally arrived signaling the end of corona lockdown. It couldn’t have come soon enough.

But is it over?

Even though it’s only July, there’s a nagging thought in the back of your mind: Back to School.

You may fear that your Mommy War will morph into World War III if you’re forced to do school at home again.

Not so fast. You have another option.

So when everyone’s outside playing in the nicer weather, relieved not to have worksheets and online lessons to endure and you finally can take a deep breath, consider pandemic homeschooling for fall — completely designed by you and your family.

Here’s how.

We Now Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled School Year

At this point, nobody knows what will happen with school reopenings.

There are lots of ideas circulating around as governors, county officials and school system superintendents weigh pros and cons of all the options before them.

(Notice I left out parents. You think we’d be at the top of the list, right? Nope.)

Just thinking about the logistics of some of the following ideas on the table makes my head spin.

For instance:

• Normal reopening. Can you imagine thirty or so kids in one room all day long wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart? Me neither.
• Two or Three Days a Week in School for Everybody. Usually this scenario involves splitting up the student body into groups who alternate going in for classroom instruction on some days and staying home on other days. Mostly staying home for remote learning with a school check-in now and then.
• Special Needs, English as a Second Language, Low-Income Students Only. Giving priority to certain groups deemed the most needy while everyone else stays at home to plow through remotely is not a very popular option for the majority of people whose kids don’t fit in one of the targeted categories. (This one probably won’t get accepted.)
• Online Learning Only. Here everybody stays home while schools remain shuttered indefinitely.

The uncertainty of not knowing means planning ahead to adjust is pretty impossible.

Worse yet: Since public health officials predict that another lockdown is inevitable come winter if not before, everyone will be forced into crisis schooling, take 2.

What will your reaction to this be?

1. Will you allow yourself to get sucked up into freaking out about the ultimate decision — whatever it will be?

2. Will you wade into having to make — in the most likely circumstance — a public-school-to-homeschool transition every week? You’ve experienced the drama this transition erupted into in March. Why knowingly and willingly put yourself through it weekly?

3. Will you entertain the notion that you’ll just allow your kids an education-free year? They will needlessly fall behind while the world — even in the grips of an untreatable virus — barrels along.

Upshot: Take charge today of how Covid-19 will impact your family’s schooling routine by committing to pandemic homeschooling in Fall 2020.

You can do it! I’m here rootin’ for ya every step of the way.

Take control of the situation. Don’t allow it to dictate your life and run your household. Ever.

You can be prepared this time around.

Here’s how to begin pandemic homeschooling in 3 easy steps.

Note: I’ll have plenty more to say about the nuts and bolts of homeschooling in future posts once you get started, including how to navigate the process throughout the year. Lots of tips and tricks for success coming, too! These 3 steps just concern making the commitment and beginning to set up your pandemic homeschool.

Your Permission Slip to Embrace & Explore Pandemic Homeschooling

If you’re like most parents, you’ve been told that you can’t educate your own kiddos.

While I wholeheartedly salute certified teachers in both public and private schools (I was one for four years so can personally testify to their strength and skill), I need to say that pandemic homeschooling is not — in any way, shape or form — about doing public/private school at home.

On the other hand, pandemic homeschooling is about keeping your kids intellectually, emotionally and socially engaged while we’re living through a global pandemic. There’s no getting around it, under it or over it. We all gotta live through it.

This brings me to my first of three steps in the process.

1. Reboot & Reset. (A way to end the Mommy Wars, too!)

It’s time for a total mind shift.

In a very real way, Covid-19 is giving you a chance to get to know your children. Really know them.

Being with them 24/7 in quarantine makes it possible.

If you surrender to this reality and seize the opportunity before you, getting through a Covid-19 quarantine will be a lot easier.

At least it’ll be much more pleasant!

Remember when you first sent off your child to school or left them at daycare? You probably experienced mixed feelings — fear, worry, guilt.

No more with Covid-19. The virus has brought them back to you. It’s letting you keep them close to your heart.

Now, this doesn’t mean you become like Siamese twins, permanently attached. Figuring out boundaries in all sorts of situations– the daily ins and outs of pandemic homeschooling — will be the subject of future posts.

But, the coronavirus allows you to truly be present to them and for them.

You’re not just sharing the same living quarters. You’re at home together.

You now have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only watch them grow up 24/7. You are a major player in their growth. Being the captain means you’re setting them on a course which can influence their lives forever. How exciting!

Further, inviting them to be co-captains in this quest allows them to take charge of their own education and their own lives. This may be the first time they realize that their opinions really matter. (See #2 for more on doing this.)

Whoa. This may require another monumental mindset shift — about parenting.

Spoiler Alert: Who knows? As you’re figuring out control issues and jointly making decisions, you just may learn something about yourself as a parent and as a person from pandemic homeschooling!

2. Talk Is Not Cheap.

A pandemic homeschool works best when everyone’s involved in how it runs. Kids’ opinions must matter.

So, what’s the best strategy for finding out what your children want and need?

Hold a family meeting (or two) to identify your kids’ interests and passions. Build a curriculum around them.

You’re fortunate to have the internet at your fingertips. But, it’s a double-edged sword.

There are literally tons of homeschool curricula to choose from! You may justifiably feel overwhelmed and not know where to start.

Here’s a secret: You don’t have to choose a curriculum for each child, in every subject. Nor do you even have to follow a “curriculum” when you pandemic homeschool.

I homeschooled successfully for 12 years and have three bright and curious teens who love to learn and look forward to college. I loosely followed a math curriculum. I borrowed the broad outlines of a spelling program.

The rest I created myself, using my children’s interests to guide me.

Tip: You can create your own curricula if you want! This may sound like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. (Contact me for some inspiration and/or guidance.)

Alternatively, you may choose to follow along whatever guidelines your county department of education recommends.

Or, you can spend the lockdown engaged in child-centered and child-directed activities that have educational features.

Family Meeting Introduction Speech

To make this work, start with a family discussion. Throw the concept of a pandemic homeschool out there.

Use the meeting to begin discovering what your children really want to learn how to do. It could be something they’re involved in now or wish to start.

Here’s an intro for the meeting that explains what a pandemic homeschool is and how you’d like to design it, placing it in a larger framework of family life. (If all of your littles are under 7, you may need to simplify it.)

“I know that the school lockdown was hard for everyone. You’re sick of worksheets from school. You hate video lessons. And you really miss being with your friends.

Unfortunately, Covid-19 is not letting up in the United States. In fact, this month is the worse it’s ever been here. We’re still in the first wave.

Public health officials predict that the winter will be very bad for coronavirus and seasonal flu. If schools reopen in September, there could be another lockdown by December.

To avoid the disruption in your education and our family life that a lockdown brings, I have another solution.

I believe creating our own pandemic homeschool is our best option.

You will be co-captains in this effort. This meeting is about how to make it happen.”

Family Meeting Guide Questions

Here’s a list of guide questions for the meeting(s):

1. If you could choose, what would you like to do or learn about the most? Why do you like it so much?
2. What’s your second favorite thing to do or learn about? Why?
3. Do you have any idea on what exactly you’d like to do or learn about your favorite thing?
4. Do you have any idea on what exactly you’d like to do or learn about your second favorite thing?

For example, if you like painting, which type of painting, surfaces, paints, etc. would you like to work with? If you’d like to play a musical instrument, which one? Which type of music do you wish to learn to play? If you like tinkering, which types of appliances do you want to fix?

If you’re getting blank stares with these questions, possibly your children may still be awe-struck. This is totally understandable.

At school, they’re used to sitting in a chair for long periods, passively receiving information on things they typically don’t care about. Usually, no one asks them what they’d like to learn.

Once they realize what you’re proposing — your offer of academic freedom with few rules and limitations — they will get excited!

They’ll begin to see that you’re suggesting an entire year working on stuff they really like.

If you still need to prompt them, watch this video together to spark interest:

Hopefully by this time the family meeting is full of energy and excitement with your kids sharing their passions and interests with you and other members of your family. They’ll sketch out how they wish to pursue them in your pandemic homeschool.

If they only have a vague idea of what they’d like to do, that’s totally understandable. Take that as your cue to propose a few possibilities and flesh out their ideas.

Listen to what bounces back. Use it as your marching orders to create a pandemic homeschool they’ll never want to leave — or at least stay happily at until they can safely return to school!

Note: Playing video games all day or most of the time is not an option. However, it’s very possible to integrate gaming into an educational program. More on this in an upcoming blog.

3. Be a Champion.

Remember that family meeting I mentioned in the last section? Aha! Use what you learned to zero in on your kids’ passions and interests.

Spend your pandemic homeschooling days with your children who are leading their own educational development based on what they told you during that meeting and any follow ups to it.

Use your child’s passions and interests to serve as the basis for a comprehensive educational plan that you integrate across all subjects.

Note: This task may sound more daunting than it actually is! Stay tuned for many more blog posts on this topic. Or contact me now if you can’t wait!

Call to Action: What you can do now in the summer before embarking on the pandemic homeschooling journey is: research, research and research!

For instance:

• Network with friends and people in your community
• Set up purchases or budget for them
• Make appointments
• Form small groups
• Do whatever is needed to bring your kids’ dreams to reality.

Your Goal This Summer: Find out exactly how you can make their dreams and aspirations reality for the upcoming year. If they continue their pursuit later, you’re laying the foundation for the rest of their lives.

If this works, you’ll be their champion for life, eternally grateful to you when they’re older and looking back on this time.

Now, if that’s not every parent’s dream come true, I don’t know what is!

Let me break down exactly how to accomplish Step #3.

Say you have a child who is passionate about:

• Dancing
• Singing
• Drawing
• Sewing
• Painting
• Sculpting
• Playing a sport
• Crafting
• Playing a musical instrument
• Cooking
• Reading
• Writing
• Acting
• Doing science experiments
• Tinkering
• Woodworking
• Beekeeping
• Birdwatching
• Gardening
• Raising animals
• Sailing
• Repairing cars
• Coding
• Entrepreneurship
• Something else — the sky’s the limit!

Whatever it is, ask them to narrow down their choices to one or two activities.

Scout out local and online resources for making these a reality. In your research, be on the lookout for:

• Supply or equipment companies (eBay, Craigslist and Freecycle.org included)
• Professionals willing to mentor your child (or maybe a small group that you put together) now or during the school year
• Books and courses on the subject (lots of low-cost bookstores and folks offering paid or free video tutorials)
• Homeschool groups doing these activities or with connections to people who do.

For example, I remember a local beekeeper willing to train older homeschool kids to start and maintain their own hives. When ages 10 and 12, my sons donned authentic beekeeper suits and masks and got close to an active bee hive. They learned to overcome their fear of bees, too! Sweet deal.

Think what you could do with the honey! Especially if you have another child who loves cooking. Yummy.

A fellow homeschooler introduced me to a carpenter who’d take on student apprentices who wanted to learn woodworking. Wouldn’t it be nice to have custom, homemade furniture in your house made by your own son or daughter? Impressive!

In either case, or cases like these, you could start a family, home-based business selling their goods.

Just think of all the real-life math and financial literacy your children would be learning hands on. Building a website and marketing their products would be yet another skillset they’d acquire.

All of these skills will serve them well for a lifetime. And you positioned them to learn like this, becoming their champion for life.

Think of Fall 2020 as your chance to make it happen.

Beekeeping or woodworking are just two examples. I’m positive there are many more. So many people are out of work these days because of Covid-19. Mentoring children would be a great way to earn money or give back to the community by helping the next generation.

Never hurts to ask!

Spend the summer asking around, looking for bargains and setting up activities. If your kids are old enough, invite them to assist. They’ll be learning to take their education in their own hands and create it themselves. Isn’t this what education is fundamentally all about?

The Time to Create Your Pandemic Homeschool Is Now

After a stressful spring school lockdown, you definitely don’t want to do that again.

Your kids’ tears, screams and tantrums were matched only in level of discomfort to your own yelling and pulling your hair out.

There’s got to be a better way — and there is.

It’s called a pandemic homeschool, custom-made to suit your family.

With three simple steps, you can spend the remaining summer break personalizing the educational paths of each of your children.

With their regular input to the plan from start to finish, you’ll be ready to spend the entire school year happily learning at home, while untreatable Covid-19 rages outside.

No more worries about hounding your kids about finishing worksheets and projects given by a remote teacher they’ve known only briefly and meet only occasionally.

No more anxiety about explaining lessons to your kids and wondering if you’re doing it right.

In your pandemic homeschool, children will largely self-direct as co-captains while you more or less supervise and guide. They’ll accomplish this masterfully because you’ve set them up this summer to succeed all year.

They’ll love it — and you for doing it!

With these three steps:

• Reset
• Meeting
• Research

You’ll be prepared for the first day of school like never before.

Most of all, you’ll be indirectly teaching your kids how to learn without consciously doing so. Mastering that is the most important skill to have.

It’ll set them up for a lifetime of empowered learning where their zeal for knowledge will be limitless and never-ending.

All thanks to you and your Covid-19 pandemic homeschool.