There are a few common mistakes that homeschooling parents tend to make and these five about head the list. These are not woes that are necessarily of parents new to homeschooling. Even those who have been teaching their children at home successfully for a while now can still end up making these errors. Being aware of the potential problem can help you to think proactively of possible solutions.
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1. Over scheduling classes
There is a good lesson plan and one which will over burden both you as the teacher and your children as the students. You need to factor in the time that you can actually spend teaching and preparing for classes before you set up a crazy schedule which has you pulling at your hair within a week.
2. Under budgeting for resources
Since you have to buy your own resources and study material for teaching your children you need to make a realistic budget to help you plan your expenses. Some basic material is a must, the rest you need to pick and choose based on just how useful it is likely to be. Remember if its something expensive that you will use just once or twice, its just not worth spending on.
3. Multi tasking to exhaustion
You need to be skilled at handing a number of tasks at one go when you begin to homeschool. There is not just the studies, but also the feeding, cleaning and a whole lot of other chores and errands that you need to run. Don’t make your life so jam packed with activities that you exhaust yourself. Remember if you fall ill the full family suffers. So take care of your health first.
4. Being too rigid with the plan
Having a plan is a great thing. It keeps you focused on what you have to do and it also allows you to keep track of what all you have achieved in a given time frame. The trouble starts if the plan is not flexible enough to take some knocks. No matter how great your original plan is, you should be able to make minor changes in it if circumstances change.
5. Not keeping records
With the great number of things that you need to keep track of it is sometimes easy to forget keeping records of your child’s progress. You tell yourself that you can always make the report later on, but eventually you will forget. This can cause discrepancies in the record keeping of your child’s progress which can affect him adversely at a later date should he choose to return to regular school or attend college.
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